I really only have a couple of questions and no input myself. Unfortunatly I know too little about Marx and so, I must ask…
Did Marx ever cater to a means/end philosophy reminiscent, but different from Kant’s categorical imperative? I’ve been chatting it up with someone recently who is under the impression that Marx believes that the end justifies the means…and that this is specifically Engel’s influence upon Marx. As if Marx thought differently at some time, and then came Engels…changing it all up.
Any thoughts? I would appreciate it greatly.
Thank you
Alex - this is the sort of thing that I would call “almost” true. It takes a nip out out the truth.
I would suggest that Marx claims that the process determines the product, or is more important than the product. Or that the process is the product, or that the product is merely a given and temporary manifestation of the process. I think that the characterisation you present describes Lenin better than either of these two men.
Homilies like “the end justifies the means” may not assume a complex enough paradigm for a man who bridged the gap between philosophy and ideology. But it suffers more by being a partial view than a strictly incorrect one.
luckily, it is not my view at all! i’m reiterating someone else’s question to me…which i don’t quite understand because it doesn’t fit into my knowledge of marx (which is too limited).
thanks
Well, Marx did offer some ideas (such as his concept of alienation) that are potentially as broad as Kant’s categorical imperative, but any direct association between the two philosophies/ers (thank you Jakob) is partial and one would have to do a lot more work to demonstrate the similarities.
The hours worked and the need of the worker determine the distribution of wealth. If worker paints a home and does a crappy job, the worker should still receive the same pay for the hours worked as a worker who does an excellent job painting a house.
Marx did not theorize about ends and means. Kant never held such a view nor did he think in those terms in his practical philosophy–he thoght in terms of transcendental categories, duties, and the person.
Marx did not think in terms of the person because he was thinking in terms of the race—and so if the race really is the history of the MEANS of producing and human sustenance–materialism–then of course Marx had the view that “the ends justify the means”—because the ends were the justification of the movement of universal history.
I don’t understand why anyone in the world would compare such a profound thinker as Kant with a slob like Karl Marx.
A 5th grader can understand Marx. Professors do not understand Kant.
I did some Kantian reading years ago, sorry but I found him obscure in parts, just as others. My POV is a preference for clarity. If an author is unclear, and cannot clearly articulate her or his thoughts, then perhaps the author does not know what he or she really is claiming.
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The price of his labor will, therefore, be determined by the price of the necessary means of subsistence. . . The cost of production of simple labour power, therefore, amounts to the cost of existence and reproduction of the worker. . . . (The Marx-Engels Reader 206)
Bottom line is wealth is distributed according to need. Marx also claimed that “if capital [labor] grows quickly, competition among the workers grows incomparablly more rapidly, that is, the means of employment, the means of subsistence, of the working class decrease propotionatly” (217) That is, Marx did not understand human nature. Lazy Joe Schmoe will receive the same or more than Industrious Joe Schmoe because Lazy’s needs to subsist are greater. That is, Marx believed the workers would compete with their labor to create better subsistance for all. Most people tend to be industrious when individually well rewarded.
He spoke of the dialectic (contradiction) of capitalism. How businesses make more and more products, pay the workers less and less, and soon their would be no customers to purchase the goods. He was way off on this count as well.
BTW: Most US citizens do not give a rip regarding the World Cup. Frankly, and I have lived in the states for life, and only mum’s friends appear interested as they are from the UK, not another soul born and raised here. This goes back to you previous comment regarding the World Cup. Most are interested in football, basketball, Nascar. Me, well, I do not watch sports, except ice skating and some rodeo and eqestrian events, but this is seldom.
Er, um, pardon me for jumping in, but Marx is pretty much with Adam Smith, here. This is fairly straight-ahead supply and demand in the labor (labour) market. It is operant in the American economy today. Marx may be talking in ideal terms, but not in Ideal terms. That is, this is a fairly simple model, but that’s how economic models always start out. It is rudimentary, but serves its purpose.
Marx is often with Adam Smith, by the way. His great mistake was to think that labor is a kind of capital, not that wages can be determined by the requisite subsistence level (as a sort of baseline, it can and is). Marx’s model was unduly limited, yes. He was usually talking about the more or less unskilled labor in English factories. Well, you can’t starve them to death, and you don’t have to pay them more than they will work for. That’s pretty much all he is saying.
Of course, if the state owns the factories, everyone is a worker. His mistake about human nature wasn’t that we are, some of us, lazy, but that we can operate an economy wholly collectively (through government) at least while still in competition with capitalist nations. If all the world was communist, his model would work. But it’s not.
addendum - this is Marx the economist, not Marx the ethicist. I do not see any bearing this has on the original question Alex asked.
Hopefully, this:http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5i.htm, will help. Kant was concerned with morality and moral intentions, and so was Marx. They both argued for the best moral route, and an individuals intentions. However, both appear to have forgotten thant humans on day one may intend x, but on day 60 do y because of the changing human condition.
Holy shit, aspacia - I can’t read all that! I’m not sure that I would use the term “moral intentions” with Kant. He is clear that the intention of an act is not relevant - that your motive doesn’t count, but only your slavish devotion to his dictum. It is a lack of intention he prescribes - all you are to do is your duty. You don’t have to intend anything - the “intention” in the CI is purely hypothetical.
