An Ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's Account of Justice and Equality Author(s): Alan Gilbert Source: The American Political

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

ALAN GILBERT
University of Denver 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 'sformulations, 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.

with this theory of history. According to the relativist and reductionist views, Marx and Engels ofOn Marx's generaltheoreticalhypothesis,sys- fered only a historical critique of prevailing contems of law and related moral conceptions arise ceptions of justice and equality and eschewed with given systems of production, spur their ad- these concepts except to debunk them. A third vance, and share in their demise. Such prevailing view, a moral realist one, suggests that Marx and conceptions are relative to historical epochs; they Engels dialectically reformulated existing proenjoy validity for a limited period but compel no letarian demands for equality and justice. According to the relativist view, the Marxist eternal or universal assent. Thus, in response to the claim that payment of interest is a matter of sees as an issue only the historical efficacy of an ethical system to a given mode of production-for natural justice, Marx contended: example, a justification of the natural character whichgo on between The justice of transactions of slaveholding in ancient Greece or of wage agentsof productionrests on the fact that these slavery in the contemporary United States-rather of transactions ariseas naturalconsequences the than the truth of a moral argument. Claims of relationsof production.The juridicalforms in justice in social theory are incidental to the causal which these economic transactions appear as . role of prevailing economic tendencies, although voluntary actionsof the participants, . . as contractsthat may be enforcedby the stateagainsta those claims might reinforce or retard economic single party, cannot, being mere forms, detertrends, and moral concepts make no distinguishminethis content.Theyonly expressit. This conable contribution to social explanations. Concepto tent is just wheneverit corresponds the mode tions of justice differ incommensurably from perof production, is adequate to it. It is unjust iod to period, class to class. (See, for example, wheneverit contradictsthat mode (Marx 1961, Trotsky 1963, and Fisk 1975). Representative proVol. 3, pp. 339-40;Marxand Engels 1959, Vol. ponents of these conceptions, abstracted from 25, p. 351). their specific historical settings, would continue to Three interpretations of justice, each with some defend their own visions of justice, but quarrel basis in Marx and Engels, might be consistent endlessly. This interpretation is a form of appraiser's-group relativism: that is, an act is judged by a given appraiser to be right if and only if it ac'I am indebted to Nicholas Sturgeon and Richard cords with his society's prevailing moral code Boyd for helpful criticismsof this paper, and to Allen (Lyons 1976, p. 109). Wood for several enlightening conversations about Whereas the representatives of different epochs these issues. take their own visions of justice seriously, Marx-

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ists do not; they adopt a version of ethical relativism and dismiss moral arguments as a muddle. Ethical relativists could still defend their own ethical conceptions or those of their epoch, yet Marxian relativists refuse to endorse such conceptions because they radically differentiate moral knowledge from other kinds of knowledge. Such Marxians argue that in natural science and social theory, investigators can discover approximate truth without reference to the social origins of a point of view. Here ethics suffers by comparison with science. From a scientific standpoint, no moral truth or objectivity exists. Furthermore, this ethical relativist interpretation denies both moral progress and advance in ethical theory, a view that corresponds to the widespread ethical relativist, conventionalist, or historicist trend in Anglo-American philosophy and social science. According to the reductionist interpretation, a Marxist could not only explain standards of justice by reference to the mode of production, but could endorse them on this basis (Wood 1972, 1979, has skillfully defended this argument). This view conflicts with ethical relativism. It relates the existing historical variety of conceptions of justice to the agent's group; an act is right (at a given time) if and only if it accords with the moral code of the agent's mode of production or social class. (Lyons 1976). The reductionist then assesses the validity of these differing conceptions of justice not in their own terms but according to their impact on the productive forces. Thus, observers could agree that slavery was just not because slaves were inferior or barbarians lacking mental competence, as slaveholders alleged, but because slavery temporarily stimulated production. In fact, although temporarily endorsing the slaveholders' judgment about justice, this view seems (peculiarly) compatible with the denial of the slaveholders' reasons. Such an interpretation saves itself from ethical relativism but only at the expense of reductionism. More strongly than the relativist interpretation, this view debunks all conceptions of justice. In Wood's version of reductionism, the historical observer concurs with juridical standards if they conform to the relations of production. Wood sees justice as a conservative notion that corresponds to the old relations of production even when that productive system has gone into decline. Radical critics can never use such conceptions. A new view of justice becomes valid only after a political revolution has sanctioned new production relations. Although this interpretation attempts to account for Marx's criticisms of the use of the term eternal justice by moralistic radicals (Marx 1966, Vol. 1: 84-85), it leaves a crucial question unanswered: in periods when one mode of production declines, a new one arises,

and a revolutionary movement flourishes, at least two conceptions of justice clash. How is the observer to choose between them? According to Marx's general historical theory, a reductionist could endorse the new conception because it advances the productive forces even before new production relations become predominant. Prevalent moral standards lose their validity when the old production relations retard the productive forces, and the reductionist could then sanction the use of the term unjust by radicals. Either version of reductionism permits a kind of dialectical progress, a progress in productivity, but at least in Wood's account, no progress in morality or ethical theory can occur. In subsequent debate, Wood maintained that Marx used other ethical standards, such as political community, freedom, and self-realization, to indict predominant modes of production and restricted a reductionist argument to concepts of justice (Wood 1979, pp. 282-91). This recognition undermines any historicist attempt to reduce Marx's overall ethical judgments to his critique of prevailing ideas about justice. In comparison to these other ethical goods, Wood regards justice as unimportant. A reductionist account could, therefore, acknowledge ethical progress in these other goods, but Wood does not. For Marx and Engels, however, greater realization of political community, cooperative productive activity, and individuality distinguishes communism from previous exploitative societies (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 2, p. 24; Marx 1973, pp. 325, 487-8). We might regard this reductionist interpretation as a version of scientific realism, one that identifies which actual relationships have been termed justice. But unlike the moral realist interpretation, the reductionist account denies that any conception of justice could be true. Like its ethical cousin, relativism, the reductionist interpretation denies moral truth or objectivity. Some theorists, such as Leo Strauss, have criticized all modern political thought, liberal and radical, for a putative commitment to moral relativism or historicism in contrast to the moral objectivity and loftier political and philosophical theory of the ancients (Strauss 1965). In Strauss's terms, modern liberalism and radicalism must endorse a contentless notion of individual freedom. If either a relativist or a reductionist account of Marx's moral judgments is true, such a critic could identify Marxian theory as part of an historicist trend. Strauss's critique captures one important strand in modern political theory. For example, Hobbes's idea of an anarchy of moral meanings which requires the Leviathan of civil society to establish a positive order, is a strongly conventionalist view; that is, moral ideas mean what the

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sovereign says they mean (Hobbes 1962, pp. 39-40). Michael Oakeshott offers an elegant reformulation of Hobbes's conception: a philosophical defense of modern individuality reflects current European self-understanding and has no further, more objective basis (Oakeshott 1975, pp. 325-6). John Rawls, a liberal theorist, looks to moral reasoning in an original position to encourage moral objectivity. Yet Rawls draws the relatively pure moral intuitions that play a role in his "reflective equilibrium" from "our intuitions," that is, the intuitions which at this historical moment moral philosophers happen to have (Rawls 1971, pp. 19-20, 49-50). In the social sciences, similar notions of moral conventionalism have become widespread. To take only one example, Max Weber's conception of legitimacy appeals to what a given population thinks to be just. Weber brackets the issue of whether legitimate governmental practices actually are just or unjust. Furthermore, Weber viewed different dimensions of reality, politics and religion for example, as ruled by clashing demons and denied the possibility of moral objectivity. His "national economics" celebrated the eloquent relativist ideal of Machiavelli's Florentine, who valued his city more highly than his soul (Weber 1958a, p. 126; 1958b, p. 107; Gilbert 1981c). The importance of moral relativism in contemporary liberal philosophical and social scientific thinking lends some plausibility to the general Straussian critique. Nonetheless, Strauss's argument is thoroughly unfair to the diversity of modern liberalism. He ignores the hardly contentless liberal and radical denial of ancient slavery as a prerequisite for any morally defensible form of social cooperation and individuality (see Montesquieu 1965, bk. xv; Hegel 1975, pp. 54, 140; Gilbert 1981b), and he fails to identify Marx's moral judgments, if Marxian social theory is true, as objective or realist claims about human needs and capacities. Thus, a moral realist interprets Marx's standards of human goods, including political community, freedom, individuality, friendship, solidarity, and scientific and artistic achievement, as stemming from Marx's conception of human nature (see also Gilbert 1981a). This human nature exhibits certain original capacities and needs, roughly those identified by Darwin's theory; subsequent historical development has refined these original capacities or created new ones (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, pp. 178, 341: Cohen 1979, pp. 151-2). This vision of a historically modified human nature combined with Marx's theory of economic and political development favors a society that fosters the greatest flourishing of individuality and achievement of potentials. Note that this view contradicts any relativist

