The Marx-Engels Reader - Essay Example

Marx holds that human knowledge automatically begins from our sensations and perceptions, and consequently, the interaction between men and their situations are what conglomerate to form reality. In contrast to Hegel, Marx insists that objective truth is not utterly attainable through historical progression. As he explains, "the communist materialist sees the necessity, and at the same time the condition, of transformation both of industry and of the social structure (Marx 135). This declaration leads Marx to conclude that, in order to improve human lives, history must play itself out differently.

Marx believes that many of his predecessors inadequately address issues of freedom by discounting the social circumstances of the abjectly poverty-stricken. The idea that individuals entirely dominated by the oppressive will of the capitalist class would enter into a rational bargaining position with the rest of society is completely absurd to Marx. Marx claims that concepts of personal ownership and private property are not abstract truths pertaining to human morality. Contrarily, he argues that the sanctity of private property rests in a ruling class attempting to infuse values into a society that helps to maintain their privileged position.

According to Marx, civil law elevates the possession of the private property to a moral status: "civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of the natural community" (Marx 151). Once laws are put in place to establish the rights and wrongs of personal ownership, two things happen: first, the advantaged rank of the bourgeoisie is supported by social controls; and secondly, the populous begins to view these social controls as earthly manifestations of divine moral ideas.

In other words, people begin to believe that it is morally wrong to steal their lord's produce, for example, even if they were the ones who cultivated the produce. To Marx, the forces of history allow the capitalists to protect their preeminence by instilling a warped sense of justice in their laborers. Inevitably, Marx's conclusion regarding the organization of society automatically demands moral judgment. The question becomes, 'Is it wrong for society to emphasize the importance of personal property, if the result is the creation of a class enslaved by social forces' Obviously, Marx believes that capitalism is morally objectionable.

He contends that the reality of class conflict is not merely the expression and fragmentation of social aims into individual aims, but a result of the history of thought. Accordingly, Marx argues that the social institutions and norms that have come into existence through historical processes are just as responsible for immoral consequences as individual selfishness. Yet although his conclusion regarding the working class may have sprung out of metaphysically commonsense propositions, Marx implicitly depends upon the realm of ethics to provide us, as human beings, with an idea of where to make history.

Armed with these basic tenets of Marx's thought, it is now possible to evaluate his philosophy from more common ethical standpoints. Marx seems to condemn common modes of ethics because they are unavoidably tainted by the expression of unilateral power. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Marx's readers have repeatedly used different versions of abstract ethics to agree or disagree with the philosopher's conclusions about society and our obligations to it.