Marxism, Morality, and Ideology

Abstract

The relationship between Marxism, morality, and ideology has been fraught with controversy and heated debates throughout the century. Advocates of ‘scientific socialism’ tend to dismiss morality as mere ideology, which serves as a camouflage for class interests. In this view, Marxism is a science, separate from and opposed to morality; morality is conceived of as part of the ideological superstructure: false consciousness, containing lies and illusions, which seduces the bourgeoisie into self-satisfaction and complacency, while blinding the working class to their own class-interests and exploitation by the ruling class and the capitalist mode of production. Since, however, there are powerful moral impulses in Marx's own critique of capitalism and call to socialist revolution, and since those engaged in political struggle invariably make use of moral terms and exhortations, the self-reflexive ‘scientific socialist’ comes to devise some sort of moral doctrine: Engels, Kautsky, Trotsky and others talked of a higher socialist morality which would govern the future socialist society and, in some versions, which is to become already the guiding morality for a socialist revolutionary.