Seek to strengthen your moral commitments and religious faith. Reread the Ten Commandments and the Book of Ecclesiastes. A Bible is not a bad teacher of history and a guide to survival in hard times.
– Rees-Mogg
Whoever does not care to return to Moses, Christ or Mohammed. Whoever is not satisfied with eclectic hodgepodges must acknowledge that morality is a product of social development; that there is nothing immutable about it; that it serves social interests; that these interests are contradictory; that morality more than any other form of ideology has a class character.
– Trotsky
“Marxism denies morality!” How often have we heard expressions of this type, which merely reveal ignorance of the ABCs of Marxism. True, Marxism denies the existence of a supra-historical morality. But it does not require much effort to show that the moral codes that have regulated human conduct have varied substantially from one historical period to another. At one time, it was not considered immoral to eat prisoners of war. Later on, cannibalism was regarded with abhorrence, but prisoners of war could be turned into slaves. Even the great Aristotle was prepared to justify slavery, on the grounds that slaves did not possess souls and therefore were not fully human (the same argument was used in relation to women). Still later, it was considered morally wrong for one person to own another as a piece of property, but perfectly acceptable for feudal lords to have serfs who were chained to the land and entirely subject to the master, to the point of giving up his bride to the lord on her wedding night.
Nowadays, all these things are regarded as barbarous and immoral, but the institution of wage-labour, where a human being sells himself piecemeal to an employer, who uses his labour-power as he pleases, is never called into question. This is, after all, free labour. Unlike the serf and the slave, the worker and employer arrive at an agreement of their own free will. Nobody obliges the worker to work for a particular boss. If he does not like it, he may leave and seek employment elsewhere. Moreover, in a free market economy, the law is the same for everyone. The French writer Anatole France wrote about the “majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
In modern society, in place of the old open forms of exploitation, we have disguised, hypocritical exploitation, in which the real relation between men and women is translated into a relation between things – little bits of paper which give their owners the power of life and death; which can make what is ugly beautiful; what is weak, strong; what is stupid, intelligent; what is old, young.
Trotsky wrote that money relations have sunk so deep into people’s minds that we refer to a man as being “worth” so many million dollars. It is a measure of the degree of alienation that exists in present-day society that such expressions are taken for granted. Nor is anyone surprised when, during a monetary crisis, the television talks about the currency as if it were a person recovering from an illness (“The pound/dollar/Deutschmark was a little stronger today…”). Human beings are regarded as things, while objects, especially money, are regarded with superstitious awe, recalling the religious attitudes of savages to their totems and fetishes. The reason for this fetishism of commodities was explained by Marx in the first volume of Capital.
The search for an absolute morality proves to be completely futile. Here again, the immutable laws of logic can offer us no help. Formal logic bases itself on a fixed antithesis between truth and falsehood. An idea is either right or wrong. Yet truth, as the German poet Lessing pointed out, is not like a stamped coin that is issued ready from the mint and can be used under all circumstances. What is true at one time and under one set of circumstances becomes false in another. The same is the case with concepts like “good” and “evil”. What is “good” and praiseworthy in one society is abhorrent in another. Moreover, even within a given society, the concept of what is good and bad frequently changes, according to circumstances, and to the interests of a particular class.
If we exclude incest, which appears to have been taboo in virtually all societies, there are very few moral injunctions that can be shown to have been eternal and absolute. “Thou shalt not steal” does not make much sense in a society not based on private property. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” only has meaning for a male-dominated society, where men wished to be sure that private property was handed down to their own sons. “Thou shalt not kill” has always been surrounded by so many qualifications that it immediately becomes transformed into something quite different, or even its opposite; for example, thou shalt not kill, except in self-defence; or, thou shalt not kill, unless it is somebody from another tribe/nation/religion, and so on.
In every war, the armies of the nation are blessed by the priests as they go out to slaughter the armies of other nations. The absolute moral injunction not to kill suddenly turns out to be relative to other considerations, which, on closer examination, are found to be related to the economic, territorial, political, or strategic interests of the states involved in the fighting. The hypocrisy of all this was well expressed in a little verse by the great Scottish poet Robert Burns On Thanksgiving For a National Victory:
Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men, and give God thanks?
Desist for shame! Proceed no further:
God won’t accept your thanks for Murther.
