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A Marxist Theory of Justice?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

A. M. Shandro
A. M. Shandro
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Abstract

Some recent Marxologists (notably Allen Buchanan, Richard Miller and Allen Wood) have denied that the idea of justice can play any significant role within Marxist thought. This article maintains, on the contrary, that the very logic of historical materialism, notably the concept of the historical development of human needs, necessitates a concept of justice even in the higher phase of communism. Furthermore, the “anti-juridical” interpretation of Marx fails to provide an adequate account of the connection between the communist values of self-realization and community. It therefore obscures the concerns addressed by a notion of justice. The early Marx's concept of species-being (Gattungswesen) expresses the relation between self-realization and community in historical terms. Thus it provides an appropriate context for a Marxist theory of justice.

Résumé

Quelques marxologues actuels (notamment Allen Buchanan, Richard Miller et Allen Wood) ont nié à l'idée de justice tout rôle significatif dans la pensée marxiste. Cet article soutient au contraire que la logique même du matérialisme historique, notamment le concept de développement historique des besoins humains, nécessite un concept de justice y compris pour le stade supérieur du communisme. En outre, l'interprétation « anti-juridique » de Marx n'explique pas adéquatement le rapport entre les valeurs communistes d'auto-réalisation et de communauté. Cette interprétation obscurcit ainsi l'objet même d'une notion de justice. La notion d'etre générique (Gattungswesen), dans les écrits du jeune Marx, exprime ce rapport entre l'auto-réalisation et la communauté en termes historiques. Elle offre de cette manière un contexte approprié pour une théorie marxiste de la justice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 27 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1989

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References

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17 Cited in Young, “Dispensing with Moral Rights,” 68.

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26 Marx and Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, 529.

27 Ibid., 529–30.

28 Ibid., 530; emphasis in the original.

29 Ibid., 530–31; emphasis in the original.

30 Ibid., 531.

31 Buchanan, Marx and Justice, 24, 58.

32 It may be objected that the characterization of this position as altruistic is overdrawn, that the performance of socially useful or socially recognized tasks will be experienced as self-realization. While Marx expected that community needs and self-realization would prove far more harmonious in communist society than under capitalism, he did not presume to furnish a guarantee of their congruence; that is, he recognized these two kinds of need as distinct. My point is that to recognize this distinction while simply assuming the congruence of its two sides is to decree either universal altruism or the universal reach of a commissar of needs.

33 Marx, Capital, 617–18.

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36 Ibid., 351; emphasis in the original.

37 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1976), 294Google Scholar; emphasis in the original. See also Aristotle's suggestive comments, Ibid., 258–59, 304–05.

38 Marx and Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, 145.

39 Ibid., 491.

40 My thanks to one of this Journal's anonymous reviewers for raising this question.

41 Marx, Early Writings, 379; emphasis in the original.