On The Moral Of Marxist Historical Materialism As An Ideology

Allen Wood in his book "Marx against Morality" mentions a tension in Marx's moral point of views. On one hand, Marx claims that all kinds of morality in a class society are just ideology, so that he calls for the totally abolition of all morality. On the other hand, Marx makes many moral judgments as he criticizes capitalism for causing exploitation, poverty, alienation and degradation of the working class. How can Marx appeal to a moral ground while also abandoning morality as a product of ideology? Another important issue is how to understand this tension in relation to his core concept of historical materialism? In answering to these questions, I will first introduce and comment on three kinds of solutions to these questions in American Marxism. They are Allen Wood's anti-moralism, Kai Nielsen's contextual objectivism and Cornel West's radical historicism. Based on my reflection on these three kinds of understanding, I am going back to Marx's original text and attempts to offer my own understanding on Marx's moral points of views in the perspective of historical materialism.