interpretation, which sees humanity itself as epoch relative or contends that no human nature exists (Fisk 1975, pp. 74-8). Defending an aspect of moral realism, Husami has challenged Wood's reductionism by distinguishing Marx's claims about the truth of moral judgments from his account of their origins or "sociology of moral norms" (Husami 1980, pp. 42-53). Husami argues that Marx recognized moral facts about justice under capitalism; however, he tries to deny Wood's reductionism any basis in Marx's own comments on justice. But as Wood (1979 Section III) has responded, Marx not only criticized capitalist standards of justice but also the notions of "eternal justice" offered by radicals like Proudhon and Lassalle. Marx sometimes appeared to substitute scientific explanation (and political strategy) for any moral claims at all. By rejecting Wood's interpretation outright, Husami has nearly painted Marx as the type of moralist Marx criticized, a theorist who offers a primarily ethical critique of capitalism. Wood in response similarly denies any merit in Husami's contention that Marx scathingly indicted the inhuman consequences of capitalist exploitation. Taking Husami's and Wood's accounts together, Marx and Engels appear to be ambiguous about whether or not capitalist exploitation is unjust. I will argue, however, that although Marx and Engels did not regard injustice as the only or even the main indictment of capitalism, they saw the historic differences between rich and poor, explained by Marx's theory of exploitation, as, in Engels's phrase, crying injustices. Thus, the Wood-Husami debate does not stem from any ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's moral judgments or in their condemnation of capitalism and previous exploitative societies but rather from a different ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's account of the status or truth of moral concepts. The difficulty lies not in Marx's and Engels's ethics but in their metaethics and its peculiar impact on their interpretation of their scientific, political, and ethical disputes with other radicals. On this argument, many readers of Marx, both sympathetic and unsympathetic, have mistakenly used some of Marx's and Engels's relativist or reductionist metaethical statements to ignore their actual moral judgments. I call my interpretation of Marx's ethical judgments a moral realist one in analogy with the realist arguments of Putnam (1975), Boyd (1979) and Kripke (1980) in contemporary philosophy of science and language. Moral realism recognizes the objectivity of moral judgments about human needs and capacities, progress in morality and moral theory, the dependence of ethical progress on advances in social organization and social

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theory, and the role of moral conceptions, especially true ones in social explanation and political strategy. Anglo-American philosophy, influenced by empiricism, has stressed a priori analysis of the definition of moral terms; for example, the ancient Greeks' criteria for using the term good would determine its meaning.' Consequently, any change in the definition of the term good renders moral continuity problematic, and a claim that ancient Greeks and modern liberals share important conceptions of the good life or freedom is incoherent. Thus, this general empiricist conception in the philosophy of language leads directly to moral relativism or historicism (Rorty 1979, pp. 280-1). In contrast, for the realist, moral concepts refer to actual human social and psychological capacities for cooperation, freedom, and individuality manifested in the course of historical development. The realist view begins from Aristotle's argument that the Greek polis first demonstrated the human potentials for a good life, or of man to be a political animal, potentials that were not previously recognized in Persian or ancient Greek 1252b 16-23, despotism (Aristotle, Politics, 1253a30-31). Later arguments, such as Hegel's that in Greece, only male citizens were free, but modern society has recognized that all males are free, or Marx's argument that communism enables the full realization of social individuality, attempt to identify new manifestations of human ethical possibilities. Thus, a realist explanation of the ambiguity in Marx's metaethics can lead to a much more sympathetic view of justice than relativism or reductionism. Realism acknowledges some merit in past and current views about justice but offers a theoretical reformulation of those views; it shows how dramatically moral differences between liberals and the ancients, for example Montesquieu's rejection of Aristotle's social biological defense of slavery, or between Marxists and liberals, pivot on issues of social theory rather than on incommensurable ethical premises. The moral realist account recognizes historical progress but is not historicist or relativist. Unlike empiricist or neoKantian moral philosophy, moral realism emphasizes the discovery of moral knowledge a posteriori based on observable human social practice and denies it any a priori status. The realist regards an approximately true moral theory as pos-

sible. One might even claim that Aristotle advanced such a theory about cooperation and freedom among those recognized as human, although he wrongly excluded women and slaves (Gilbert 198lb). The realist also contends that progress has occurred in morality, for instance from slave to nonslave organizations of society, and in moral theory. Such advances are heavily dependent on advances in history and in social theory. The truth of claims about justice or other moral judgments would influence the destiny of radical movements and would prove indispensable to an adequate social theory. Thus, this paper argues that a moral realist account provides the most consistent interpretation of Marx's and Engels's judgments about justice and the role of ethical judgments in Marxian social theory and will show that their occasional metaethical relativist or reductionist comments are misleading. If this argument is correct, it results in a more sweeping reinterpretation of the status of moral argument in Marx's historical theory and political strategy and a more fundamental recasting of Marx's relationship to ancient, liberal, and earlier radical political and moral theory than any previous view. What Can Marxists Fairly Say About Injustices? In One Hundred Countries, Two Billion People, Robert S. McNamara, then president of the World Bank, made an impassioned plea for international redistribution. Pointing to the plight of the most impoverished citizens of India, he contended: It is the poorest40% who despitetheircountry's gross economicgrowth remainin conditionsof deprivationthat fall below any rationaldefinition of human decency.... When we reflect that of the morethanhalf a billionpersonsliving on the Indian subcontinent,some 200 million subsist on incomesthat averageless than $40 a whatthat really year, how are we to comprehend implies?(McNamara1973, pp. 104-5) One might add that if the lowest 400o7 are so poor, the circumstances of the vast majority are only slightly less oppressive and uncertain. By any conception of meeting the minimal human needs of food, shelter, and jobs, let alone health care and schooling, these inequalities, characteristic of individual countries and more strikingly of international society as a whole, seem unjust if not perverse and outrageous. Furthermore, by McNamara's own account, inequality of income shares is increasing in India as in many other poor nations. For McNamara, the causes of this impoverishment seem unclear; they reside in some absence of

2The empiricist view of moral terms ultimately derives from Locke's argument that words refer only to nominal essences, specified by lists of secondary qualities, not to real or internal essences. Locke, 1979, bk. 3, chs. 5-6, esp. pp. 442-45. Kripke (1980, pp. 134-40) and Boyd (1980) have criticized this view.

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dynamism among entrepreneurs or the masses in poor nations, or perhaps ultimately in some putative cultural or psychological deficiency, and do not stem mainly from the heritage of colonialism or the contemporary effects of foreign intervention. But once a common concern, spurred by McNamara's book, becomes widespread among policy-making elites, McNamara expects that the conditions of the least advantaged will improve. How might a Marxist respond to McNamara's appeal to justice? In a classic strategy suggested by Engels's The Housing Question (1873), a critique of the German Proudhonist Millberger, a Marxist might point to facts about the interaction of rich and poor which make McNamara's view implausible. In the poor nations the new elites benefit from skewed income distribution (Tucker 1977, pp. 154-5). Furthermore, the elites of the advanced capitalist nations who sometimes supply economic and military aid to the poor nations have a common interest with these elites in maintaining impoverishment (they benefit from cheap labor, for example), and international monetary institutions sustain their interests. For the Marxist, some version of Lenin's theory of imperialism or today's dependency theory would appear to explain the increase in inequality and to illuminate the gap between at best skewed and unequal economic growth and internal and international rhetoric about redistribution (Myrdal 1970, pp. 60-1).3 Correspondingly, only mutual support among workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals in both poor and rich nations, offers any hope of securing redistribution to the less advantaged (Gilbert 1978b). McNamara's view suggests that the World Bank, once it recognized the injustice of international distribution, would welcome attempts at redistribution in the poor nations. From a Marxian point of view, the World Bank is tied to certain class interests, and rhetoric notwithstanding, would oppose serious attempts at such redistribution. For example, consider the World Bank's reaction to the election in 1970 of the democratic socialist regime of Chilean Salvador Allende. Far from encouraging this non-revolutionary attempt at redistribution, the World Bank cut its aid from more than twenty million dollars to none. After the 1973 coup, the World Bank restored its aid to the Pinochet regime (Cusack 1977, p. 144; Payre 1975). The Marxist might conclude that the facts and an accurate social theory show that within a

I 3Though cannot examinethe issue in this paper,the internationaldivision of labor in EasternEurope and the ThirdWorld, presidedover by the Soviet economic elite, strikinglyresembles capitalist forms of dependency.

