Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 08:34:18 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: ethics and intentions



Redmomd's post is a mass of confusion. Of course socialists think that the
morally right. i.e., correct, thing to do is to further left political
goals. But the use of "left" here doesn't mean that morality isn't about
doing the right thing. 

Redmond seems to confuse moralirt and legality. He supposes it's some sort
of counterexample to my claim to note that civil rights activists
sometimes do civil disobedience. But of course it's not. Sometimes the
morally right thing to do is to break the law.

Redmond says that a free society wouldn't need morality. What doesthis
mean? Not, presumably, that in a free society it would OK, or as OK as
not, for anyone to what she pleased, say, to torture Redmond to death for
the fun of it. Perhaps the idea is that in a free society people would do
what morality says is the right thing, i.e., not torture Redmond, without
reference to any rules or appropriate models. Maybe they'd just absorb it
from the air. But this is psychologically silly and in any case fails to
get rid of the line between morally right and wrong.

Redmond says that a free society wouldn't have any judicial sphere to
categorize its members. Law is distinct from morality, of course, but I'm
curious as to how Redmond thinks people would resolve disputes in a free
society, if not by reference to a more or less predictable set of rules
and procedures administered by a body with the power to arbitrate
conflicts. Maybe he thinks no one would have disagreements, or that they
culd all be resolved by amicable discussion. This trikes me as
overoptimistic.  

Redmond sees some connection or other between the idea in bourgeois
society we are all just commodities and conservative defenses of the
"dominant morality." Actually I would have thought that the dominant
morality is that we are not commodities but traders in commodities,
ourselves free and equal. And there are many strains of the "dominant
morality," Gingrich's family values dreck being among the most embattled
and least popular, which is why I think attacks on it arouse such string
responses.

Redmond would reduce all morality to one strain in the dominant morality.
This is just dumb. But what would you expect from him, eh?

--jks

> On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Justin Schwartz wrote:
> 
> > I don't get Yoshie's allergy to morality. Morality is about doing the
> > right thing, even Kant's morality.
> 
> Revolutionary morality is about doing the Left thing, not the Right
> thing. A free society wouldn't need morality, or indeed any kind of
> juridical sphere to categorize its members. Civil rights activists have
> an inkling of this when they break minor laws in order to protest major
> ones; and of course much of media activism in general is about creating an
> image or symbol which negates the ethos of late capitalism, if only for a
> moment (e.g. Greenpeace's stunts, or the provocations of gangsta rap).
> Morality is the objective shadow cast by capitalism's juridical sphere on
> the (allegedly enlightened) subject; it's the reminder that, deep down, as
> far as the system is concerned, we're all just bits and pieces of
> property, to be bought and sold like sacks of potatoes. This is why the
> bourgeoisie always reacts so forcefully to an attack on the dominant
> morality; Gingrich's noxious tirades on family values aren't just a
> smokescreen, they're a form of class praxis, whereby any threat to the
> white, male overclass of rentiers and Wall Street punters is recoded as a
> criminal conspiracy, necessitating a huge army of cops, soldiers and other
> agents of repression.
> 
> -- Dennis
> 
> 
> 
> 
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