Ethics and Oppression

On the Morality of the Oppressed

Morning Comrades.

To conclude this weeks talks about our existing ideology let’s dip a little into morality and ethics. All too often, when discussing the the violence of capitalism and the alternatives proposed for the past 250 years to it, we naturally fall into the binary reality of good vs evil, and this includes myself, without truthfully addressing the question in full. I genuinely doubt that there is enough space here to come to a satisfactory answer, or rather a defensible one, but it it is important to at the very least start start the process and keep it our minds. To be clear, these questions have been thought about and discussed the First International in 1886 but I haven’t touched on the subject in the 5 years here.

The starting point is this: If we assume that the dominant capitalist ideology we exist under is inherently anti-humanitarian and thus “bad”, as I have suggested, than logically, the opposition to it has to be progressive and inherently “good”. Unfortunately, our framework of analysis has been shaped within this binary of good vs. evil, here in the West, since the Enlightenment, more so, that there is always a necessary conflict that is inherently and its core, religious - the battle for the soul is as old as human history.

However, the question needs to be asked: is an alternative to the dominant ideology inherently “good” simply because it is oppressed reality or is there more to it? Is the proposed alternative to capitalism, in its entirety from the material conditions to the ideological realities, good simply because it is oppressed with all the might of the dominant force?