War is a fact of life (and death). There have been many wars throughout human history. The fact may be deplored, but not denied. Moreover, all the most important issues between nations have ultimately been settled by war. Pacifism has never been a fashionable doctrine with governments, except as the small change of diplomacy, the exclusive aim of which is to deceive everyone concerning the real intentions of the government it represents. Lying is the stock-in-trade of diplomats. It is what they are paid for. “Thou shalt not bear false witness” simply does not come into it. An army commander who did not do everything in his power to deceive the enemy about his intentions would be considered a fool or worse. Here, however, a lie becomes something praiseworthy – a military ruse. A general who told the truth about his plans to the enemy would be shot as a traitor. A worker who revealed details of a strike to the employer would be regarded in the same way by his or her workmates.
From these few examples, it is clear that morality is not a supra-historical abstraction, but a something that has evolved historically, and undergone considerable changes. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church condemned usury as a deadly sin. Nowadays, the Vatican has a bank of its own, and raises very large sums of money by lending at interest. In other words, morality has a class basis. It reflects the values, interests and outlook of the dominant social class. Of course, it cannot succeed in maintaining the necessary degree of social cohesion if it is not accepted by the great majority of citizens. Hence, it must appear to consist of absolute and unquestionable truths, the violation of which must bring the whole social edifice crashing down.
There are few sights more repulsive than the sight of well-to-do ladies and gentlemen lecturing the public on the need for morality, religion, family planning and thrift. The same individuals, whose selfish greed is manifested every day in huge salary increases for boardroom directors, lecture workers on the need for sacrifice. The same speculators, who do not hesitate to plunge the currency of their own country into chaos in order to increase their already swollen bank balances, lecture us on the need for patriotic values. The same banks, multinationals and governments that have been responsible for the merciless squeezing of millions in Africa, Asia and Latin America throw up their hands in horror whenever the workers and peasants take up arms to fight for their rights. They lecture the world on the need for peace. But the stocks of murderous weaponry upon which they continue to lavish fabulous sums show that their pacifism is also quite relative. Violence is only a crime when it is resorted to by the poor and oppressed. The whole of history shows that the ruling class will always defend its power and privileges by the most brutal means, if necessary.
Family, Order, Private Property and Religion have always been inscribed on the banners of conservative defenders of the status quo. Yet of these supposedly inviolate institutions, only one, private property, is of real interest to the ruling class. Religion is, as Rees-Mogg bluntly points out, a necessary weapon to keep the poor in order. Most of the upper class do not believe a word of it, and go to Church, much the same as they go to the opera, in order to show off the latest fashion. Their understanding of theology is as scanty as their appreciation of Wagner’s Ring cycle. In their private life, the bourgeois show scant consideration for the “eternal laws of morality”. The epidemic of scandals, which have rocked the political establishment in Italy, France, Spain, Britain, Belgium, Japan and the United States, is just the tip of the iceberg. Yet they prate endlessly on about “eternal moral truths” and are surprised when they are greeted with a resounding guffaw.
Does this mean that morality does not exist? Or that Marxists do not have a morality? Far from it. Morality exists, and plays a necessary role in society. Every society has an ethical code, which serves as a powerful bond, to the degree that it is recognised and respected by the great majority. Ultimately, existing morality and the legal code which seeks to put it into practice is backed by the full force of the state, reflecting the interests of the ruling class or caste, although it does so in a disguised way. While the existing socioeconomic order carries society forward, the values, ideas and outlook of the ruling stratum are accepted without question by the great majority. The class basis of morality was explained by Trotsky:
The ruling class forces its end upon society and habituates it into considering all those means which contradict its ends as immoral. That is the chief function of official morality. It pursues the idea of the ‘greatest possible happiness’ not for the majority but for a small and ever-diminishing minority. Such a regime could not have endured for even a week through force alone. It needs the cement of morality.[47]
Those few individuals who dare to question it are branded as heretics and persecuted. They are regarded as “immoral” people – not because they do not possess a moral standpoint, but because they do not conform to the existing morality. Socrates was declared to be a harmful influence on the Athenian youth, before being made to drink hemlock. The early Christians were accused of all manner of immoral acts by the slave state that persecuted them mercilessly before it decided it would be better to recognise the new faith, in order to corrupt the leaders of the Church. Martin Luther was denounced as an evil man, when he opened up an attack on the corruption of the mediaeval Church.
