 Hi, welcome back. So this is the final week of this course on Marxist philosophy. And this week we're going to be talking about something quite different to what we've talked about in previous weeks, which is the question of morality, not something really that Marx has talked about that often. Why is that? Well, Marx once said quite famously that, and I quote, in all ideology, men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura. He also famously explained that in any class society, the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling class. So in other words, the dominant ideas of a given society are not only those of the ruling class, but they are, they obscure the real relations, the real characteristics of that society. They present them in a topsy-turvy and in a false way. And he also said that we should never judge a man by what he thinks about himself, but by what he does. And similarly, he says that one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness. In other words, to really understand a society, shouldn't pay too much attention to what it thinks and says about itself. In other words, it's ideology, but examine the real material basis of that society and exactly what it really does. And I would say that the more close to politics a given idea or area of human thoughts is, the more distorted it will be. So for example, bourgeois economics, the economics that you'll taught at university, for example, is pretty openly a distortion of reality. I mean, it's just a belated an apology for capitalism. It's not really a scientific theory at all. And I would say the same applies for morality. Morality has always been underclass society. When I talk about morality, I mean the major philosophical theories of morality and also the dominant values, the moral values of a given society, is of always served the purpose of justifying the rule of the ruling class and of the mode of production that presently exists and of obscuring the real injustices of that society. And the way it does this in general is through obfuscation, its abstractness, blurring and even ignoring the real class contradictions and injustices of society. That's the main approach of all the moral theories. No matter how different they are, they really all have that in common. They never start out from an analysis of the unequal and exploitative character of the society that they are, that the authors or practitioners belong to. They always take that for granted they never question that. They never say, for example, or start out by saying, can this society allow people to behave in a moral way? Is it really possible in a capitalist society or in a feudal society for people to obey the moral rules that we set them? And is that justified therefore? Do we need to change that society? They never really look at that. Everything is looked at from the point of view of the individual and their behavior. And the social context in which they live is generally ignored entirely. And so in this way it kind of justifies the unjustifiable character of class society. Now throughout most human history this morality, this official morality, was of course a religious one. And this dominant ideology of religion that you have, this kind of illusion which held society together with all of its massive contradictions and injustices, of course, it had recourse to an external power to explain and justify everything. In other words, an almighty God or a group of gods greater than society, greater than individuals, was timeless, eternal. And it really defined what was right and what was wrong. And you couldn't really question this for fear, of course, of eternal punishment by those very gods themselves. And so what was really happening with this ideology is that the real foundations of society again were being ignored. But in reality it was those material foundations of society, whether it be feudal or slave society or capitalist, that the structure of that mode of production ultimately is what gave rise to certain kinds of behavior, certain expectations or norms such as, you know, a certain kind of family structure and sexual relations, for example. And it's that that really produces the need for these moral codes which are then sanctified and made eternal by this God. The most obvious example of this, I suppose, is the question of theft because obviously if you live in a society without private property and inequality, you don't need a moral code against theft. In fact, theft itself is not really, doesn't really make any sense. The concept probably wouldn't even exist. So the commandment not to not never to steal is a product of a pre-existing social development in which you get, of course, not only private property, but massively unequally distributed private property. That's what gives rise to the ability even to have a concept of theft. And then, of course, the widespread behavior of thieving, of course, is made unavoidable really by the massive inequality of such societies. So that's the real genesis and basis for that moral code, but it's then presented as if it comes from heaven and is absolutely eternal, of course, and that gives it basically serves to justify and sanctify the inequality of that society. And I would say that for the same reason that this moral code was always false and topsy-turvy and ignored the real basis of those moral norms, for that same reason, such commandments or moral codes have always been ignored. They've never, there's no moral code that any society has developed, any class society anyway has developed that has been by and large adheres to basically all of these rules are routinely flouted. Hypocrisy is really the watchword of any class society, including capitalism. Every ruling class in history has practiced wars of conquest, which involve killing, obviously, thievery and lying as well. All of those things are really absolutely integral to fighting any war by a ruling class. And of course, ruling classes throughout history are infamous for their adulteration, their keeping of mistresses, and of course, also their greed, all of which are officially wrong in pretty much any religious moral code. And yet all of them are pretty much routinely ignored by the ruling class of that society. So hypocrisy is the defining feature, really, of morality or of official morality, shall we say. And that's the case today, very much so. We're all probably aware of, you know, the political hypocrisy that we see around us. And again, it stretches into morality. I'll just give some examples. Just yesterday, I saw that in Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared