Their Morals and Ours

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Fragment uit een belangrijk essay van L.T. over de communistische
moraal. Ik sluit me aan bij de strekking van dit essay. Er kunnen geen
 automatische antwoorden gegeven worden mbt wat moreel toelaatbaar is
in de klassestrijd.


Dialectic Interdependence of End and Means

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn
needs to be justified, From the Marxist point of view, which expresses
the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if
it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the
abolition of the power of man over man.

“We are to understand then that in achieving this end anything is
permissible?” sarcastically demands the Philistine, demonstrating that
he understood nothing. That is permissible, we answer, which really
leads to the liberation of mankind. Since this end can be achieved
only through revolution, the liberating morality of the proletariat of
necessity is endowed with a revolutionary character. It irreconcilably
counteracts not only religious dogma but every kind of idealistic
fetish, these philosophic gendarmes of the ruling class. It deduces a
rule for conduct from the laws of the development of society, thus
primarily from the class struggle, this law of all laws.

“Just the same,” the moralist continues to insist, “does it mean that
in the class struggle against capitalists all means are permissible:
lying, frame-up, betrayal, murder, and so on?” Permissible and
obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which unite the
revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable
hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and
its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own
historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in
the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are
permissible. When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us
the conclusion follows that the great revolutionary end spurns those
base means and ways which set one part of the working class against
other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their
participation; or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and
their organization, replacing it by worship for the “leaders”.
Primarily and irreconcilably, revolutionary morality rejects servility
in relation to the bourgeoisie and haughtiness in relation to the
toilers, that is, those characteristics in which petty bourgeois
pedants and moralists are thoroughly steeped.

These criteria do not, of course, give a ready answer to the question
as to what is permissible and what is not permissible in each separate
case. There can be no such automatic answers. Problems of
revolutionary morality are fused with the problems of revolutionary
strategy and tactics. The living experience of the movement under the
clarification of theory provides the correct answer to these problems.

Dialectic materialism does not know dualism between means and end. The
end flows naturally from the historical movement. Organically the
means are subordinated to the end. The immediate end becomes the means
for a further end. In his play, Franz von Sickingen, Ferdinand
Lassalle puts the following words into the mouth of one of the heroes:

... “Show not the goal
But show also the path. So closely interwoven
Are path and goal that each with other
Ever changes, and other paths forthwith
Another goal set up.”

Lassalle’s lines are not at all perfect. Still worse is the fact that
in practical politics Lassalle himself diverged from the above
expressed precept – it is sufficient to recall that he went as far as
secret agreements with Bismark! But the dialectic interdependence
between means and end is expressed entirely correctly in the
above-quoted sentences. Seeds of wheat must be sown in order to yield
an ear of wheat.

Volledig:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********