Moralism vs. Legitimacy

On Foundational Communist Democracy

Morning Comrades.

This is going to be a deeper topic that ties into Monday’s dispatch to lay some sort of foundational ideology behind a Communist Democracy and a potential world to fight for.

In a time of mounting crises across the Western world—economic inequality, ecological collapse, authoritarian drift, and eroding faith in institutions—many analysts and commentators continue to frame political discourse in terms of morality. They ask: was this policy good? Was that leader bad? This kind of language may feel intuitive, even righteous, but it obscures the actual dynamics of power and domination that structure modern political life. As far as I am concerned, Good’ or ‘bad’ are not even serious categories of political analysis. ‘Legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate’ is the question.” To understand the implications of this, we must move beyond moralistic critique toward an analysis rooted in structures, systems, and the legitimacy that sustains them.

A companion point deepens the argument: “Anyone can point out individual cases of rectitude amidst systemic domination—all you will get is more political moralism.” In other words, highlighting isolated acts of goodness or integrity within a fundamentally exploitative system merely reinforces the illusion that the system itself can be reformed through moral will, rather than confronted and dismantled through structural transformation.

The Poverty of Political Moralism

The language of "good and bad" in politics is seductive. It allows for emotional resonance, appeals to shared values, and often feels like the first step toward accountability. But it is a fundamentally individualistic lens, focusing on the intentions and character of actors rather than the institutions and systems they serve.

For example, consider Western media portrayals of political leaders: a U.S. president who signs a climate agreement is lauded as “good,” while one who deregulates oil drilling is “bad.” But this binary fails to account for the deeper structure of the global fossil fuel economy, corporate power over environmental policy, and the militarisation of energy politics. The “good” action does not challenge the system’s ecological destructiveness; it temporarily masks it.

Similarly, branding governments or parties as “good” because they adopt progressive stances on social issues ignores the reality that those same institutions may also uphold imperialist wars, police repression, or capitalist austerity. Political moralism does not just distract—it anesthetizes.

As Marxist theorist Ellen Meiksins Wood argued, liberal democracy “naturalizes the market” by framing injustice as the result of bad actors or insufficient regulation rather than as the inherent product of a capitalist system. The moralistic lens helps reproduce this illusion. What is needed is a shift in analytical category: from moral judgment to political legitimacy.

Let’s get into it.