Karl Marx and The Greater Good

Posted on: November 5, 2018 at 12:06:39 CT

Marx's Ethics And Its Consequences
The underlying false ethical assumption which permeates the Manifesto and underlies Marx's political and economic ideas is that self-interest is intrinsically evil and corrupt. Marx speaks of the "naked self-interest," and "egotistical calculation" of the Bourgeoisie, who, by offering payment in exchange for the services of physicians, lawyers and poets, "stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe."

What, in essence, is implied by such a statement? That because an instance of trade is advantageous to one or (in fact) both parties, because it appeals to their "naked self-interest," by that very fact it must be considered corrupt and evil—that self-interest is corrupt and evil—that the source of personal honor is self-sacrifice, as opposed to self-preservation. As identified by Ayn Rand, implicit in such a view is a premise of death as the ultimate standard of value motivating one's moral actions, actions which, in order for one to claim a positive moral status, one may never be the beneficiary of. Here, in what is perhaps the fundamental issue underlying ethics (self-preservation versus self-sacrifice as the standard of morality), we see the suggestion of a moral standard—in fact, an inversion of good and evil—that, when put into existential practice, will lead to the rationalization of countless human deaths, to the sacrifice of countless "selfish" individuals, a wholesale slaughter of human beings on a scale never before seen or imagined, in the service of "the greater good" of others, of humanity as a whole.

Edited by 90Tiger at 12:07:45 on 11/05/18