The crime of Marxists is to point out that capitalist society has entered into conflict with the needs of social development; that it has become an intolerable obstacle to human progress; that it is shot through with contradictions; that it is economically, politically, culturally and morally bankrupt; and that the further survival of this sick system puts the future of the planet in grave danger. From the standpoint of those who own and control the wealth of society, these ideas are “bad”. From the standpoint of what is needed to find a way out of the impasse, they are correct, necessary, and good.
The long drawn-out crisis of capitalism is having a most negative effect on morality and culture. Everywhere, the symptoms of social disintegration are palpable. The bourgeois family is breaking down, but, in the absence of anything to put in its place, this is leading to a nightmare of poverty and degradation for millions of needy families. The decaying inner cities of the United States and Europe, with their huge pools of unemployment and deprivation, are a spawning-ground for drug abuse, crime, and every kind of nightmare.
In capitalist society, people are regarded as dispensable commodities. Goods which cannot be sold lie idle until they rot. Why should human beings be any different? Only it is not so simple with people. They cannot be allowed to starve to death in large numbers, for fear of the social consequences. So, in the ultimate contradiction of capitalism, the bourgeois is obliged to feed the unemployed, instead of being fed by them. A truly insane situation, where men and women wish to work, to add to the wealth of society, and are prevented from doing so by the “laws of the market”.
This is an inhuman society, where people are subordinated to things. Is it any wonder that some of these people behave in an inhuman manner? Every day the tabloid press is full of horror stories about the terrible abuses committed against the weakest, most defenceless sections of the community – women, children, old people. This is an accurate barometer of the moral state of society. The law sometimes punishes these offences, although in general crimes against (big) property are more energetically pursued by the police than crimes against the person. But in any case, the profound social roots of crimes are outside the powers of courts and police. Unemployment breeds crimes of all sorts. But there are other, more subtle factors.
The culture of egotism, greed and indifference to the sufferings of others has flourished, particularly since the 1980s, when it was given the stamp of approval by Thatcher and Reagan, and has undoubtedly played a role, though it is not so easy to quantify. This is the real face of capitalism, more accurately of monopoly and finance capital – ruthless, crude, grasping and cruel. This is capitalism in its period of senile decay, attempting to recover the vigour of its youth. It is parasitic capitalism, with a marked preference for the fleshpots of financial and monetary speculation, instead of the production of real wealth. It prefers “services” to industry. It closes factories like matchboxes, ruthlessly destroying whole communities and industries, and recommends miners and steelworkers to find work in hamburger bars. It is the 20th century equivalent of “Let them eat cake”.
Quite apart from the monstrous social and economic consequences of this doctrine, it spreads a deadly moral poison through the fabric of society. People with no prospect of even finding a job are confronted with the spectacle of the “consumer society”, where getting and spending money are presented as the only worthwhile activity in life. The role models of this society are the pushy parvenus, the get-rich-quick mob, prepared to go to any lengths to “get on”. This is the true face of “free enterprise”, of monetarist reaction – it is the face of an unprincipled adventurer, a crook and a swindler, a shallow ignoramus, a bully in an expensive suit, the personification of greed and selfishness. These are the people who applaud the closure of schools and hospitals, the cutting of pensions and other “unprofitable” items of expenditure, while they make fortunes by lifting a phone, without ever producing anything of use for the benefit of society.
It is often asserted that people “naturally” act according to their interests. This is then interpreted in a narrow way, as personal egotism. Such an interpretation suits the defenders of the present socioeconomic system, in which greed and the pursuit of self-interest are held up as great moral principles, equivalent to the exercise of “personal freedom”. If this had been the case, human society could never have developed. The word “interest” itself comes from the Latin “inter-esse” which means “to take part in”. The whole basis of the intellectual and moral evolution of the child is the movement away from “egotism” and towards a greater sense of the needs and requirements of others. Human society is based on the necessity of social production, co-operation and communication.
It is the impasse of capitalism which threatens to push human culture back to a childish level, in the worst sense of the word – the childishness of senile decay. An atomised, self-centred society without a vision, without a morality, without a philosophy, without a soul, a society “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
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Trotsky, L. Their Morals and Ours, p. 13.