Michael Lazarus

Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT

Alasdair MacIntyre’s latest book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, confirms his interest in Marxism as a form of critique. MacIntyre’s debt to Marx has been central to recent scholarship, strengthening his reception as a radical thinker. This article examines the relationship between politics and ethics in MacIntyre and Marx. Following Aristotle, MacIntyre sees ethics as part of political inquiry. Marx features in Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity to help confront the “ethics-of-the-market” and the “ethics-of-the-state.” This renewed engagement demands a reassessment of his critique of Marx. MacIntyre argues Marx lacks a sufficient account of the human good. However, MacIntyre fails to consider the implications of his own characterisation of Marx’s Aristotelianism. Marx develops an ethical understanding derived from an Aristotelian social ontology, elaborated first in the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” with the concept of “species-being,” and, then, in the value-form theory in Capital. Marx’s teleological concept of labour supplies his social theory with an ethical structure. I argue MacIntyre’s critique of Marx, and in turn C. L. R. James, underplays the importance of this concept of labour in founding a collective politics of resistance, and instead, retreats to the politics of the local community.

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 18 June 2018

Revised 10 May 2019

Accepted 11 June 2019

KEYWORDS

Alasdair MacIntyre; Karl Marx; C. L. R. James; social ontology; social theory

From: International Critical Thought 2019 9 (3)

Editor: Wang Yi