capitalist internationaleconomic system, major cannot occur. redistribution Yet somethingseemspeculiarabout this Marxagonizesover ian response.AlthoughMcNamara natureof this situation,the Marxist the arbitrary says nothing about justice. Perhapsthis Marxist holds the relativist interpretation,according to which McNamarahas a bourgeoisconceptionof justice, and conceptions of justice are simply a concepmuddle, or perhapshe has a reductionist is tion, that McNamara rightthat this distribution is unjust (capitalismas a productivesystem has passed its historicalzenith), but wrong about the reasons. Yet the Marxist'ssocial analysis,if true, undermines only McNamara's claim that the World Bank can serve as an instrument for redistribution (Taylor 1973); it leaves McNamara'sclaim about the glaringinjusticeof internationaldistribution, or the "crying contrasts" of rich and poor, in Engels's phrase, perfectlyintact (Engels1966,pp. 173-4).Furthermore, the Marxist's social theory shows who benefits from these injustices and pinpoints a defect of characterin McNamarawho at least deceives himself.4 Although the Marxist might contend that the condemnationof injustice can occur only on McNamara'smoral premise, it is hard to see why a Marxist wouldn't share this premise. Marxistsdo, after all, object to erormous disparitiesof wealth and povertyand their social consequences;an indictmentof these consequencesprovides an importantmotivation for socialism. In this case, a common moral concern lends urgency to the Marxian criticism of McNamara'ssolution. Nothing in the social critique of McNamara'sremedy-calling on conscientious elites to rectify impoverishmentlogically requiresa rejection of all concepts of justice. Beyond this, the Marxist'srefusal to address McNamara'smoral assessment of international distribution seems ironic, for if anything, the Marxisthas better reasons for calling this situation an injustice than McNamara has. McNamara's argumentmightblamethe victimor historical accident, but suppose the citizens of poor nations lack initiativeowing to internalenvironmental causes, or supposeno one is to blame for internationalinequalities. If people are impoverishedas a result of their own inadequacies, no injustice has occurred. And although Rawls has forcefullydefendedthe fairnessof rectifying it social and naturalarbitrariness, is hard to see. blameless arbitrarinessas an injustice (Gilbert 1978a, pp. 109-10, 117). The Marxiananalysis,
'Shklar (1979) rightly argues against exaggerating the moral significance of such character defects.

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however, fixes appropriate responsibility on the beneficiaries of inegalitarian distribution and shows how victimization has occurred. More plausibly than McNamara, a Marxist can view contemporary international distribution as unjust. A realist argument demonstrating the grain of truth in McNamara's conception, seems far more appropriate than either relativist abstention from moral comment or reductionism. This example highlights the inaccuracy of Marx's and Engels's occasional characterization of their own views as a historical critique of prevailing conceptions of justice. Since Marxian historical theory leads more decisively than McNamara's to a condemnation of injustice, this analysis compels a deeper inquiry into the reasons why Marx and Engels found relativist or reductionist formulations attractive. Three Accounts of Justice in Marx and Engels Marx's and Engels's metaethical argument vacillates between relativist or reductionist and realist conceptions of justice. As I have noted, on Marx's and Engels's historical critique, prevailing conceptions of justice derive from a system of law which suits the needs of a predominant mode of production. Pointing to the epoch relativism or merely functional validity of such moral concepts, this historical theory deflates the grandiose claims of theorists who seek to recast society according to ideal standards of justice. Ironically, even radical claims about injustice frequently share in the prevailing conceptions and offer no adequate analysis of social structure and political alternatives. In some of Marx's formulations, radicals require only a clear understanding of the internal conflicts in capitalist society and definite political strategies to overthrow it. Moral indignation cannot substitute for such analysis and obscures the need for a patient, realistic strategic perspective (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, 84-5; Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 2, pp. 25, 30). Furthermore, such moral views encourage an elitist radicalism that scorns the struggle of the oppressed classes, where the participants might discover the validity of a revolutionary point of view. Moralistic radicals substitute their own artificial solutions-crotchets, as Marx called them-for real class conflict. Thus, Proudhon sought to inaugurate a reign of eternal justice by the formation of cooperative banking arrangements (mutualism) as the guarantor of fair exchanges among small propertyholders. He opposed unions on the grounds that they violated individual liberty and even defended the French government when it shot down striking coal miners at Rive-de-Gier (Marx 1963, pp. 125-6; Proudhon 1924, pp. 377-80, 384-5). Similarly, the German tailor Wilhelm Weitling, sometimes

celebrated as a Christian humanist alternative to the heartless atheist Marx, dismissed the industrial working class as unready for immediate revolt and recommended a communist uprising by the "thieving proletariat" (Wittke 1950, p. 120; Forder 1970, pp. 220-21; Gilbert 1981, chs. 3-4). In both cases, influential radical opponents of Marx relied on moral concepts as the central feature of their social theory and displayed profound elitist hostility to the working-class movement. To combat these views, Marx and Engels attempted to distinguish neatly between communist political radicalism (designed to make socialism and internationalism issues in the midst of active class conflict) and moralistic radicalism. In quasipositivist fashion, they contrasted their scientific arguments with their opponents' ethical or ideological ones, interpreted on a relativist or reductionist basis. (In fact, a reductionist reconstruction of issues of justice is a classic empiricist move, which begs the question of whether or not the situations people have referred to as unjust deserve our concern (Sturgeon 1980, pp. 31-2)). A reader may properly ask whether Marx's quarrel is with all moralities or only with the use of moral concepts by ruling class spokespersons or by radicals who hold accompanying erroneous theories of capitalism. Yet Marx and Engels offered another view of justice and equality. They recognized that workers, artisans, and peasants often use moral concepts to criticize a prevailing social order. As Engels remarked in Anti-Duhring (1878), the demand for social equality became the battle cry of the sixteenth-century German peasant war and expressed "the revolutionary instincts of the peasantry," their "spontaneous reaction against the crying social inequalities, against the contrast of rich and poor, feudal lords and their serfs, surfeit and starvation." He noted similar demands in the French communist workers' movement and called for "the abolition of classes" as the "real content" of these demands (Engels 1966, pp. 117-8). But indignation over inequality between rich and poor is a component of justice. In inegalitarian economies, all crises and hardships fall with especial severity on the poor. As class societies, even feudal ones, legitimize expectations of customary provision of subsistence among the producers, such special hardships often appear as an abridgment of the obligations of the nonproducers, or in modern times as a violation of individual rights. Given that the lives of the producers and their families depend on the reliable fulfillment of such expectations, their violation is a seeming breach of promise and provokes a particularly vivid sense of outrage, which historically has played an important causal role in popular

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revolts (Moore 1965; Thompson 1971; Scott 1976). In contrast to an impoverished conception of justice that confines itself solely to legal relations and hence cannot, for example, criticize the injustice of laws that sanction slavery, any adequate conception must assess how given social arrangements affect the needs and capacities of all individuals. Minimally, it would condemn any system of distribution that provided superfluity for the few combined with starvation for the many. Maximally, in Marx's view of communism, for example, a just system of distribution would measure need according to diverse individual capacity, a view that invokes an ancient conception of natural justice, such as Aristotle's suggestion that the best fluteplayer, rather than the handsomest or wealthiest, should receive the best supply of flutes (Aristotle, Politics, 1282b301283a4; Brecht 1966, p. 128). Thus, Engels and Marx do not reject the proletarian demand for equality as ideological but justify it in terms of need and reformulate it as a demand for abolition of classes. In Marx's Value, Price and Profit (1865), he advocated participation in strikes and unions that could drive up workers' wages at least temporarily. (Marx drew a new distinction between a relatively invariant physical element of subsistence and a much more elastic moral or social element.) In the long run, however, Marx contended that capitalism would undercut these union gains and drive workers to revolt. Through participation in their "real movement," he advocated the substitution of the "revolutionary watchword," abolition of classes, for the "conservative motto 'a fair day's pay for a fair day's work' " (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 446). Marxian social theory sees the concept of a "fair day's pay" as conservative because that demand does not question the existence of capitalism and seeks only a "better rate of exploitation" from the workers' point of view. According to Marx, the particular conception of "fairness" invoked in this demand cuts against the workers' real interests. Yet Marx defended the workers' anger and supported their demands with this particular moral gloss removed. He thought that the capitalist division of rich and poor, characterized by a certain kind of exploitation in production, justified the workers' fight for higher wages and a shorter working day. His own social theory dramatically extended the workers' claims to the expropriation of all surplus value from the capitalists and the creation of a classless society. Since Marx's analysis illuminates and reinforces the workers' indignation, it seems peculiar to view this change of demands as replacement of an ideological ethics devoid of scientific content with a social theory devoid of

ethical content. More plausibly, science does not neatly replace ethical evaluation. The revolutionary demand grows out of the moral content of the workers' original demand and in a Hegelian sense recalls it. According to Marx's moral realist line of argument, ethical indictments by workers, artisans, and peasants arise from the real experience and understanding of a given social system's oppressiveness; Marx sought to learn from this popular understanding by studying actual movements (Gilbert 1981, chs. 1-2). Thus Marx's scientific and political critique of Proudhon and the utopian socialists focused on their refusal to participate in and learn from class conflict. Unlike such elitists, his theory requires Marxists to take the opinions of others seriously and to engage them in moral as well as theoretical and political conversation about why, for instance, workers should aim for the abolition of classes rather than equality. In contrast, according to the relativist or reductionist interpretations, all that a Marxist can fairly say about concepts of justice is to debunk them. Engels's and Marx's Argument against Proudhon's "Eternal Justice" In The Housing Question, Engels dismissed Proudhon's conception of "eternal justice" as a fantasy. As one strategy for making this argument, Engels debunked all conceptions of justice as relative either to a mode of production or to the person holding the specific conception. He contended that "The justice of the Greeks and Romans held slavery to be just; the justice of the bourgeoisie of 1789 demanded the abolition of feudalism on the ground that it was unjust. For the Prussian Junker even the miserable District Ordinance is a violation of eternal justice."' Furthermore, the concept of eternal justice "belongs among those things of which Millberger correctly says 'everyone understands something different' " (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 624). In these statements, Engels adopted either an appraiser's-group relativism or a person relativism. Engels again seemed to take a positivist stand toward moral concepts; unlike scientific investigation in which researchers can ultimately resolve disagreements, human beings can never resolve disputes about justice, which only result in ceaseless wrangling. Earlier, Engels criticized Millberger's wish that

