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"By assuming that an ethical system can be found within the existing intellectual field to justify revolutionary struggle against capitalism as “just”, we are kept in an intellectual straitjacket that has limited many previous attempts to undertake a serious Marxist accounting of ethics. There is no basis upon which we can say capitalism is unjust within capitalism, as to do so would necessarily gesture to the system of signifiers produced by capitalism itself, or to make reference to some previous form of social life to which we wish to return. The alternative then, is an immanent theory of the good, articulated most clearly and fully by Alain Badiou, as being a force that can only be gestured to from within our current moment. Ethics will not justify the revolution – the revolution will produce the new ethics.
First, a note on definitions. When discussing moral law, as established within the superstructure of a given social formation, I will discuss morality. When discussing attempts to find a correct mode of activity that allows for the Good, I will discuss ethics."
"Any serious discussions of morality should begin with an understanding of what it is. In short, morality is a form of social technology, a construction of shared ideas, beliefs, and institutions that construct a field of value production, where certain behaviours are deemed socially appropriate or are socially maligned. This field, being a domain of cultural creation, is in class societies interpellated by structures of ideology. The view of ideology I will be utilising here is essentially Althusserian (and thus Lacanian) – ideology is a field of cultural and philosophical logics that are produced within the ideological state apparatus and produce contradictory ideological subjectivities. This realm of ideology produces an inverted world, where the Capitalist Real is distorted and perceived through a symbolic realm of ideological constructs. It is an imaginary world, mapped onto our very real social relationships.
Morality can then be understood as a form of ideology. This can be easily parsed when we look at the history of modern moral philosophy. From Kant to the Utilitarians, through to attempts to revive Aristotelian philosophy, all are utterly interpellated with the logics of class society, and its emphasis on individual right, individual subjectivity, and capitalist reason.
This poses a problem if you are interested in constructing a post-capitalist morality – a revolutionary ethics, so to speak. All moral structures that one can refer to are by their nature already part of the ideological superstructure of capitalist society. One is trapped within the categories offered by bourgeois morality. Fundamentally, capitalism cannot be understood as unjust within the realm of bourgeois morality – for there is no externality to ideology, no capacity to see beyond itself. In insisting that we can take mastery of the bourgeoisie’s own concepts (in this case, moral philosophy), we are led into an ideological trap."
"The proletariat does not struggle because it believes itself to be just. It struggles for food, for security, for freedom, for dignity, for power. Our starting point is the real conditions of our lives and our desire to live better, for lives worth living."
"We do not struggle because it is just. We struggle because we can, and will, take power."
-Roxy Hall, On marxism, ethics, and the truth of communism, Cosmonaut, 27 juillet 2022: https://cosmonautmag.com/2022/07/striking-without-threatening-on-marxism-ethics-and-the-truth-of-communism/
