The following criticisms have been advanced against Marxist ethics:
(1) Communism is not a Synthesis:
But does Marx‘s theory provide officious upon the criterion of a dialectical method? When a thesis must evolve from assimilation and an antithesis to this thesis, then where is the proof that there will be no antithesis of the communist society?
Image Source: songandsin.files.wordpress.com
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Actually, this antithesis is perceptible in the communist countries. In the prevalent communist countries, a new kind of class antagonism is taking shape. In this conflict between the ruling party and independent thinkers, many of the latter underwent extreme torture. The theory of treating communist society as the ultimate ideal state of human society is paradoxical.
(2) Emphasis on violence is wrong:
In the base of the mutually contradictory elements of principles of dialectical justice, there is hidden a unity. Marx forgets this fact entirely. In all people—master and slave, landlord and serf, capitalist and worker-there is emotional conflagration of hate, violence and prejudice against any one of them?
Then, in a communist state when the capitalist class is annihilated will not this hate and violence acquire new channels? This is the very importance of Gandhi’s way of non-violent strike.
On dialectical justice and armed revolt they there is conflict Marx emphasized the violent aspect of revolution. Criticizing this, Maurice Ginsberg writes, “The Communist view that the ethics of revolution is the ethics of enmity, therefore presents a challenge which, if not countered, must end in the destruction of all forms office government and liberal civilization’
(3) Economic value is not the sole value:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Marx’s interpretation of all social activities of man on an economic basis is as partial as Freud’s interpretation of them through the sex impulse and Neitzsche’s by will-to-power.
Man has other tendencies besides economic activities. Each of them has a social and moral value, and none of them can be disregarded. In the words of Hill, “To be sure its economic value are values, although most of them seem to be of instrumental rather than the intrinsic sort, but there are many other values that Marxism either ignores or illegitimately reduces to an entirely independent status.’
(4) The categorical aspect of ethics, too, is important if:
Morality, to Marx, is relative. According to him morality is relative to class. Every powerful doss imposes its morality on the society.
Thus, no moral theory can be declared unqualified. Marx’s theory can to some extent interpret the morality of a mob or group but besides this ethics also has a categorical aspect to treat Kant’s thoughts as the outcome of his social and economic circumstances would be to profess ignorance.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The moral thoughts of Socrates were completely out of keeping with general morality of his time but even then they out of keeping with general morality of his time but even then they were far superior, and more veracious than subsequent social morality.
Norms molded by circumstances, in nature, can be social laws, not moral axioms. The source of moral is inner moral sense. It was in this sense that Kant treated moral it itself relative and cannot be admitted in every circumstance.
Ethics relative and categorical aspects and Marx violates the latter aspect but puts it accurately. “To deny validity to absolute ethics is to rob the sea of its compass.’ In the absence of a decisive morality, a person fined it difficult to draw practical directions, especially when more than opinion is prevailing.
(5) The end does not justify tile means:
Marx’s interpretation of the end relation is incorrect. Ethics cannot depend upon result. The aim by illegitimate means carries their illegitimacy. Ethics is not relative to “‘Circumstances. Communist ethics is at most, a practical social science. In a moral life, the purity of both means and ends is essential.
(6) Marx’s interpretation of history is not universally true:
Marx’s economic is of history does not stand undisputed in all societies. Especially, in India in ancient and medieval periods, at least for some time, the social relations king and the people, lord and servant, did not resemble Marx’s ignition.
Useless institutions do, of course, die out with the passage of time kingdoms of Ramchandra and Ashoka are a manifest challenge to Marx, “no excuse of kingship.
(7) Internal consciousness is more important than eternal aspects:
Actually visualized only the external activities. Usually, it is the internal justness which controls man’s external activities. No communism can be successful without a purification of this internal aspect. Economic equality is to eliminate our internal defects, hatred, competition, enmity, etc. The need for transformation of Marxist ethics in the light of the sayings of Gandhi and
(8) Ethics is based on freedom of the individual:
Marxist ethics grants a purely negligible place to the individual. The tendency towards regimentation ‘ particularly suicidal to or destructive of the unhindered development of art and literally thought.
It is a grave mistake to try to make man moral by force of external laws a process necessitating internal refinement and self purification. Marxism does stress the development of thinking but it forgets that according to justice, as people meditate upon communism, the defects will be as precipitin along with the qualities. Lenin disposes of criticism by deriding it dogmatism or opportunism. But without freedom of thought it seems ‘ meaningless to call man free.