'See also Marx 1961, Vol. 3, pp. 339-40. Marx, however, avoided the puzzling inconsistencies, for instance the endorsement of person-relativism, sometimes found in Engels's philosophical arguments.

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rent agreements under capitalism could be "pereverywhere according to the strict demands of justice." This "justice" would protect each artisan or peasant in his ownership of a dwelling. Engels counterposed the facts of capitalist production to Mfilberger's dream. Capitalism persistently uproots small propertyholders and forces them into large cities; it tends to replace independent propertyholding, including homeownership, with capitalist landlordship: Whatdoes this rigamarole mean?Nothing more than that the practicaleffects of the economic laws which govern present-day society run contraryto the author'ssense of justice and that he cherishes pious wish that the mattermightbe the so arrangedas to remedythe situation. Yes, if toads had tails they would no longer be toads! And is thenthe capitalistmodeof production not 'pervaded a conceptionof right,'namely,that by of its own right to exploit the workers?And if the author tells us that is not his conceptionof right, are we one step further(Marxand Engels 1962, Vol. 1, pp. 562-3)? In this argument, we can see that Engels's claim about the person relativism of justice ("the author's sense of right") does not necessarily follow from the claim of Marx's historical theory about mode-of-production relativism. In fact, Engels uses the conception of right appropriate to capitalism to debunk Milberger's personal sense. Furthermore, throughout The Housing Question, Engels analyzes Millberger's sense of right as a class sense, namely a small propertyholder's or petit bourgeois conception of justice, rendered anachronistic by capitalist expansion. Thus, from a Marxian point of view, one could simply drop the person relativist argument and stick with the appraiser's-group relativist one. But given this account, Engels's argument seems peculiar. Engels characterizes capitalism's "justice" as "its own right to exploit the workers"-a description that a capitalist would hardly endorse. (Is this characterization merely an expression of Engels's "own sense of justice"?). Engels's comment on exploitation does not follow from his ethical relativism or reductionism but rather from the realist argument noted above, which Engels used to indict capitalism.' to 'Note that Engels'sjudgmentmightbe appropriate a form of ethical relativism,namelya defense of one's own moral views given that this moral position is as validas any other. Engelsdid not endorsethis form of relativism, however,becauseof his admirationfor science at the expenseof ethics. Beyondthis, contraryto any form of relativism,as we shall see, Engelsthought divisions of rich and poor were unjust given human needs, not merelydependingon the specific observer,

Elsewhere in The Housing Question, Engels condemned miserable housing conditions and cheating by merchants as examples of the "countless small, secondary abuses (Obelstande)" of capitalism and stigmatized exploitation (Ausbeutung) of the worker in production as the "fundamental evil (Grundilbel)." Recalling the Communist Manifesto, Engels criticized the Proudhonists in a realist vein: "It is the essence of bourgeois socialism to want to maintain the basis of all the evils of present-day society and at the same time to want to abolish the evils themselves" (Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 18, pp. 214-5; 1962, Vol. 1, pp. 558-81). Thus, a revolutionary strategy based on an accurate social theory would strike at the basic evil in the mode of production. Engels analyzed the facts against Proudhon's appeal to "eternal justice" in the light of Marx's historical theory; his claims depend upon the approximate truth of the theory and include a specific explanation of capitalist exploitation, of the fundamental class conflicts that grow out of it, such as the fight over the length of the working day, of capitalism's tendency to concentrate control of industry in a few hands and to create a large propertyless proletariat, and of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and engender crises. Given this analysis Engels argued that "factually," capitalism produces its own gravediggers. Contrary to Proudhon and Miflberger, workers could not, scientifically speaking, overturn capitalism by establishing the "sincerity of exchanges" among revivified small propertyholders, any more than according to Darwin, toads could have tails (Proudhon 1923, Vol. 1, p. 258). In Capital, Marx gave an ironic twist to this critique of Proudhonism. Proudhon identified justice among small propertyowners with the regulation of production and exchange by means of the equal labor times embodied in commodities. For Proudhon, the violation of such exchanges by large capitalists could occur only through "swindling," someone taking more than his or her due. Contrary to Proudhon, Marx showed that the extraction of surplus value and its concrete forms of profit, interest, and rent could occur regularly under capitalism without swindling. He argued that one commodity in use, labor power, creates a greater value (surplus value) than its own value in exchange (subsistence). But, Marx insisted, the capitalist extracts surplus value without violating the laws of circulation, that is, the juridical standards of capitalism (Marx 1966, Vol. 1, pp. 193-4); in this sense only, capitalist exploita-

and defendeda conceptionof moralprogress moral and truth.

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tion is not "robbery" (Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 19, pp. 382, 359-60). Satirizing Proudhon, Marx showed that the generalization of commodity production, characteristic of capitalism, led to the gradual expropriation of small holders, not to their salvation: "So long as the laws of exchange are observed in every specific act of exchange the mode of appropriation can be completely revolutionized without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to commodity production" (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, p. 587). Marx added, "We may well therefore feel astonished at the cleverness of Proudhon, who would abolish capitalist property by enforcing the eternal laws of property that are based on commodity production" (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, p. 587, n. 1) and compared Proudhon to an incompetent chemist: Proudhonbegins by taking his ideal of justice of (Gerechtigkeit), 'justice eternelle' from the juridicalrelationsthatcorrespond the producto tion of commodities; therebyit may be noted he proves to the consolation of all good citizens, that the productionof commoditiesis a form of production as everlastingas justice. Then he turnsroundand seeks to reformthe actual productionof commodities,and the actuallegalsystem corresponding thereto, in accordancewith this ideal. What opinion should we have of a chemistwho, insteadof studyingthe actuallaws of the molecular changesin the compositionand decompositionof matter, and on that foundation solving definite problems,claimedto regulate the compositionand decomposition matof ter by the 'eternalideas' of 'naturalit6' and 'affinite? (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, pp. 84-5; Marxand Engels 1959, Vol. 23, pp. 99-100). Based on his scientific criticism of Proudhon's theory, Marx made seven claims: (1) he identified Proudhon's specific conception of justice as an ideological reflection of capitalist juridical relations; (2) he argued that conceptions of justice are transitory (limited to one or several historical epochs) rather than eternally valid as Proudhon thought; (3) contrary to the Ricardian socialists and Proudhon, he showed that capitalist exploitation occurs without robbery in the process of commodity circulation; (4) he opposed Proudhon's overrating of the significance of justice in historical explanations; (5) he argued that strategically, workers could not overcome capitalist oppression by reforming the juridical system to accord with its corresponding ideal of justice, but rather by making political revolution and transforming the mode of production; (6) he contended that given the nature of capitalism, appeals to the moral sense of capitalists would do no good (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, pp. 62, 582); and (7) he criticized all ideas of justice in the name of science. If Marx's scientific argument is correct, however, it establishes only claims one through

six; it does not show that all claims of injustice and exploitation are relative to specific modes of production but just that Proudhon's is nor does it show that all claims of justice must be the basis of (or be based upon) an inaccurate scientific theory and an inadequate political strategy. It does not rule out, for example, a scientific and moral theory-say one of exploitation-which could evaluate social situations over several epochs of class society and play a political role in the forging of communism. Claims one through six are consistent with any of the three interpretations of justice described in the introduction. Only claim seven-an implausible one given Marx's actual argument against Proudhon-would sustain an ethical relativist or reductionist account against a realist one. Furthermore, Marx and Engels undermined claim seven because their own argument shares a common moral premise with Proudhon's. In Anti-Duhring, for example, Engels wrote: If for the imminent overthrowof the present with its cryingcontrastsof mode of distribution want and luxury, starvation and debauchery von (schreienden Gegensatzen Elendund Uppigwe keit, Hungersnotund Schwelgerei), had no that the betterguaranteethan the consciousness
mode of production is unjust (ungerecht) . .. we

