Marxist Ethics and Proletariat Morality

QUESTION: Marxist Ethics – Proletariat Morality

ANSWER:

The proper Marxist morality for the present historical period is a class morality—specifically, the morality of the proletariat, the propertyless masses. According to Scientific Communism: A Glossary, “Devotion to the cause of the working class, collectivism, mutual aid, comradely solidarity, hatred toward the bourgeoisie and toward traitors to the common cause, internationalism, and stoicism in struggle are traits which not only define the content of proletarian ethics, but also characterize the moral image of the typical representatives of the working class.”¹ This is the code of ethics Marxists hold and promote.

Marxist Ethics – Class Hatred
Hatred of the bourgeoisie is fundamental to the Marxist ethical code. Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow, a documentation of the inhumanity of applied Marxist theory, contains illustration after illustration of “class hatred” or communist class morality in practice. According to Marxist ethics, hatred is moral as long as it is directed toward the proper institution, class, or enemy. Hatred thus becomes a necessary ingredient in the clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It follows, then, that society’s generally accepted moral principles (which Marxists claim are bourgeois tools) are in direct opposition to the moral principles of the proletariat. If this is true, no one in the bourgeoisie can do right or act morally. Unless members of the propertied class became proletarian, anything they do, no matter how moral by their standards, will be contemptible to Marxists.

Lenin sums up Marxist Ethics as follows: “Is there such a thing as communist morality? Of course, there is. It is often suggested that we have no ethics of our own; very often the bourgeoisie accuse us Communists of rejecting all morality. This is a method of confusing the issue, of throwing dust in the eyes of the workers and peasants.”²

Notes:

Rendered with permission from the book,Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews(Rev. 2^nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.

¹ Cited in Sleeper, A Lexicon of Marxist-Leninist Semantics, 106.
² V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 45 vols. (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1982), 31:291.