The defectiveness of utilitarianism

Even though Marx and Engels offered a realist reinterpretation of justice, they were hesitant about making overall ethical assessments of exploitative societies. Difficulties arising from the harshness of human progress might provide an independent argument against Marxian use of ordinary moral standards. As Engels's praise of the Paris Commune indicates, however, he and Marx evaluated communist progress differently from preceding alien advance. This chapter will explain this shift. It will counter a Marxian version of the “conflict of goods” objection: the claim that Marx reached no overall moral verdicts on many historical systems because intrinsic goods inevitably clash and no objective judgment is possible.

As a first approximation to Marx's argument, let us divide many past cases where the working class was neither large enough nor sufficiently politically sophisticated to contend for power from instances where communism is possible. For the earlier contexts, we might then say, Marx frequently made utilitarian-like judgments about the expansion of productive forces. He invoked a broad positive criterion of ultimately enlarging human capacities for self-realization and happiness. He might also have appealed to a negative, roughly quantitative standard of ultimately diminishing suffering. Yet we should proceed cautiously in calling Marx a utilitarian.