shouldbe in a prettybad way. The mysticsof the of MiddleAges who dreamed the comingmillennium were already conscious of the injustice of (Ungerechtigkeit) classcontrasts(Engels1966, p. 173;Marxand Engels 1959, Vol. 20, p. 146). Engels commented that "to economic science, moral indignation, however justifiable, cannot serve as an argument, but only as a symptom" (Engels, 1966, pp. 173-4). Engels not only recognized the justification of moral anger, but contended, The indignation(Zorn)whichcreatesthe poet is absolutely in place in describingthese terrible conditions, and also in attackingthose apostles of harmonyin the serviceof the rulingclass who eitherdenyor palliatetheseabuses,but how little it can prove anythingfor the particularcase is evident from the fact that in each epoch of all past history there has been no lack of material for such indignation(Engels1966, p. 166;Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 20, p. 139). Engels viewed divisions between rich and poor as a reprehensible feature of all previous epochs except early communal society. Although a sense of injustice alone could not do away with these divisions, "poetic criticism" had unmasked the "apostles of harmony" and contributed to a political atmosphere conducive to a more thoroughgoing radicalism. Engels suggested that the proletarian demand for equality had a double meaning. One meaning grew out of the bourgeois

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demand for political equality and had a certain validity. But Engels stressed the other meaning of equality: the "spontaneous reaction" against divisions of rich and poor as a "simple expression of the revolutionary instinct" of workers and peasants which "finds its justification in that and only in that" (Engels 1966, p. 117). He saw this account of equality as separable from its first meaning and legitimate in its own terms. Finally, Marx's analysis of exploitation, the extraction of gratuitous or unpaid labor, provided a new interpretation of the source of these class divisions. Contrary to Wood's argument, while Marx identified the mistakes in Proudhon's conception of swindling, he also offered a more defensible explanation and indictment of capitalist exploitation. It might appear that Engels's appeal to facts to overcome moral disagreement described a necessary course of social development and displayed a moral neutrality between capitalism and communism. Yet Marx and Engels always condemned the exploitative features of capitalism and praised communism. For instance, in attacking the Proudhonist conception of the dispossession of individual homeowners as a retrogression "below the savages," Engels contended: The Englishproletarian 1872is on an infiniteof ly higherlevelthan the ruralweaverof 1772with his 'hearthand home.' And will the troglodyte with his cave ... ever accomplisha June insurrectionor a Paris Commune(Marxand Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 564)?7 For Engels, the Paris workers' revolt of June, 1848, or the first proletarian government, the Commune, exemplified a specially admirable ethical achievement. Marx also spoke of the Coinmunards, heroic "heaven storming"; he praised the political action of worker-officials who received only a skilled workman's wage in order to forge a cooperative society (Marx and Engels 1971, p. 153). Engels's celebration of the Commune is not easy to reconcile with his mode-ofproduction relativism, for this political community not only accorded with socialist relations of production but in Engels's view was "infinitely higher," an example of moral progress. Engels's indictment of legal justice that protects the capitalists' "right to exploit" accentuated the Commune' s positive features. Engels offered this praise as an accurate assessment of reality rather 7Notethat Engels's(and Marx's)chauvinismtoward savagesand troglodytesis not necessaryto the argument. A Marxistcould admirethe Communeand yet of hail the accomplishments oppressedclasses in less advancedsettings,as Engels,for example, economically the celebrated Germanpeasantwar.

than merely his own "sense of right." The facts of capitalism coincided with the ethical need to create a classless society in which the "richest" flourishing of human individuality could occur (Marx 1973, p. 325; Marx and Engels, 1962, Vol. 2, p. 24). Marx also justified the moral outrage that underlay, in his view, inadequate demands for social equality. In 1875, for example, Marx praised Proudhon's "epoch making" What is Property? for "provocative defiance, laying hands of the economic 'holy of holies' (large scale private property in the means of production), superb paradox which makes a mock of bourgeois common sense . . . a deep and genuine feeling of indignation at the infamy of what exists (and) revolutionary earnestness," though he also noted that, while characterizing property as theft, Proudhon had entangled himself in obscure speculations about "true," that is small, bourgeois property. Marx distinguished Proudhon's achievement in What is Property? from the pretension to science, caricature of Hegel's dialectics, and lack of anger of Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty (1962, Vol. 1, pp. 391-2). Thus, Marx and Engels shared with Proudhon a common factual recognition of the division of rich and poor and a common moral indignation at its consequences. All three argued that social systems should prevent the starvation or extinction of their members and ultimately give individuals their due,8 and condemned divisions between rich and poor which give some abundance while many others do not receive their due and, at worst, starve. Therefore, divisions of rich and poor are infamous and unjust. Agreeing up to this point, they then add further factual premises to reach their divergent political and moral conclusions. Proudhon argued that in the capitalist form of this division, capitalists regularly violate the laws of commodity exchange by monopoly, swindling and usury, and saw the remedy as the establishing of a society of small, equal propertyholders, regulating their economy through a mutualist banking system in accordance with the exchange of equal labor times or the principles of eternal justice. Marx and Engels maintained that in the capitalist form of this division, capitalists regularly extract surplus value from workers in ways consistent with the laws of commodity exchange, depriving
'Proudhon had a far narrower sense of what was due to small propertyholders than Marx's conception of a communist distribution according to need. Marx's conception of the Commune as a prerequisite for individuality is analogous in form to Proudhon's conception of (mutualist) individuality. See also Oakeshott 1975, p. 319, n. 1.

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small holders of the means of production, pitting a majority of propertyless proletarians against a small number of property owners, and creating increasingly harsh conditions for the propertyless. As Chartism, the June insurrection, and the Paris Commune demonstrate, working-class solidarity and political community is possible. Marx and Engels saw the remedy as the abolition of exploitation and ultimately all class divisions and the establishing of a society in which social individuality can flourish. In summarizing their disagreement with Proudhon, Marx and Engels stressed a drastic conflict between ethical judgment and scientific theory and surmised that their argument engaged Proudhon's only with respect to social theory and not moral judgment. But since Marx and Engels joined with Proudhon to condemn the crying contrasts of luxury and need, their scientific argument had an inextricable moral component. Marx did not disagree with Proudhon about the moral desirability of opposing capitalism but rather about the inadequacy of Proudhon's theory of mutualism as an effective means of transformation. In other words, the dispute turned not over indignation, but over the notion that, in today's philosophical jargon, "ought implies can." Contrary to the positivist impression created by Engels's and Marx's relativist or reductionist remarks, they appealed to facts and social theory to show how moral disputes and indignation at unjust conditions might at last be successfully resolved. If the foregoing analysis is correct, it has broad implications for a comparison of Marx's view with other arguments about justice. Marx shares his ethical premise with many contemporary theorists and would disagree with today's moral theory mainly over the nature of modern society and the means needed to change it. For instance, a Rawlsian would object to divisions of income that fail to benefit the least advantaged, and for utilitarians, the deprivations of the poor would undermine overall or average happiness. But if Marx's social theory is true and such divisions arise as a fundamental consequence of capitalist exploitation, then either of these moral arguments would justify socialism (Rawls 1975, p. 546). As Wood has argued, probably any recognizably moral principles would lead to the condemnation of capitalism and its consequences as Marx understood them; a theory that could condone these consequences would not be a moral theory at all (Wood 1972, pp. 281-2). Although Wood does not draw this conclusion, his argument suggests a greater objectivity in moral theory than has often been supposed. Now a Rawlsian might deny this degree of objectivity in moral judgments by arguing that

Marx's (and Rawls's) criticism of divisions of wealth and poverty rests merely on a relatively purified intuition. However altered by social theory and moral principles to achieve a reflective equilibrium, such a condemnation remains ultimately "our" (historically limited) judgment. But one might look at such intuitions as embryonic moral generalizations and analyze the notion of human nature, needs, and capabilities on which this indictment rests. If one interprets intuitions in this way, one can argue about whether they are (empirically) right or wrong. For instance, Aristotle offers certain strongly intuitive arguments about the "naturalness" of slavery (Politics, Bk. 1). Given subsequent revolts against slavery and the existence of non-slaveholding societies, Montesquieu, Hegel, and others showed that this intuition rested on a mistaken theory about other human beings. Marx would make similar arguments against the naturalness of wage slavery. In other words, such intuitions could be considered moral observations and might play a role in ethical theory more nearly akin to theory-loaded scientific observations than Rawls envisions. In that case, the process of observation and theoretical refinement characteristic of reflective equilibrium would strongly resemble the process of scientific reflection and alteration of theory to achieve successive approximations to the truth (Rawls 1971, pp. 49-50).' Scientific Realism and Moral Realism In debating with Mulberger, Engels compares the possibility of moral progress, which he appears to deny, with that of scientific progress, which he vigorously affirms, but here, too, his argument is more ambiguous than it seems at first glance. To combat MUlberger, Engels likened justice to a sort of "social phlogiston":
While in everyday life, in view of the simplicity of the relations discussed, expressions like right, wrong, justice and sense of right are accepted without misunderstanding even with reference to social matters, they create, as we have seen, the same hopeless confusion in any scientific investigation of economic relations as would be created, for instance, if the terminology of the phlogiston theory were to be retained. The confusion becomes still worse if one, like Proudhon, believes in the social phlogiston, 'justice' or if one like MUlberger avers that the phlogiston

'I owe this comparison to Richard Boyd. In an important ambiguity, Rawls does not just argue intuitively for political and moral equality but recognizes its basis in facts about human moral capacity-"equality is supported by the general facts of nature." Rawls 1971, pp. 506, 510, 548.