Similarly (in a sense), I think Marx thinks only in terms of class, and not in terms of the individual at all. Your overriding point that individual’s wants and desires are not accounted for is correct, though. Precisely because neither thinker includes intentions.
Sorry “bout” that faust. I never did any in depth Kantian reading, and it seems I interpreted Kant, along with a professor differently.
Again, I believe Kant and Marx were concerned with what was best, most moral way for humans to live and survive, albeit they have different ways of approaching this utopian ideal. I may have misunderstood Kant, as I never did any in depth research regarding his writings, similar to Derrida. I have found them not really connected with the dynamics, the reality of human existence. Chuckle, similar to the philosopher kings of Plato, at least I believe it was Plato, proposed to rule, but probably never could.
Your overriding point that individual’s wants and desires are not accounted for is correct, though. Precisely because neither thinker includes intentions.
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Don’t they? Marx intended to create a worker’s world. Kant was trying to create a better world for humans too.
Hey, I am open to debate as it has been 10+ years since I have really dealt with Kant.
Well, I would say that each may have claimed he had those goals, but I do not read any writer the way he wishes to be read, automatically, at least. Hobbes, I am sure, felt that people would be happiest if they completely bowed to monarchy, and Plato was sure that happiness was an actual function of the City State.
Marx was concerned about individuals only as a part of a socio-economic class. I think that is too limited a model to mean very much. I am not sure that he was as concerned about individual factory-owners, bankers and international traders as he was the individual happiness of factory workers. The actual moral intention of the individual is not the same as the interest of the whole - but Marx thought it was. I am claiming that he is wrong, which counts more - to me, as a critical reader - than what he, himself thought. The very phrase “moral intention” when applied to a collective entity, makes no sense to me. Rules can have intentions (by extension) - we can say the we know the intent of a rule, but that is a different sense of the word “intent”. It means something more like “function” than “purpose”, in the sense of “motive”.
Our moral “intentions” are motives. The “intent” of a moral rule is not properly a motive, but a function. There I go with that language thing.
And similarly with Kant. He is clear about this, if little else. He doesn’t care if you are happy or sad to follow his dictum - he is here clearly a rationalist. Kant was trying to create a better world for his socio-economic class - the same one Marx would destroy.
That’s the thing about each of these men - they were only trying to make things better for one class of people. Like Hobbes. I think we can give Plato more credit than this, however.
But you alternately seem to support and discredit Marx. I am here only giving my view, and it’s not so important that I am actually debating. But am I?
Hey now Faust you know I don’t want to disagree with you but!
Marx the “political economist†is concerned with social classes and a dialect of history as a struggle between social classes without doubt.
How ever there’s a lot of early Marx that is actually very concerned with individual problems and has a lot of genuine concern for the individual “caught” in the machinations of production.
Where I really like him is his description of alienation in economic terms – basically where you make products that are then turned against you.
You work to live but the things you are paid to make are profoundly “anti†your own life.
Funny as well in the early works (as compared with the Das Capital and all the economic stuff) his writing style is considerable clearer. I would very much recommend a perusal of his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 for any one who has a few hours on their hands!!
Krossie - I just don’t buy it. This is not Sartrean alienation, or Camusian (Camusian?) alienation. It is exactly because he puts things in economic terms so often - it is difficult to read this as a moral formulation without seeing class, class, and more class. This is different from the Republic, despite superficial similarities.
I have read that stuff. By the way, how do I know you don’t want to disagree with me? Are you worried that I will do to you what I did to poor Achilles? That was sophomoric and I am duly ashamed. Sangrain and Imp put me up to it. It’s not the real, serious, philosophical me.
Yes it is.
Anyway, this is an odd moral system - as odd as any morality one can glean from Hobbes - but turned upside down from him. As Sartre gives you nothing but individual choice (and Sartre is not known as a major ethicist - I hope), Marx gives you choices only through your labor union (in effect). Or through revolution. We are both social and individual - it’s how we balance the one against the other that makes for a true morality.
But, unlike Marx (yeah, right), I will not fight to the death over this. I just think that Marx has a fatally incomplete view. That’s exactly what the quotes you provide say to me - we are laborers first and last. One of the young, energetic bucks around here might do well to compare Marx and Plato in his Republic to see the distinction in an essay.
I admire Marx, but for inventing a thoroughly modern ideology - this itself changes the idea of morality from its traditional sense - that’s not the part that works so well as morality per se, for me, anyway.
I know that and I absolutely agree he always puts the economic constrution first and foremost. Its just that a lot of the very deterministic aspects and the “pseudoscience” was added by Lenin and co.
Now the roots are in Marx and I’m not trying to “excuse” him - but I think some of has early works do show a genuine interest in the “consequences” of the capitalist mode of production (or feudal for that matter) on the individial sufferahs. (as the Bob marley might term the prols)
Its an alienation that stems from an economic/socail process so this always comes first - but some of the writing in the econ and phil manuscripts has a real humanism to it and a “concern” for the individual subject. No he was never an existentialist - that was mostly me tryin’ to rile yeese!
By putting production over/ahead of the individual?
I would agree