in defense of Prince Andrew and his alleged behavior that, you know, we mustn't demand that our royals be superhuman. So in other words, it's superhuman behavior not to engage in the kind of practices he is thought to have engaged in. Which is a ridiculous thing to say. It's quite obvious hypocrisy, a defense of a fellow member of the ruling class, double standards, to say the least. We also have another example from Britain, which was when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party. You had a relentless campaign against the alleged anti-Semitism in the party. No Blair IMP could help themselves but to give issues of moral indignation at, you know, their shock and horror, the fact that the Labour Party could have so much racism within it. Of course, all of this was just blatant lies, just drums up to serve a political purpose. And now that he has gone and we have a Blair right at the helm, suddenly all of those problems have disappeared and suddenly the wave of anti-Semitism from Labour members, you don't hear anything about. And on the other hand, you have all of those people named in the leaked reports and absolutely nothing is done about any of that. The hypocrisy is glaring. I also remember participating in a debate a few years ago with a priest. And at some point, the priest was asked. I think the person he asked was a member of his congregation. It was a leading question intended to make the Marxists look like bloodthirsty cynics or ideologues, rather. And the question was, would you ever be prepared to kill for your beliefs? In other words, would you impose with violence your beliefs onto society? And of course, the implication is that Marxists, yes, that's what they believe in. And the priest very sanctimoniously replied, no, I would never kill from that belief. So I think that's completely wrong. Later in the debate, someone also asked him, did you support the Iraq war? And he said, yes. Now, what do you think? Do you think you thought that the Iraq war would not involve anybody dying, anybody being killed? I don't think so. So clearly it was a very hypocritical position. He does believe in killing to further your ends, whether or not his ends are justified as a separate question. He does believe in that. But he very sanctimoniously declared that he did not believe in that and that really anyone who does must be a bloodthirsty ideologue. So you have this kind of hypocrisy everywhere in capitalist society. It's unavoidable. It's a product of the injustice of that system. Now, with the bourgeois enlightenment, bourgeois revolution, human thought took a big step forwards. And materialism was revived. And this reflected itself in the moral theories, which no longer saw God, an ancient dogma, as a sufficient basis for a moral code and instead a sort of rational basis for moral behavior with sorts. And I suppose that was a step forward. However, it has to be so that their efforts were really just as abstract and as a historical as the religious ones in the same kind of way that the ideals of the bourgeois revolution, you know, of establishing an age of reason and of equality. Those were always, as Marx explained, very abstract and could not really find realization because capitalist society is just another class society based on a new form of exploitation. And in the same way, these moral codes were, yes, they didn't base themselves on God, but they were equally abstract and a historical and therefore could never really be applied. And indeed, they never really have been followed. There were there were really two main trends to bourgeois, bourgeois moral philosophy, which is Kantianism and utilitarianism. As I said, they're both very abstract. And they search for a sort of timeless moral code, which will always be valid. Now, let's start with Kant's one, the categorical imperative. And this teaches us that to establish any kind of maximum behavior, meaning like a rule, a moral rule of behavior, what we have to do is search for something that principles is universalizable. So in other words, you take a kind of behavior such as lying, is that universalizable? In other words, would it be good if everybody lied? Well, clearly not. Would it be very good if people told the truth while you'd be inclined to say yes? So that's the rational basis for your rule that society has all members of society must abide by in order to be moral. The abstractness of this is obvious, right? First of all, like I said, no one ever really thought very few people seriously follow such a reaches guideline. But also it's obvious that it's not even really true as an ideal, regardless of whether or not such an ideal can be maintained. Clearly lying in some circumstances is not only not bad, but very good. If, for example, a group of slaves get together and deceive their master, in other words, lie to their master, their owner in order to free themselves, would that be a good or a bad thing? I think we'd all say it's definitely a good thing. So is search for a kind of abstract and finished, once and for all given rule, which must always be obeyed, is totally false and can never be adhered to, but it doesn't even make sense. What it really is, in my view, it's like this kind of morality. It's like the hypocritical morality of a priest issuing a sermon to a bunch of respectable ladies and gentlemen, bourgeois ladies and gentlemen who are very keen to maintain the appearance of always saying the right thing and would never admit to lying or any kind of wrong behavior, very keen to observe the norms. But in reality, they pay other people to do all of their dirty deeds for them. That's, to my mind, what this morality really represents. And then we have utilitarianism. Now this does at least have the merit of flexibility. Here we have the basic rule being there's really just one rule of utilitarianism, which is that there almost is no rule. Just do whatever produces the most happiness. That's the basic rule of utilitarianism. So the ends justify the means. In other words, by all means kill people if that is the course of action which will produce the most happiness for the greatest number of people. Now the trouble with utilitarianism is that it's no less abstract and ahistorical despite its flexibility than any of the other theories. Maybe we agree with this idea of flexibility, but the point is it stops just at the point when the theory should start. In other words, it should start by beginning to answer the question of what it is that produces the most happiness. And implied within utilitarianism is a sort of naive