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theory is as correct as the oxygen one (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 625). Here again, Engels drew a positivist distinction between scientific investigation, which achieves agreement on relatively reliable theories, and moral clashes, which lead to no resolution. Engels praised MUlberger's person-relativist conception that concerning justice, "everyone understands something different," but refused to commend Milberger's peculiar conception of oxygen-based and phlogiston-based chemistry as, scientifically speaking, equally valid. In this context, Engels's analogy of justice with social phlogiston, moving from ethics to science, views justice, like phlogiston, as simply part of an inadequate (unscientific) ethical theory that a purely scientific one has replaced. Engels's mode-of-production relativist arguments reinforce this impression. In this setting, Proudhon's notion of eternal justice, reflecting commodity production, seems just so much erroneous ideological mist that will dissipate in the sunlight of a socialist mode of production. Yet Engels's analogy has another possible interpretation. In a footnote to this passage, he contended that phlogiston theory pointed to a single element involved in combustion, even though it got most of that element's properties backward. The phlogiston theory contributed importantly to the discovery of oxygen: Before the discovery of oxygen chemists explained the burning of substances in atmospheric air by assuming the existence of a special igneous substance, phlogiston, which escaped during the process of combustion. Since they found that simple substances on combustion weighed more after having been burned than they did before, they declared that phlogiston had a negative weight so that a substance without its phlogiston weighed more than one with it. In this way, all the main properties of oxygen were gradually ascribed to phlogiston, but all in an inverted form (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 625). The phlogiston theory was not even approximately true. Yet that theory helped to pose the issue of the nature of combustion in such a way that a novel theory could explain it. In this sense, Lavoisier's discovery of a new element, oxygen, which combined with other elements upon burning, grew out of and solved the central problem of phlogiston chemistry. In his Preface to Volume 2 of Capital, Engels remarked that "this discovery (phlogiston) sufficed for the explanation of most of the chemical phenomena then known (until the later 18th century) although not without forcing in many cases" (Marx and Engels 1-962, Vol. 1, p. 470). Compared to Engels's relativist description of justice as mere shifting ideology, this argument seems strikingly favorable to the scientific accomplishments of phlogiston theory. For Engels,

modern chemistry provided a better explanation for anomalies in a previously mistaken but not wholly inadequate chemistry. In today's terms, Engels adopted a scientific realist attitude toward phlogiston theory rather than that of a relativist or a Kuhnian.1' Thus, the analogy of justice with phlogiston reflects a realistic hunch on Engels's part about moral questions, one that might also explain Engels's claim that matters of right and wrong in everyday life are not confusing. If this major feature of morality presents no important difficulties, it is hard to see why we could not ultimately hope to achieve similar agreement in moral theories about the basic structure of society, since self-interest and rationalizations certainly affect everyday judgments in one's own case. Comparable rationalizations, based on class interests, might simply render progress in moral theory (and in moral reality) more difficult, though not insurmountably so, than progress in daily life and in the sciences (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 582). We can gauge the strength of this realist inkling by examining Engels's most important use of the phlogiston analogy, his exploration of the significance of Marx's discovery of surplus value for political economy and moral argument. According to Engels, earlier scientific exponents of a labor theory of value had partially recognized that capitalists extracted a surplus from the workers. In The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ricardo argued that Adam Smith had confused the value of the labortime incorporated in the production of commodities with the value of the labor-time which the worker's wages could command on the market (1948, pp. 5-11). Distinguishing these separate commodities, Ricardo isolated the amount paid for the use of the worker's labor (what Marx would call labor-power) and the extra value created by the worker in production (what Marx would call surplus value). Yet Ricardo never treated this surplus as a special concept nor attempted to reexamine previous political economy based on this insight (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, pp. 515-6, 537-8). Engels drew an analogy between Ricardo's identification of surplus and Priestley's and Scheele's discovery of "dephlogisticated air" or "fire air." As Engels suggested, these chemists, although close to discovering oxygen, remained entangled in the "phlogistic categories as they found them" just as Ricardo remained enmeshed within the older political economy. But the Ricardian socialists and Proudhon abandoned

"'A Kuhnian attitude toward science would in fact be far more consistent with ethical relativism than Engels's own position. See Rorty 1979.

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Ricardo's clear distinction. They asked: what is the value of labor? and answered: the full value of the product. They then condemned the appropriation of any part of the output by the capitalist as injustice or stealing. Here we see a different and particularly strong motivation for Marx's and Engels's critique of "eternal justice." Instead of solving political economy's central problem of the value of labor, Proudhon and others obscured it through the use of moral categories. Thus, this specific disagreement with other radicals in scientific analysis fused with Marx's and Engels's general antipathy to Proudhon's moralism; scientific and political critique, focused against the moralists' economic analysis, seemed to go hand in hand. Engels's phlogiston analogy demonstrates the full force of Marx's characterization of the moralists, who derived political remedies from an inadequate social theory, as bad chemists (Althusser 1965, Vol. 2, pp. 118-26). According to Engels, Marx, like Lavoisier, approached the central anomaly in previous theory with fresh eyes; where others "had seen a solution, he saw only a problem." Marx solved this problem-"placed previous political economy on its feet"-with his discovery of surplus value, and provided new analyses of such crucial difficulties in classical political economy as the relations of commodities and money, the character of class conflict under capitalism, and the nature of rent, profit and interest. For example, Marx explained the generally recognized falling rate of profit as a qualified tendency resulting from a rapid introduction of machinery or shift in the organic composition of capital, whereas older theories had interpreted it as an inevitable result of increasing population (Malthus) or rising rent (Ricardo) (Dobb 1973, p. 157). Engels contended:
With this fact (surplus value) as his starting point, he (Marx) examined all the categories he found at hand, just as Lavoisier, with oxygen as his starting point, had examined the categories of phlogiston chemistry he had found at hand (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, pp. 471-2).

In the projected fourth volume of Capital, Theories of Surplus Value, Marx examined earlier theories in political economy to mark their discoveries and to show how the concept of surplus value could resolve their internal problems. Both Marx and Engels viewed political economy-the study of the real relations of capitalist production-as a more mature scientific theory than phlogiston chemistry (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, p. 80). Despite the major changes wrought by Marx's discovery of surplus value, political economy had previously existed as a full-blown scientific enterprise. Thus, they explored the history of this discipline from a realistic perspective and demon-

strated its progress in achieving successive approximations to the truth. Given Marx's and Engels's realist interpretation of political economy, Engels's comparison of justice with phlogiston chemistry seems strikingly favorable to justice. At least popular conceptions of justice, one might surmise, would serve as a first approximation to the truth, and Marx's theory reformulated them. Engels failed to see the force of his analogy in sustaining moral realism because of his criticism of Proudhon's labor theory as a mistaken solution to the fundamental difficulty in Ricardo's political economy, his opposition to Proudhon's focus on the putative "eternality" of justice, and his rejection of moralism in the radical debates of the time. But although Engels's general account wobbled between relativist or reductionist and realist formulations, his specific arguments about moral concepts were strongly realistic. For instance, he contended that the proletarian demand for social equality grew out of the bourgeois demand for political equality in the Puritan and French Revolutions: "The proletarians took the bourgeoisie at their word: equality must not be merely apparent, must not apply merely to the sphere of the state, but must also be real, must be extended to the social and economic sphere" (Engels 1966, pp. 117, 24-5). Did Engels see this proletarian extension of the demand for social equality as an inaccurate or ideological one? On the contrary, this extension improved on the general demand for political equality by identifying the real source of class domination that would corrupt the quality of citizenship. It moved a step closer to the true conception as articulated in Engels's and Marx's social theory. Thus, Engels concluded that the proletarian demand "draw(s) more or less correct and far-reaching demands from the bourgeois demand."" Engels reformulated this conception of social equality: "The real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity" (Engels 1966, p. 117). On the basis of Marx's historical theory, Engels partially criticized this proletarian slogan-he suggested that a demand for absolute equality among human beings denies individuality and becomes absurd-but called for the achievement of an aspect of equality, the abolition of exploitation as a prerequisite for (social) individuality. Engels himself used the term equality in precisely this way. Contrary to Wood's interpretation,
"In citing Engels's remark, Wood 1979, p. 282, omits the crucial clause and fails to see a possible realist interpretation.

