Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I THE THEORY OF POLITICAL FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUALITY: SLAVERY, MUTUAL REGARD, AND MODERN EGALITARIANISM
- PART II DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUALITY IN MODERN SOCIAL THEORY
- 5 Historical materialism and justice
- 6 Two kinds of historical progress
- 7 The Aristotelian lineage of Marx's eudaemonism
- 8 Radical democracy and individuality
- 9 The Protestant Ethic and Marxian theory
- 10 Nationalism and the dangers of predatory “liberalism”
- 11 Democracy and status
- 12 Bureaucracy, socialism, and a common good
- 13 Levels of ethical disagreement and the controversy between neo-Kantianism and realism
- Conclusion: the project of democratic individuality
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Historical materialism and justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I THE THEORY OF POLITICAL FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUALITY: SLAVERY, MUTUAL REGARD, AND MODERN EGALITARIANISM
- PART II DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUALITY IN MODERN SOCIAL THEORY
- 5 Historical materialism and justice
- 6 Two kinds of historical progress
- 7 The Aristotelian lineage of Marx's eudaemonism
- 8 Radical democracy and individuality
- 9 The Protestant Ethic and Marxian theory
- 10 Nationalism and the dangers of predatory “liberalism”
- 11 Democracy and status
- 12 Bureaucracy, socialism, and a common good
- 13 Levels of ethical disagreement and the controversy between neo-Kantianism and realism
- Conclusion: the project of democratic individuality
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Marx, Weber, and moral objectivity
Part I showed that liberals and radicals, to be consistent, must affirm some version of moral realism and that both are committed to recognizing significant ethical progress. In fact, they have similar – often identical – reasons for endorsing realism and insisting on the historical advance of human freedom, notably the abolition of slavery. As one major theme, Part II contends that given these underlying moral similarities, the major social theoretical and political disagreements between the leading competing democratic and social theories – radical and liberal, Marxian and Weberian – are empirical; they do not arise from opposed underlying moral premises. Relativists have insisted on the comparative intractability of moral disputes; this part, however, suggests how important contemporary debates can be objectively resolved.
As a second central theme, Part II contends that the underlying ethical unity of liberal and radical theory requires a reworking of each. Marx defended social individuality – a society in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Yet he neither elaborated a theory of communist individuality nor explored the implications of clashing views of individuality – for instance, eudaemonist conceptions versus reductionist class accounts – for the political theory of a revolutionary regime.
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- Democratic Individuality , pp. 197 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990