Marx's Ethical Vision

"The communists do not preach morality at all"; this line from The Communist Manifesto might seem to settle the question of whether Marxism has anything to offer moral philosophy.Yet, Marx issued both trenchant critiques of "bourgeois" morality and thundering condemnations of capitalism's "vampire-like" destructiveness.He decried commodity-exchange for corroding our ability to value one another for who we are, not how much our lives could be traded away for.He expressed apparently ethical views about human nature, the conditions necessary for human flourishing, and the desirability of bringing such conditions about--views that are interwoven throughout his life's work, from his youthful philosophical poetry to his unfinished masterpiece, Capital. Renewed attention to Marx's distinctively "dialectical" and historical materialist approach to conflict and change makes sense of this apparent tension in his thought.Following Marx, Vanessa Christina Wills centers labor--human beings satisfyi