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 invariable 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.
But do not elementary moral precepts exist, worked out in the development of mankind as an integral element necessary for the life of every collective body? Undoubtedly such precepts exist but the extent of their action is extremely limited and unstable. Norms ‘obligatory upon all’ become the less forceful the sharper the character assumed by the class struggle. The highest pitch of the class struggle is civil war, which explodes into mid-air all moral ties between the hostile classes.
Under ‘normal’ conditions a ‘normal’ man observes the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill!” But if he murders under exceptional conditions for self-defence, the judge condones his action. If he falls victim to a murderer, the court will kill the murderer. The necessity of the court’s action, as that of the self-defence, flows from antagonistic interests. Insofar as the state is concerned, in peaceful times it limits itself to individual cases of legalized murder so that in time of war it may transform the ‘obligatory’ commandment, “Thou shalt not kill!” into its opposite. The most ‘humane’ governments, which in peaceful times ‘detest’ war, proclaim during war that the highest duty of their armies is the extermination of the greatest possible number of people.
The so-called ‘generally recognized’ moral precepts, in essence, preserve an algebraic, that is, an indeterminate character. They merely express the fact that man, in his individual conduct, is bound by certain common norms that flow from his being a member of society. The highest generalization of these norms is the ‘categorical imperative’ of Kant. But in spite of the fact that it occupies a high position upon the philosophic Olympus, this imperative does not embody anything categoric because it embodies nothing concrete. It is a shell without content.
This vacuity in the norms obligatory upon all arises from the fact that in all decisive questions people feel their class membership considerably more profoundly and more directly than their membership in ‘society’. The norms of ‘obligatory’ morality are in reality charged with class, that is, antagonistic content. The moral norm becomes the more categoric the less it is ‘obligatory’ upon all. The solidarity of workers, especially of strikers or barricade fighters, is incomparably more ‘categoric’ than human solidarity in general.
The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilability of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions patronised by religion, philosophy, or that hybrid which is called ‘common sense’. The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception. The exposure of this deceit, which retains the tradition of thousands of years, is the first duty of a proletarian revolutionist.