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Engels contended in "On Marx's Capital" that the bad or exploitative features of capitalism nonetheless "develop(ed) the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society" (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, pp. 468-9).'" According to a realist account, the earlier radical theories of Munzer, Fourier, Blanqui, and Bray about social inequality provided approximately true descriptions of exploitation and the corruption of bourgeois society. Marx's theory improves on them and represents a form of moral progress just as proletarian socialist movements represent a moral improvement over the Levellers. Alternately, these (mainly inadequate) ethical theories, analogous to phlogiston chemistry, posed problems that a better scientific and ethical theory could solve." Marx's theory of exploitation, class conflict, and the abolition of classes captures the important grain of truth in the claims of injustice of preceding radical theories. Even this weaker claim for the earlier theories recognizes the possibility of ethical progress. In Anti-Duhring, Engels defended such progress in moral knowledge and compared it to advances in the natural sciences: ... as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms,moralitywas alwaysclass morality;it has eitherjustifiedthe dominationand the interests of the ruling class, or, as soon as the oppressedclasshas becomepowerfulenough, it has representedthe revolt against this domination and the futureinterestsof the oppressed.That in this processtherehas on the wholebeen progress in (Fortschritt) morality,as in all otherbranches

of human knowledge (Erkenntnis), cannot really be doubted. But we have not yet passed beyond class morality. A really human morality (wirklich menschlische Moral) which transcends class antagonisms and their legacies in thought becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class contradictions but has even forgotten them in practical life (Engels 1966, p. 105; Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 20, p. 87). Given exploitative class divisions, all moral judgments, true as well as false, have served class interests; such divisions and the ideologies that they engender cloud moral argument and prohibit the clarity that exists, according to Engels, in the morality of everyday life. But the removal of such class divisions and ideologies renders the ethics of social relations under communism as transparent as those of individual relationships had been. It permits a "genuinely human morality." Wood has properly recognized a conflict between his reductionist interpretation of Marx on justice and Engels's argument about a genuine non-relativist human morality, but he suggests that in this passage, "Engels denies that the 'proletarian morality of the future' is 'true' as contrasted with its predecessors" (Wood 1979, p. 291). To concur with Wood's judgment, one would have to ascribe to Engels the notion that no truth or progress exists in chemistry or political economy, a view that Engels plainly rejects. Even in his most relativist comments on morality, Engels disagreed with that contention in Mulberger. In the chapter in Anti-Duhring on moral progress, Engels dismissed the "eternality" of chemical and biological theory which, he noted, achieve approximate truth only eventually and after major conceptual changes (Engels 1966, pp. 98-9).14 This critique of an alleged "eternality" of scientific theories, analogous to Engels's arguhardly rules out the ment against Proudhon, possibility of true biological knowledge. Wood's failure to see Engels's scientific realism leads him

"In analyzing Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, Wood 1979, p. 292, argues: "To do away with these defects (the defects of equal right) one must 'wholly transcend the narrow horizon of bourgeois right' represented by all principles of equality. Marx alludes to Louis Blanc's slogan 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs' precisely because this is not in any sense a principle of equality, it does not treat people alike or equally from any point of view but considers them simply as individuals with their own special needs and faculties." Contrary to Wood, Marx's conception of social individuality sees all individuals as equally free from the exploitation characteristic of previous class societies and as "individuals with their own special needs and faculties." "A reductionist though realist view leaves the concept of justice in even worse shape than phlogiston. Although an atomic analysis of combustion is true even though phlogiston does not exist, no ethical analysis of the relationship designated by justice is true. Engels's and Marx's refinement of workers' demands for equality or fairness, however, counts decisively against a reductionist interpretation.

'4Engels argued: What a long series of intermediaries from Galen to Malpighi was necessary for correctly establishing such a simple matter as the circulation of the blood in mammals . . . and often enough discoveries, such as that of the cell, are made which compel us to revise completely all formerly established final and ultimate truths in the realm of biology, and put whole piles of them on the scrap heap once and for all. Engels rightly used a concept of approximate truth but contended carelessly that: "Really scientific works as a rule avoid such dogmatic and moral expressions as Ifinal and ultimate] error and truth." Engels 1966, pp. 99, 102.

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to overlook the strong element of moral realism in Engels's account of justice. To illustrate progress in moral theory, we might briefly examine Marx's relation to Hegel. Hegel had argued that the primary ethical difference between the ancient Greek city and the modern state resides in the modern recognition of subjectivity (freedom, individuality) as a fundamental component of universality or political community. In this regard, Hegel contended, "the very status slavery is an outrage on the conception of man." The complex ethical life of the free individual developing through family, civil society (the arena for the individual pursuit of economic needs and interests), and the universality of the state (the general legal framework for the realization of individuality), requires the abolition of slavery. Having studied English political experience and classical political economy. Hegel already feared that the dynamics of the capitalist division of rich and poor would undermine the ethical universality of the modern state. Starting from this tension in Hegel's The Philosophy of Right, Marx argued that capitalism would use the state against the workers and that the proletarian movement would create the genuine possibility for the flourishing of individual achievement, based on political community and the elimination of exploitation (Hegel 1977, pp. 15, 48, 84, 126-7, 133-4, 148-51; Avineri 1972, pp. 90-8; Gilbert 1981b). He might have reformulated Hegel's dictum: "wage slavery is an outrage on the conception of man," and seen social individuality under communism as the realization of Hegel's basic argument on individuality and universality. Hegel had emphasized historical progress in morality: Christianity had helped to create the conditions for a development of individuality and the abolition of slavery; post-French-revolution civil society, at least as it existed in Germany, embodied a significant achievement of freedom (Hegel 1977, pp. 31, 129-30). Marx could share Hegel's judgment about progress since slavery, but given his analysis of capitalism, he extended Hegel's argument: only the working class movement could fully realize human freedom and individuality. On the issue of freedom and moral progress, Marx by no means rejected but criticized and refined Hegel's vision. Given this conception of a dialectical moral progress, one might see Engels's phlogiston analogy as providing an accurate interpretation of the relation of Marx's historical theory to previous political economy, of the relation of its ethical component to previous demands for equality, and of the relation of Marx's ethical and political theory to previous ones. In this sense, Engels's and Marx's mode-of-production relativism or reductionism serve as misleading glosses

on their own theory. These interpretations capture only their critique of prevailing moralities and of Proudhon's eternal justice but miss their own fundamental moral realism. Starting from the negative consequences of divisions between rich and poor, their historical theory, if true, points to a single ethical resolution: the abolition of exploitation and the uniting of mental and manual labor. Interestingly enough, Lenin, a not overly sentimental Marxist, took up Marx's and Engels's moral as well as scientific realism. In his notebooks on Hegel's Logic, Lenin contrasted Kant's "empty abstraction of the Thing-in-itself with living movement, deeper and deeper, of our knowledge about things" (Lenin, 1974, Vol. 38, p. 91). The historical progress of experimental or practical investigation and theoretical criticism engenders theoretical conclusions that increasingly approximate the truth. In State and Revolution, Lenin adopted a similarly realistic interpretation of Marx's critique of earlier conceptions of equality and regarded Marx's theory of the phases of communism in Critique of the Gotha Program as a refined conception of justice:
The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality: differences and unjust differences in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production-the factories, machines, land, etc.-and make them private property. In smashing Lassalle's (early leader of German worker's movement) petty-bourgeois, vague phrases about 'equality' and 'justice' in general, Marx shows the course of development of communist society which is compelled to abolish at first only the 'injustice' of the means of production seized by individuals and which is unable at once to eliminate the other injustice which consists in the distribution of consumer goods 'according to the amount of labor performed' (and not according to needs) (Lenin 1974, Vol. 25, p. 466).

