IMO morality should never enter the picture what so ever. Morals and ethics are utterly and completely USELESS!!! Perhaps it has some useful value for various mobilizations by stirring the passions of the masses. But as a unit of analysis? Utterly worthless! And yet, our "leftists" and "Marxists", all they have to offer is moral condemnations! Your essay correctly identifies this. Morality prevents people from engaging with reality to test their theories. All it ever seems to do is give people an excuse why they can't do something. "Oh I can't do X or Y or Z, that would be immoral!" It would be as if a scientist in a laboratory worked through a series of equations in his or her head, and thereby deduced an entire theory of physics without once ever engaging in a lab
"Morality prevents people from engaging with reality to test their theories." ???
Is it really morality that keeps people from doing the revolution? Or the lack of it?
Actually, this separation of morality and politics is an invention of the bourgeoisie. Capitalism & capitalist cannot have morality, communism & communist must have one.
👏👏 great work. really appreciated the insistence that theory should clarify struggle rather than become a substitute for it.
IMO morality should never enter the picture what so ever. Morals and ethics are utterly and completely USELESS!!! Perhaps it has some useful value for various mobilizations by stirring the passions of the masses. But as a unit of analysis? Utterly worthless! And yet, our "leftists" and "Marxists", all they have to offer is moral condemnations! Your essay correctly identifies this. Morality prevents people from engaging with reality to test their theories. All it ever seems to do is give people an excuse why they can't do something. "Oh I can't do X or Y or Z, that would be immoral!" It would be as if a scientist in a laboratory worked through a series of equations in his or her head, and thereby deduced an entire theory of physics without once ever engaging in a lab
"Morality prevents people from engaging with reality to test their theories." ???
Is it really morality that keeps people from doing the revolution? Or the lack of it?
Actually, this separation of morality and politics is an invention of the bourgeoisie. Capitalism & capitalist cannot have morality, communism & communist must have one.
to be a little more precise with my language bc i was playing fast and loose:
a proletarian morality should be framed in terms of "It is my solemn ethical dury TO DO x" instead of "I cannot do X because of its Sinful Essence."
the author of the piece I think gets this: morality in the west is never an imperative to act and always an excuse for why we cant take action