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An Ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's Account of Justice and Equality1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1982

Alan Gilbert
Alan Gilbert*
Affiliation:
University of Denver
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Abstract

Given the widespread moral conventionalism or historicism in contemporary social science and ethics, many have viewed Marx as arguing either that conceptions of justice simply shift historically and lack objectivity (relativism) or that notions of justice are to be understood solely as expressions of class interests (reductionism). Although metaethical ambiguities about the status of conceptions of justice influenced some of Marx's and Engels's formulations, they condemned the “crying contrasts” of rich and poor. Marx is better understood as defending a version of moral objectivity or moral realism. The paper begins with an example from the recent debate about justice in the international distribution of wealth to highlight the implausibility of a relativist or reductionist account. It then describes alternative views of the status of justice and equality in Marx and Engels and explores the logical structure of Marx's critique of Proudhon. A fourth section examines the analogy between Marx's and Engels's realism in the philosophy of science and their realist arguments in ethics, focusing on Marx's and Engels's non-relativist and non-reductionist conception of moral progress. The conclusion sets Marx's use of concepts of exploitation in the context of his overall moral judgments and suggests that Marx's social or historical theory rather than his moral standards are the most controversial part of his ethical argument.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 328 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1982

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Footnotes

1

I am indebted to Nicholas Sturgeon and Richard Boyd for helpful criticisms of this paper, and to Allen Wood for several enlightening conversations about these issues.

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