I’m a VP with a biggish company. Every year, the first week of the year the senior managers from across the US fly somewhere warm, play golf, shoot guns, sit by a beach or a pool, get wasted, ham handedly try to cheat on their spouses and have meetings about how to take more of your labor value. Obviously due to covid that won’t be a thing this year, and instead the conferences are virtual, so me, and a couple hundred other ghouls who already make six figures + got shipped huge snack boxes, boxes of booze and received $500 credits at door dash. The CEO just gave his kickoff presentation and, with all the money they saved from not paying for travel they’re giving away ten k worth of Amazon gift cards and a brand new Tesla. So just who is eligible for this windfall, you ask. The hundreds of warehouse workers who couldn’t work from home, the truck drivers out on the road, installers and sales people exposing themselves to covid every day? Nah, us couple hundred ghouls already making incomes in the top 5%. Can I just guillotine myself and be done with this already?
Should I act morally and perform direct actions to minimise harm? No, I don’t have to according to Marxism nevermind.
The point I’m making isn’t incompatible with the point you’re making.
Engels was never an owner of his father’s factory, but if he was then you are correct he should use his position to advance the cause of the working class in whatever way is most effective.
Engels never inherited the mill - when his father died, his family feared he would squander the legacy “on his communist friends”, and he was unable to withdraw any capital from the firm for 20 years. He left the mill in 1869 but retained shares and invested in the stockmarket, to provide an income that allowed him to continue supporting Marx and to write and work for the cause of socialism.
The problem is the ills of capitalism are systematic. Capitalism doesn’t suck because of individual actions, it sucks because of the inevitable consequences of its organizing principles.
Small scale feel good actions on an individual level don’t challenge the underlying structure of capitalism. Our movement must be scientific in its tactics and strategy if we are going to accomplish a goal as lofty as moving all of humanity past the predatory stage of human development.
So what harm are you actually minimizing if you don’t end up challenging the structure of capitalism at a fundamental level? The system is still going to produce the same evils.
So what harm are you actually minimizing if you don’t end up challenging the structure of capitalism at a fundamental level?
You are directly improving people’s lives. It doesn’t matter if it’s within capitalism, it is a moral imperative for leftists to minimise exploitation, especially when they have the power to easily do so.
If you see someone beating up an old lady and you are able to intervene and do so, you are minimising harm without challenging the fundamental structure of society. What a weird take that you can only do good things by challenging capitalism.
Cool. None of that is incompatible with Marxism.
You’re missing the forest for the trees here.
The questions Marxism answers is how do we organize to fundamentally change society. It is not a framework of morality, even though its goal is the material liberation of all humanity.
That doesn’t absolve you from being a moral person, it just means that Marxism isn’t the framework for determining morals. It’s like trying to cook from a recipe and using a ruler to measure out your water instead of a measuring cup. You’re using the wrong tool for the job.
Your morals can guide you to Marxism, but Marxism does not define any moral systems. Marxism is a framework for historical and material analysis, and it is a theory of change.
The same discussion can be had with any science, and the intersection of science and morals is a huge topic of debate. But invariably morals are something that is imposed from without. Science has no morals inherent to it, and science without morals is how you get things like Nazi scientists conducting medical experiments on prisoners.
