Expanding on this slightly, a question arises of “why not simply pick a perspective and go with it?” Meaning, in our developed societies, simply viewing evil as bad from the perspective of the proletariat. And some theorists, including Lenin, have taken an approach similar to this. But a Marxist understanding of the world can never pick one perspective with the full exclusion of others. This new concept of evil remains subordinated to class and inferior to it in explanative power.
The liberal concept of evil does fully exclude other perspectives, and can be used to explain the actions of “enemy” nations, turning them into the Axis of Evil again and again. Their leaders are personally evil, meaning, depending on the flavor of the liberal, being somewhere on the spectrum between mentally ill and in league with Satan. This kind of narrative is great if you want to do coups.
If we call, for example, Ronald Reagan evil, we do not mean it as personally evil, but evil as a function of his position in society. We can not explain his actions as being caused by some metaphysical evil, because our evil is directly and consciously linked to class. To fight this kind of evil is not to fight a personification of it, but the system itself.
This new concept of evil remains subordinated to class and inferior to it in explanative power.
materialism lets us look critically at aspects of bourgeois morality that exist at odds with the interests of humanity, but class on its own isn’t a complete blueprint for proletarian ethics. not all social interactions reduce to class relations, and you also have to account for nonhuman sentients who are outside of society altogether
Yes, this new concept of evil exists within the chosen perspective, and we can not hope to understand reality with just one perspective. That does not stop us from examining this single relation.
Expanding on this slightly, a question arises of “why not simply pick a perspective and go with it?” Meaning, in our developed societies, simply viewing evil as bad from the perspective of the proletariat. And some theorists, including Lenin, have taken an approach similar to this. But a Marxist understanding of the world can never pick one perspective with the full exclusion of others. This new concept of evil remains subordinated to class and inferior to it in explanative power.
The liberal concept of evil does fully exclude other perspectives, and can be used to explain the actions of “enemy” nations, turning them into the Axis of Evil again and again. Their leaders are personally evil, meaning, depending on the flavor of the liberal, being somewhere on the spectrum between mentally ill and in league with Satan. This kind of narrative is great if you want to do coups.
If we call, for example, Ronald Reagan evil, we do not mean it as personally evil, but evil as a function of his position in society. We can not explain his actions as being caused by some metaphysical evil, because our evil is directly and consciously linked to class. To fight this kind of evil is not to fight a personification of it, but the system itself.
materialism lets us look critically at aspects of bourgeois morality that exist at odds with the interests of humanity, but class on its own isn’t a complete blueprint for proletarian ethics. not all social interactions reduce to class relations, and you also have to account for nonhuman sentients who are outside of society altogether
Yes, this new concept of evil exists within the chosen perspective, and we can not hope to understand reality with just one perspective. That does not stop us from examining this single relation.