MARX AND THE ETHICS OF CAPITALISM

What do we really know about capitalism, according to Karl Marx? -- Easy! Here we go:

"Marx saw capitalism as a historically specific mode of production, in which capital becomes the dominant mode. The capitalist stage of development, or bourgeois society, for Marx, represented the most advanced form of social organization to date." (Wikipedia.)

Karl Marx is occasionally called the last of the classical economists, (by scholars who are proudly striving after political neutrality and scientific objectivity) the now apparently extinct, illustrious breed that started with the eminently respectable Adam Smith. "Following Smith, Marx drew an explicit distinction between the use value of commodities and their market exchange value. In Marx’s view, capital is created with the purchase of commodities for the purpose of creating new ones, with a higher exchange value than the sum of the original purchases. The use of labor power, under capitalism, becomes a commodity. The exchange value of labor power, as reflected in the wage, is less than the value that it produces for the capitalist. This difference in values, Marx says, constitutes surplus value, which the capitalists extract and accumulate. In Das Kapital, the capitalist mode of production is distinguished by how the owners of capital extract such surplus from workers, all prior societies had extracted the surplus labor, but capitalism according to Marx was new in doing so via the sale-value of produced commodities."

Encyclopedia Britannica qualifies Marx’s title as the last of the classical economists by the claim that his economics is anchored not in the real and changing world, but in the created world of Smith and Ricardo. Their labor theory of value maintaining that products are exchanged in a certain proportion to their labor costs, leads Marx to the logical conclusion in his theory of surplus value that labor alone creates all value, and all profits. The implicit conclusion is that Marx’s economic theory rests and depends on the imported and now completely outdated postulate of the classical economy.

Leaving aside the validity of this conclusion for the science of economics (which shows such a remarkable range of conflicting opinions that I fail to see why the classical view should be thus discriminated against at all!), what is of biggest importance to me is that right here, in Marx’s leap from the labor theory of value to the theory of surplus value, he is actually making a giant leap from an ethically neutral economic theory to the historically portentous venture of imbuing economics as-such with moral valuation.

"For him, this cycle of the extraction of surplus value by the owners of capital, or the bourgeoisie, becomes the basis of class struggle. This argument is intertwined however with his labor theory of value, asserting that labor is the source of all value, and thus of profit. This point is contested by most current economists, including some of the contemporary Marxist economists. One line of subsequent Marxist thinking sees the centrally-planned economic systems of existing communist societies, still based on exploitation of labor as state capitalism.

"Some 20th century Marxian economists consider capitalism to be a social formation where capitalist class processes dominate but are not exclusive. Capitalist class processes to them are simply such where surplus labor takes the form of surplus value usable as capital; other tendencies for utilization of labor nonetheless exist simultaneously in existing societies where capitalist processes are predominant."

The earlier-stated claim that Marx was the last of the classical economists is by no means contradicted by the existence of a host of minor economists called Marxian or neo-Marxian economists. On the one hand, this fact testifies to their lack of originality, an inability to chart their own course and earn their own name tag in science. On the other hand, to call any economist a Marxian, or Marxist, economist is to say that he (or she) holds the value judgment that it is ethically improper for property owners in a capitalist society to derive their income solely from the fact of such ownership.

In other words, we are no longer dealing with an ethically neutral economic theory here, but plunge right into the heat of an Armageddon-type of battle, where the outcome is all too clearly predetermined, leaving no room for further argument.

So, what do we really know about Karl Marx and Marxism? No, this time not in those fancy words about productive forces and industrial relations. What about Karl Marx as an ethical philosopher? Not much, I am afraid, if anything at all, as far as the general public is concerned… not even the all-wrong stuff of the more “familiar” aspects. However, anyone who looks at Marx not as an “outdated” economist, but as a bona fide ethical philosopher, will be able to realize right away that the rumors about Marx’s death are far away from the reality of life, that his ghost is very much alive and well, and even scarier than ever… Which is only natural. It is too easy to dismiss a scientific theory as hopelessly outdated and destined to be forgotten, but the key ethical debate over what is good and what is evil will never draw to a close. Indeed, it will keep running its course with an undiminished and, perhaps, on the contrary, an ever-growing strength, until the end of time.