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Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics pp 463–480Cite as

A Marxist Ethic of Business

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Abstract

This chapter seek to clarify the nature of Karl Marx’s views on a variety of related concerns, including the matters of rights, responsibility, punishment, compensation, alienation, and exploitation in capitalist societies. In clarifying such matters, it is hoped that what Marx might say about business ethics will come to light.

It is one of the peculiar ironies of history that there are no limits to the misunderstanding and distortion of theories, even in an age when there is unlimited access to the sources; there is no more drastic example of this phenomenon than what has happened to the theory of Karl Marx in the last few decades. There is continuous reference to Marx and Marxism in the press, in the speeches of politicians, in books and articles written by respectable social scientists and philosophers; yet with few exceptions, it seems that the politicians and newspapermen have never as much as glanced at a line written by Marx, and that the social scientists are satisfied with a minimal knowledge of Marx. Apparently they feel safe in acting as experts in this field, since nobody with power and status in the social-research empire challenges their ignorant statements. – Erich Fromm [1].

Marxism sees history as a protracted process of liberation – from the scarcity imposed on humanity by nature, and from the oppression imposed by some people on others. Members of ruling and subject classes share the cost of natural scarcity unequally, and Marxism predicts, and fights for, the disappearance of society’s perennial class division. – G. A. Cohen [2].

Marxism is not one theory, but a set of more or less related theories. – G. A. Cohen ([2], p. 155).

The language of moral rights is the language of justice, and whoever takes justice seriously must accept that there exist moral rights. – G. A. Cohen ([2], p. 297).

This chapter is dedicated to Gerald Alan Cohen, whose work on Marx has deeply influenced my thinking on Marx.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cohen, [11, 12]. See also [13].

  2. 2.

    Buchanan [14]. For a critique of Buchanan’s interpretation of Marx and rights, see [15].

  3. 3.

    Cohen ([2], p. 9), where G. A. Cohen also states of Marx’s view: “…that the given capitalist enjoys the stated right because it belongs to a structure of rights, a structure which obtains because it sustains an analogous structure of economic power.”

  4. 4.

    Marx and Engels ([18], p. 166). Also see pp. 349–351 for Marx’s further explicit support of freedom of the press, and p. 327 for his explicit support of individual freedom of expression. In case Buchanan and others who still think that Marx condemns rights per se, perhaps they ought to consider Marx’s statements that “The press is the most general way by which individuals can communicate their intellectual being. It knows no respect for persons, but only respect for intelligence. …. Everyone must have the right to read and write” (p. 177). For those who require more evidence that Marx does not condemn rights per se as Buchanan argues, it is wise to consider Marx’s words on “Communal Reform and the KÖLNISCHE ZEITUNG” wherein he argues that the very separation of town and country implies an inequality of rights, which is bad, implying that Marx believes in the equality of rights at least in such contexts (pp. 266–273). It is helpful to read Marx carefully without a biased, ideological eye that would uncharitably turn his complex and sophisticated arguments and analyses into straw.

  5. 5.

    Cohen ([2], p. 255). Moreover, he writes: “Let me then propose that a worker is forced to sell his labour power in the presently required sense if and only if the constraint is a result of standard exercises of the powers constituting relations of production” (p. 258). And while there is an objective sense, Cohen argues, in which workers under capitalism are forced to sell their labor power, “…each is free only on condition that the others do not exercise their similarly conditioned freedom. Not more than one can exercise the liberty they all have. If, moreover, any one were to exercise it, then, because of the structure of the situation, all the others would lose it” (p. 263). Cohen refers to this as workers’ “collective unfreedom” under capitalism (p. 264). So Marx’s concept of capitalist exploitation derives its negative moral content from the fact that there is collective unfreedom of workers in capitalism in which workers are forced because of circumstance to sell their labor power to one capitalist or another, as the case may be (p. 265). So while some individual workers can escape the proletarian class, not all can no matter how hard they try, which results in collective unfreedom for the workers as a class (p. 265). Also see pp. 267 f. Thus, “If it is plausible to say that capitalism makes most workers incapable of being anything else, then it is false that most workers are free, in sensu diviso, not to be proletarians” (p. 279).

  6. 6.

    Cohen ([2], p. 211). See Chap. 11 of Cohen’s book for a fine discussion of the Marxist concept of the labor theory of value and its related concepts.

  7. 7.

    Cohen ([2], p. 191). Also see [20], where it is said that workers “work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.”

  8. 8.

    Marx ([21], p. 819). Also see [2], p. 193f for commentary and analysis.

  9. 9.

    Cohen ([2], p. 200). Cohen cites both The Grundrisse and Theories of Surplus Value on these points.

  10. 10.

    Cohen ([2], p. 205f). Cohen cites The German Ideology on this point.

  11. 11.

    Kant I ([22], p. 429): “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.”

  12. 12.

    Cohen ([2], p. 137). Cohen adds that in its exclusive emphasis on the creative aspect of human nature, Marx neglects “a whole domain of human need and aspiration…he failed to do justice to the self’s irreducible interest in a definition of itself, and to the social manifestations of that interest” (pp. 137–138). See also pp. 139–141.

  13. 13.

    Cohen ([2], p. 238). Cohen also states: “…capitalism is just if and only if capitalists have the right to own the means of production they do, for it is their ownership of means of production which enables them to make profit out of labour, and if that ownership is legitimate, then so too is making profit out of labor. The key question, then, is whether capitalist private property is morally defensible.” Yet “…all, or virtually all, capitalist private property either r is, or is made of, something which was once no one’s private property, since (virtually) all physical private property comes immediately or ultimately from the land, which was there before any people, hence before any private owners of it, were” (p. 301).

  14. 14.

    Marx [25], pp. 667–669. Also see Chap. XXVII where Marx discusses the forcible expropriation of peoples from their lands and their means of production by capitalism. The moral implication here is obvious, namely, that Marx believes it is morally wrong for capitalism to expropriate means of production and their material bases from those to whom they belong, and that this appears to be part and parcel of capitalism’s modus operandi.

  15. 15.

    Cohen ([2], p. 302). Cohen also states that “…the socialist objection of justice to the market economy is that it allows private ownership of means of existence which no one has the right to own privately, and therefore rests upon an unjust foundation” (p. 298).

  16. 16.

    This claim runs counter to a strict Marxist view, which admits that “…Marxists do not believe merely that this or that capitalist society, or even every capitalist society, is unjust because of its particular origin. Marxists believe that capitalism as such is unjust, that, therefore, there could not be a just formation of capitalist private property, and that thesis requires moral rather than historical argument” (p. 302). Cohen is correct that such a strong Marxist claim about the logical impossibility of a morally just founding of capitalist private property: it requires a special defense as neither the claim nor its defense is found in the writings of Marx.

  17. 17.

    “Sufficiently” in that responsibility and its constituent conditions admit of degrees.

  18. 18.

    “The great cry of world Justice today is that the fruit of toil go to the Laborer who produces it” [35].

  19. 19.

    Engels [39]. Cited in [40].

  20. 20.

    Cohen [2], p. 293, citing from Capital, Vol. 3

  21. 21.

    For an example of how US capitalism faces reparative justice in light of its illicit and violent theft of American Indian lands, see Corlett [27], Chap. 8; [28].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    J. Angelo Corlett (Professor of Philosophy & Ethics)

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  1. Peter Löscher-Stiftungslehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsethik, Technische Universität München, München, Germany

    Christoph Luetge

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Corlett, J.A. (2013). A Marxist Ethic of Business. In: Luetge, C. (eds) Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1494-6_53

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