Actionism and Marxism

'Actionism' can be defined as valuing Action for its own sake, with Action conceived as a continual process.  It is thus opposed to any Consequentialism, which privileges the final moment of that process, or any effects of that final moment, e. g. a product, or the enjoyment of a product. Actionism thus conceives food and rest as a preceding, not subsequent to, Action, thereby inverting a standard concept of behavior as a means to satisfying desire, whether vital or otherwise.  Thus, an exemplary Actionist, for whom performance is for its own sake, is a Musician.  Likewise, the athlete who enjoys playing regardless of outcome is an Actionist, while one for whom winning is all that matters is not.  Now, Profit-seeking is not Actionist, but it is unclear whether or not Marxism is.  For, insofar as it locates the source of Value of a product in the Labor that produces it, it is Actionist, but insofar as it aims for the liberation from Labor, to free the worker for leisure, it is not, perhaps because in the latter case, Marx does not distinguish drudgery from skilled work.  Hence, it is unclear whether or not his 'From each according to ones ability' is an Actionist principle, i. e. whether or not it is doubly opposed to Capitalist Profit-seeking behavior--as both Collectivist and Actionist.

Capitalism, Socialism, Collectivism

Smith does not explain the relation between the Profit-motive and Division of Labor.  Presumably, he believes that they are consistent insofar as involvement in the latter is a means to one's profiting.  However, that leaves unclarified the proper treatment of one's co-workers.  Nor does Marx seize upon the point that a collective consciousness might be developed in the context of working with others, instead focusing on the harm done to a person by specialization.  But, perhaps surprisingly, it is Hegel who conceives work relations Dialectically, and, so, posits that Self-Interest develops via that Logic into a General Will, i. e. that the promotion of one's own well-being is that of all others, as well.  Thus, Marx' 'From each according to one's ability', implicit in which is a Collective context, has more in common with Philosophy of Right than the Germany Ideology.  Still, that derivation shares Atomist premises with Smith's doctrine, i. e. that one begins as independent of others, with the difference that Capitalist Atoms remain mutually independent, while Dialectical ones interpenetrate.  Now, more sharply contrasting with those premises is either Holistic Collectivism, according to which the Whole precedes its Parts, or Organicist Collectivism, according to which the Whole and its Parts are coeval.  Still, any of these varieties of Collectivism grounds a Moral alternative to the Egoism that is the behavioral foundation of Capitalism.

Marxism and Morality

As is clear in the German Ideology, for Marx-Engels, Socialism is not an End in itself, but a Means to the elimination of Exploitation facilitated by Private Property, i. e. by private ownership of the Means of Production.  Now, it is easy to conceive Exploitation as a violation of Kant's principle that one should not treat another as a mere Means.  Hence, Marxist Socialism is, despite its other innovations, in that respect, merely an extension of Kantian Morality.  On the other hand, Marx' precept 'From each according to one's ability' does entail something new.  For, it conceives a Person as inherently part of a Collective, rather than as an entity that is essentially isolated from others, entering into relations with them only extrinsically.  The latter Atomist concept of a Person is implicit whenever relations with others are conceived as external encounters, even I-Thou, which is the case of the entire Moral tradition beginning with Aristotle.  In contrast, Marx' precept signals a transition from that tradition to Collectivist Morality, not necessarily restricted to Socialism, but plainly occasioned by it.

Capitalism, Socialism, Is, Ought

Marxism shares with Capitalism a profound methodological confusion--between Descriptive and Normative principles.  Just as Capitalists vacillate between the thesis that Profit-seeking is, as a matter of fact, the fundamental behavioral principle, and it ought to be the fundamental principle, Marxists sometimes posit Socialism as the inevitable Dialectical resultant of the contradictions of Capitalism, and sometimes prescribe Socialism as the cure for Capitalist Exploitation.  Now, clarity regarding a confusion that has sometimes been facilely rendered as the thesis that 'one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is"', can be gained from developing an insight from Hume together with one from Kant.  As the former observes, what 'is the case' is, more precisely, what 'has been the case', and, as the latter posits, there are two 'perspectives' involved.  So, combining them--a Descriptive principle pertains to past events, while a Prescriptive principle pertains to nascent future action.  Thus, not only the latter cannot be derived from the former, the former cannot be 'derived' from the latter via some simple Logical operation, either.  So, Marxism has been deficient in explaining why Capitalist Exploitation should be abolished, and why it should be replaced with Socialism, i. e. deficient in making explicit the Moral principle that it seems to presuppose.

Capitalism, Politics, Morality

Marx' thesis that Economics is the Base of Politics, not an extrinsic concern of it, is exemplified by Capitalism implicitly being a Plutocratic political system.  Thus, while the U. S. is nominally a Democracy, the Constitutional status of a corporation a Person, with its political expenditures Free Speech, makes it not only de facto but de jure a Plutocracy.  Still, Marx leaves unaddressed the status of Morality in his critique of Capitalism, though his rejection of Exploitation does presuppose some Moral principle.  Thus, he offers no diagnosis of the Capitalist principle that one ought to seek to maximize profit, which, as normative, qualifies as a Moral principle.  That classification is not evaded by the descriptive version of the principle, i. e. that Profit-seeking is the fundamental behavioral impulse, since the latter is still subject to normative evaluation, and possible correction, just like any impulse that meets disapproval. Thus, the criticism of that principle as an expression of Greed, previously discussed, is an example of a Moral criticism of Capitalism that has generally been lacking in Political-Economy discourse.

Money, Love, Greed

The popular precept 'Money is the root of all evil' is a gloss of 'The love of money is the root of all evil', from 1 Timothy.  But despite the significant nuance, the actual quote, like many popular precepts, still does not stand up to closer scrutiny.  For, to begin with, any of many counter-examples, e. g. jealousy, falsifies it.  Furthermore, as is, there is nothing obviously evil about loving money.  It thus may be to correct that vagueness that Luther renders the passage as 'Avarice is a root of all evil'.  But, while Avarice is a more clearly defined traditional Vice, and applicable to more than Money, the two quantifiers, 'a' and 'all', in combination with the singular term 'evil', is incoherent.  For example, avarice might lead to stealing, and jealousy to murder, without avarice being a root of the latter murder, and without stealing and murder being the same evil.  So, even pluralizing 'evil' to agree with 'all' does not make avarice the root of a murder out of jealousy.  Regardless, there is also a substantive problem with Luther's equating love of money and avarice.  As Aristotle argues, the latter is a Vice in two respects--a lack of self-control of the one who is greedy, and a deprivation of another.  In contrast, the love of money, or Chrematistic, as Aristotle characterizes it, is symbolized by Midas, i. e. the love of an inanimate object such as money de-humanizes a person, independent of those characteristics of Vice.  In other words, the self-de-humanization in the love of money gets lost in translation, and remains lost in modernity--even Marx seems to miss it.

Barter and De-humanization

The purpose of simple Barter is for each party to exchange what they have  in excess for what they need.  Thus, each has the expectation of an equitable exchange, or, conversely, a disappointment of that expectation would be the end of the practice.  Hence, Equitable Exchange is a fundamental normative principle of Barter.  Furthermore, as a result of an Equitable Exchange, each party has the same quantity of goods as at the outset, except now there is qualitative diversification in their possessions.  So, there has been an increase in the diversification of the Wealth of each, but no quantitative change in the total Wealth between them.  Hence, Smith's principle of an increase in one's personal Wealth, and his goal of an increase in total Wealth, stray significantly from the practice that he characterizes as the unique Human property.  Thus, it is not inappropriate to accordingly characterize that straying as 'de-humanization', i. e. the corruption of Need into Greed.