idea that there could be found a kind of neutral equation or something, which we can, so long as we feed in sufficient data, it will decisively prove what is the most, what course of action will produce the most pleasure or the most happiness. And then we can just follow that. It will work out very well. Of course, that's absurd, right? It's not as if in class society the idea of such a neutral thing is absurd as if the working class or anyone who doesn't agree with what's going on in society can go to some sort of neutral court of class society and present to them the theory of utilitarianism and show or look, austerity and all these other things. These are not producing the most happiness and therefore they're wrong, so they must be stopped. And then the court says, well yes, you've proven it with the indisputable logic of utilitarianism, so we must stop it. The very idea is ridiculous, obviously. The bourgeoisie basically, I think really everyone, really despite what they might say, follows this idea that the ends justify the means and we have to do whatever produces the most happiness. Yeah, everyone really thinks that, but the point is what no one agrees with is what will produce the most happiness. And the capitalists tell us that austerity may have some unpleasant side effects, increasing inequality, etc., but you know it's necessary because ultimately that will produce a richer and a happier society or invading another country to spread democracy. That also is the right thing to do. But of course the whole point is that these things reflect their interests in truth and not the interests of society as a whole and certainly not the interests of the working class. As I said, the working class cannot then disprove these ideas. There is no neutral court of class society that will listen to them much less that has the power to carry out any decisions. So as Trotsky pointed out, the real question is not whether the ends justify the means. As I said, I think most people or pretty much everyone really follows that. The real question is what justifies the ends? Is the end the continuation of capitalism or its replacement with socialism, for example? So Marxists do basically agree that the ends justify the means, but of course our ends are the establishment of socialism and for us everything is subordinated to that. That doesn't mean that we're bloodthirsty ideologues who will always kill for what we believe in because it doesn't follow that just because the ends justify the means, any course of action is correct. Of course you have to follow what best serves your ends. For us what best raises class consciousness and increases the power of the proletariat. Doesn't necessarily follow that that involves anything unpleasant at all but yes for us the ends do justify the means. So any scientific theory of morality for us has to be materialist and it must basically say the truth which is that there is no such thing as an eternal or timeless morality. There's no morality that comes from somehow outside of society and to which all societies must adhere and everyone in society must adhere to as well. There are different societies with different moralities and they could only have those moralities that they do have. Morality is a product of a given set of social relations. Now it is true that there are some moral codes which you'll probably find more or less in common between all societies but that only shows that there are some common features to all societies. For example you wouldn't be very likely to find any moral code that says you should always kill people of course it's not really very beneficial to any society for people to be doing that but nevertheless yes the moral code flows from the relations of that society, the social relations and they change as those social relations change. Not only that but within a given society as well there is more than one morality because there are different classes with different interests so in other words there is the morality of the picket line and the morality of the picket line involves things like obviously solidarity you know collectively fighting together but also you know fighting against anyone who tries to break that solidarity obviously a strike break or a scab and for the working class that morality is very good in fact it's the highest kind of morality but for the capitalists they for them the morality of the picket line is thuggery and that is how they present it. There is the point is there's no way of finding a common agreement between these two moralities. The bourgeoisie can only have their morality the morality of the individual basically and the working class has to have its own morality and has to struggle for that morality and that's what our fight is all about so we don't have any illusions about morality we know what you know that it's broken all the time and that class society requires it to be broken. What we're really interested in is not establishing some sort of ethical code that we try to foist onto people but instead we're interested in understanding why it is that class society and specifically capitalism make people behave so immorally all the time or rather make people break the professed morality of their society why there is so much injustice hypocrisy why there are so many crimes in society and why these never seem to be able to be dealt with and why the rich and powerful always get away with behaving in the most immoral way or in the most hypocritical way so for us the highest moral principle is really simply whatever serves best the interests of the proletariat whatever hastens the emancipation of the working class and ultimately humanity from class society that is what is moral and everything else is just you know fig leaves and delusions basically. Lennon stated that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory we are bound to take in the ideas that surround us and to capitalism these are ideas that ultimately defend the status quo. In well read's upcoming book on the history of philosophy Alan Woods looks at the development of philosophical thinking from the ancient Greeks all the way through to Marx and Engels who brought together the best of previous thinking to produce the Marxist philosophical outlook which looks at the real material world not as a static immovable reality but one that is constantly changing and moving according to laws that can be discovered. Through this we can learn how philosophy becomes an indispensable tool in the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society. Pre-order your copy now at www.marxist.com.hop