ABSTRACT
The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, first published in 1962 and corrected and revised for a 1972 edition, examines carefully and critically the origin, precise nature and subsequent role of Marx’s ethical beliefs. Drawing freely on Marx’s still largely untranslated philosophical works and drafts the author elicits the ethical presuppositions with which Marx began. He then examines the intellectual development that made Marx a Communist and seeks to clarify the place of Marx’s ethic in his mature, ‘materialist’ work. Professor Kamenka distinguishes sharply between the critical, ethical views of Marx and the inept, conventional applications of his doctrine by Engels. He appraises the ‘ethics’ of the Communist Party and traces the development of the moral and legal theory in the Soviet Union. He concludes by subjecting Marxism as a whole to a radical, ethical and philosophical criticism for which Marx himself laid some of the foundations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |33 pages
The Primitive Ethic of Karl Marx
chapter |9 pages
The Philosophy of the Concept
chapter |6 pages
The Free Individual
chapter |5 pages
The Natural Law of Freedom
chapter |11 pages
‘The Truly Human' Society
part |38 pages
Karl Marx's Road to Communism
chapter |9 pages
The New Social Dialectic
chapter |10 pages
The Critique of Politics
chapter |12 pages
The Critique of Economics
chapter |5 pages
Communism and the Complete, Unalienated Man
part |31 pages
Critical Résumé: Ethics and the Young Marx
chapter |17 pages
Ethics—Positive or Normative?
chapter |4 pages
The Rejection of Moralism, of ‘Rights' and of Normative Law
chapter |8 pages
Ethics and the ‘Truly Human' Society
part |42 pages
Ethics and the Mature Marx
chapter |17 pages
Historical Materialism and the Overcoming of Alienation
part |27 pages
Communism and Ethics
chapter |5 pages
Ethics and the Communist Party
chapter |20 pages
Law and Morality in Soviet Society
part |11 pages
Conclusions