For Marx, the first phase of communism would rectify some fundamental grievances, notably exploitation, which workers previously referred to as injustice. Yet the initial communist principle of justice results in further inequalities since it benefits those who work harder or more skillfully and those who have smaller families. The principle of to each according to her work fails to recognize individual differences and needs; the original complaints about injustice stemmed from the denial of such needs. As Marx put it, "In order to avoid all these defects (Misstande), justice (Recht) would more often have to be unequal than equal." Although full recognition of these differences by distribution according to need in a

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sense goes beyond justice, the higher stage of communism also realizes that people have meant by justice. In the Critique, Marx suggested that: "Justice can never be higher than the economic form of society and the cultural development determined by it" (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 2, pp. 24, 21; Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 19, pp. 21, 18). This statement, marking the limitations on realizing justice in differing forms of society, recognizes moral progress from the lower (class divided societies) to the higher (communism). Lenin provides a straightforward realist reading of the Gotha Program (Marx and Engels 1962, tribution and need in Anti-Da/hring and Critique of the Gotha Program (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 2, pp. 22-4). Written just before the October Revolution, Lenin's "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" strikingly affirmed a Marxian conception of justice. Peshekhonev, a government minister, had opposed such Bolshevik programs as those for shorter hours of work, nationalization of factories, and an end to the supression of national minorities in order to maintain Russian participation in World War I. Yet he acknowledged the justice of Bolshevik demands: "They are the claims of the working people, the claims of the cheated and oppressed nationalities. It is not so easy, therefore, for the democracy to break with the Bolsheviks, to reject these class demands, primarily because in essence these demands are just." Although Lenin stressed the economic and political conditions that would make justice realizable, he insisted on the revolutionary power of such proletarian claims against opponents who dismissed the efficacy of moral argument: For him (Peshekhonev)'justice' is merely an emptyphrase.For the massof semi-proletarians, however,and for the majorityof the urbanand ruralpetite bourgeoisie(as well as the workers) who havebeen ruined,tortured wornout by and the war, it is not an empty phrase, but almost acute, most burning and immense question of death from starvation,of a crust of bread.... and Justiceis an emptywordsay the intellectuals those rascalswho are inclinedto proclaimthemselves Marxistson the lofty grounds that they have contemplatedthe hind parts of economic materialism (Lenin 1974, Vol. 26, pp. 128-30). Lenin envisioned that the justice of Bolshevik demands and specific historical circumstances would lead to a broad revolutionary alliance of workers and other oppressed classes. In stressing the radical impact of ethical concepts, Lenin recalled Marx's early remark: "Ideas become a power when they grip the people." In a Marxian social theory of revolution, such moral concepts play an important explanatory role, and the

political effectiveness of demands for justice and equality stems from their truth. Conclusion As I have argued elsewhere, Marx's moral judgments might cohere in a eudaimonist framework of moral argument which focuses on the quality of individual lives and the consequences of different social structures on a broadly conceived individual happiness (Gilbert 1981a). Here Marx envisioned such intrinsic goods as political community, development of human productive powers, friendship, and artistic achievement, which composed an ideal picture of communist social individuality. These goods were achievements of a historically developing human nature. Human beings could realize some intrinsic goods even in fundamentally exploitative societies, for instance, the Greek political community, which Marx admired despite its roots in slavery, the solidarity of Roman slave revolt led by Spartacus, or scientific discovery. For long periods of history, however, Marx thought that human progress could not occur mainly through intrinsically good activities. Yet such progress, bought at the price of widespread suffering, laid the basis for the ultimate possibility of communism. Marx therefore extenuated such progress with a conception of merely instrumental goods and distinguished communist progress which fused intrinsic and instrumental goods from previously alienated or mainly instrumental progress. Thus he saw a socialist political community like the Paris Commune as good in itself and as furthering the emergence of communism. Despite his acknowledgment of the productive achievements of exploitative societies, Marx severely restricted his extenuation of alienated progress. A rhetoric of indictment resounds as the predominant moral tone in Marx's analysis of early capitalist accumulation and colonialism. Since in Marx's view Greek political community or philosophy could only arise at the cost of slavery and a mechanized economy from capitalist exploitation, Marx never reached any overall moral judgment of these societies. In assessing them, however, he distinguishes between good and bad features: Greek science was praiseworthy; slavery was not. In this sense, Marx's sometimes exaggerated restraint in the use of moral concepts reflects the character and difficulty of the cases under examination, not as Marx and Engels sometimes inclined to think, the impossibility of objective moral assessment. In general, moral conceptions not only lead to evaluation but point to action. Even in these hard cases, Marx's standards allow, semantically speaking, a specification of moral conflicts, for instance, between the progress of science and

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egalitarianism, and counsel action to create in the long run a society that no longer necessitates such conflicts (Miller 1978). At the point when historically socialism becomes possible, Marx admired the main features of a revolutionary political movement and working class political community. At this point, already characteristic of the time when Marx wrote, standards of intrinsic goods, previously subordinate or merely negative (exhibited mainly in Marx's condemnation of their denial), became primary. Given the particular difficulties of the concepts of justice and equality, Marx confined himself even in the first phase of communism to specifying how the society is mainly just by abolishing exploitation and secondarily unjust by failing to distribute according to need. As Wood has suggested, equality differs from intrinsic goods such as political community, freedom, and the realization of individuality; equality, reformulated by Marx as the abolition of classes, is a means to secure these other goods (1979, pp. 281-2). The context of Marx's larger moral judgments provides a new perspective on his concepts of justice and equality. Such concepts always played an important role in Marx's historical arguments; he detested the exploitation of man by man and regarded all class-divided societies before socialism as exploitative. Marx's own conception of exploitation served as a standard to indict the legal and moral concepts generated by prevailing modes of production. Even though Marx emphasized this aspect of social development, however, his historical theory extenuates alien or merely instrumental forms of social progress. In effect, he restrained his moral criticism for historical periods in which he regarded alien development as necessary or no revolutionary movement as possible (Gilbert 1979). Looking at Marx's overall moral judgments in relation to his historical theory, we can see a new reason, beyond his critique of moralism or his specific argument with Proudhon, for his caution in using concepts of justice, namely an objectively limited possibility of overall moral judgment for several historical epochs. This restraint accounts for the grain of truth in Wood's emphasis on Marx's refusal to offer a simple indictment of pre-socialist class societies. Wood's interpretation becomes exaggerated only when he ignores the ever-present (even when subordinated) hatred of exploitation and its consequences which runs like the proverbial red thread through Marx's historical argument. Marx and Engels offered an ethical argument closely linked to their historical or scientific argument. Their moral argument makes a specific contribution in examining the problem of justice not only from the point of view of explaining historical controversies about justice but from the

point of view of assessing its truth. In analyzing ideologies, Marx defended only the consequencedependence of moral principles-the notion that in class societies, moral judgments, true or not, would tend to serve specific classes-rather than an origin-dependence, the conception that the claims of moral argument to truth can simply be debunked by pointing to their social or class origin. In Marx, arguments on exploitation and equality, like his conceptions of political community, freedom, friendship, and individuality, are components of an ethical picture that is a contender for moral truth. Such conceptions, as I have argued elsewhere, also play an important political role in the conflicts over the development of the working-class movement and the maintenance of socialism (Gilbert 1981a). Many contemporary philosophers and social scientists have imagined that an unbridgable gulf must exist between descriptive historical theory and prescriptive moral judgment and that conflicting moral arguments, for instance Aristotelian and Marxian ones, must derive from irreconcilable moral premises. This view ignores the intertwining in any nonanalytic moral theory between social theory and moral judgment (Lyons 1977, pp. 128-9). To the degree that investigators can agree on historical analysis, for instance that no natural slavery exists, the scope of moral disagreement is narrowed (Miller 1978).15 The foregoing argument suggests that disagreements over social theory and facts are often far more fundamental than the original moral disagreements or perhaps even conceal original moral agreement. Few would argue that abundance for a heedless minority accompanied by starvation for many or that the widespread denial of individual capacities is morally desirable. To give a different example, take those who would want to quarrel, given the many dimensions of moral progress and possible conflicts among them, with Marx's ethical vision and psychological judgments about the possibility of a flowering of human achievement and multicompetent individuality under communism. If these theorists concurred with Marx's social theory, they would have to agree with many of Marx's moral and political conclusions although they might still conclude that social individuality would prove less grand in its accomplishments than Marx had hoped or value different types or balances of activity than Marx did. These remaining differences, however, seem far less striking

'Agreement about natural science may sometimes play a similar role. Consider the effect on Aristotle's argument of the modern astronomical observation that there are no unchanging celestial beings who engage in ceaseless contemplation. (Strauss 1965, p. 8).

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than the wide area of common agreement; presumably, once socialism had reached a certain stage, empirical study could even resolve many of these disagreements. Correspondingly, the most powerful denial of Marx's vision would be a successful defense of the functioning and consequences of capitalism (as opposed to those of socialism) coupled with at least roughly similar moral premises. Marx and Engels sometimes overstressed the importance of their scientific theory at the expense of moral argument. Yet their scientific view turns out to be the most debatable part of their ethical argument. According to Marxian theory, straightforward moral rationality-the idea that a lucid exposition of moral concepts will persuade all reasonable people-does not work; for example, the most eloquent persuasion alone would not get European, American, and Japanese banks and corporations to stop investing in South African apartheid. Clashing class interests as well as conflicting social theories prevent any easy ethical agreement. Historical analysis and political strategy, not moral argument or philosophy as a separate enterprise, play the primary role in Marxian theory. Nonetheless, someone who holds a realist interpretation of Marx's moral argument should have no hesitancy about engaging in moral as well as theoretical and political dialogue with proponents of other points of view.

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