The Marxist Critique of Morality and the Theory of Ideology

ness of private life: Hegel develops private rights and morals as such abstractions, from which it does not follow, for him, that the state or ethical life [Sittlichkeit] of which they are presuppositions can be nothing but the society (the social life) of these illusions; 9 "Hegel calls private rights the rights of abstract personality, or abstract rights. And indeed they have to be developed as the abstraction, and thus the illusory rights, of abstract personality, just as the moral doctrine [die Moral] developed by Hegel is the illusory existence of abstract subjectivity." (Marx, K., Critique of Hegel's `Philosophy of Right', edited by J. O'Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1970), p.108.) rather, he concludes that they are subordinate aspects of this ethical life. But what are private rights except the rights of these subjects of the state, and what is morality except their morality? Although this passage is somewhat ambiguous, I take it that Marx is making two rather different points. First of all, he is objecting to Hegel's account of the role played by the state (in the narrow sense of the organs of law and government). Hegel, according to Marx, presents the state as morally neutral and infers from this that it is subordinate to the Sittlichkeit of society in general. Marx, on the other hand, claims that this apparent neutrality is illusory. It is in its very distance from morality -its own "abstractness" -that the contemporary state shows itself to be representative of the "abstract" realm of private right: the state, says Marx, is "nothing but the society (social life)" of these "illusory" private rights. Thus Hegel has, Marx says, albeit unconsciously, performed a great service, for in his account of the state "he has done nothing but develop the morality of the modern state and modern private rights". Marx's second point concerns Hegel's view of the place of Sittlichkeit within state and society taken as a whole. As we have seen, for Hegel, Sittlichkeit supplements, but does not replace, Moralität by overcomingMoralität's indeterminacy. Yet Marx's objection is that in the modern state Sittlichkeit in fact fails to play this role: instead of Moralität being a "subordinate aspect" of Sittlichkeit, it is Sittlichkeit, rather, which is determined by the abstract character of Moralität. This second criticism could itself be taken in two different ways. We could understand Marx as pointing to a particular deficiency of the modern social system. Under this system, we could understand him as saying, Moralität is not subordinate to Sittlichkeit but vice versa; but in another form of state and society (or, perhaps, in society which had gone beyond the state) things would be different and Sittlichkeit would indeed be such as to giveMoralität a rational content. The objection to this interpretation is that it is not 10 Marx, K., Critique of Hegel's `Philosophy of Right', edited by J. O'Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1970), p.108. 11 "What did that prove except that the separation of the present-day state from morals is moral, that morals are non-political and that the state is not moral?" (Marx, K., Critique of Hegel's `Philosophy of Right', edited by J. O'Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1970), p.108.)