I think this Engels quote on the topic is helpful.

According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality. Marx, therefore, never based his communist demands upon this, but upon the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode of production which is daily taking place before our eyes to an ever growing degree; he says only that surplus value consists of unpaid labour, which is a simple fact. But what in economic terms may be formally incorrect, may all the same be correct from the point of view of world history. If mass moral consciousness declares an economic fact to be unjust, as it did at one time in the case of slavery and statute labour, that is proof that the fact itself has outlived its day, that other economic facts have made their appearance due to which the former has become unbearable and untenable. Therefore, a very true economic content may be concealed behind the formal economic incorrectness.^[1]

Marxism is certainly closely related to morality, especially revolutionary Marxism, as almost all revolutionary ideologies stem from the ontological pursuit of “unconditional human liberation”. However, here comes the “but”, it is precisely this pursuit that prevents Marxism from using “moral argumentation”. Marxists simply cannot be “good people in a secular sense” while promoting “the liberation of all mankind”. Marxism is breaking the ideology that has deeply ingrained itself into human conditioning in a society or even an era. For example, in the case of “piracy”, almost all Marxists would support “the use of piracy by the poor or geeks who want to break the copyright barriers of large companies”. But on the other hand, people deeply influenced by the ideology of “contract fetishism” would equate the use of piracy withremoved, robbery, and murder. In such a situation, how can you use moral argumentation? It is simply impossible for you to do so. The most powerful aspect of ideology is its ability to de-ideologize itself. It dresses itself up as a natural, spontaneous, and human moral principle

I have a much harder position on it being amoral than some people in this thread, because I think Marxism is predicated on the idea that moral argument just isn’t a stable ground for a political project because morality is fundamentally arbitrary, and arbitrary in a way where people can just reject whatever you say is “self-evidently” good or bad because it’s all just a matter of preference that people try, on the basis of preferring it, to find ways of transforming into universal, “objective” values. Instead of that, it accepts that there is only preference but we can make actionable projects based on those preferences because, in aggregate, they are informed by commonalities in people’s material conditions (the main overarching similarity being class) giving them shared interests.

You can have moral motivations for supporting Marxism, and indeed most people do, but fundamentally using Marxist prescriptions as moral prescriptions undermines the point of it, though using simple facts of reality that Marxism observes to advance moral conclusions that align with Marxist conclusions, while I think tends to fundamentally be a weaker argument for reasons described above, is not contradictory.

But while I firmly oppose lying for socialism, I think choosing what to emphasize is fair, and beating someone over the head with there being no such thing as objective morality is usually not the productive way to carry on the conversation. You can just talk about human benefit and if they consider that in moral or amoral terms is really their own business unless you’re trying to recruit them as party cadre or whatever.

It’s a bit of a shock at first, but then you realize that Marxism not needing morality at all for its arguments does not at all mean you cannot fight for what you believe is morally correct based on Marxist understanding. Supporting Palestine is absolutely the morally correct position, and Marxism supports it even if you throw morality out the window.

It becomes a strength for rhetoric.

Marxism is a scientific analysis of history and capitalism, serving as a tool for working-class emancipation. The science is the horse, emancipation the cart

A whole range of morality is stored in the “cart”; just don’t hitch the “horse” to the back of the cart like other philosophies, or you’ll never get anywhere

“Morality isn’t objective” is a very different claim from “there is no morality”. I’m a hard atheist too, and I defend morality based on discussion and consensus rather than the interpretation of a multi thousand year book carried out by an elite.

You don’t need to defend universal morality to defend morality, and there are universal enough opinions that should be defended strongly: children starving is bad, people falling sick without treatment is bad, homelessness as currently taking place is bad, genocide is bad, systematic violence against women and queer people and ethnic minorities is bad.

If someone tries to argue that those things aren’t bad, what they deserve is at best reeducation, and you won’t possibly convince them of anything. Marxism gives us the analysis and tools to fight against those phenomena, and that’s why I support it. Not because of some “manifest destiny of the falling rate of profit”, but because of the scientific evidence pointing to socialist systems fighting against those issues and winning.

Moralism disguises the power struggle between the proletariat and the capitalist and ruling classes. If you frame class struggle as a moral issue, it makes room for difference in opinion. By shifting the conversation to a material analysis, you remove any room for disagreement because you can just show that it is in the interest of every proletarian to organize towards socialism and communism.

Liberalism has shifted all conversation and education about politics towards moralism instead of power struggle, which is probably why it comes more natural to you and many others to look at politics through a moralist framework. That’s what you’ve learned to do and have been doing most of your life. Political education is important to change the frame through which you engage with politics to one based on dialectical materialism.

the moral argument inside marxism is that exploitation is bad (and human free time good). but it doesn’t do microlevel moral arguments, trolleys and whatever else, so you can fit anything you like under there. (it’s treated as self evident, but you can only watch so much politicians getting elected on tightening the belts/removing holidays/moving retirement age/increasing working hours to realize that significant portion of population doesn’t see anything wrong with working more to receive less)

you can be utilitarian marxist or deontological marxist or just vaguely catholic do unto others marxist or whatever else, the moral arguments marxists are dismissive of are from laws as they currently as morality core of anything (killing bad is self obvious, not so much that using solar power without local electricity company approval is bad)

Marxist critique is often inherent critique, which is not moral, but exposes the internal contradictions of the critiqued object (like capitalism’s). It’s strength is, that it doesn’t need strong assumptions. It works within the system it critiques. Capitalism’s own contradictions lead to crisis.

But Marxist praxis is always moral, because praxis tries to build something. A system were the contradictions disappear. Why is that better than a system with constant crisis and widespread suffering? Why should humanity survive rather than perish in nuclear hellfire? Not for inherent reasons, but for moral reasons.

The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.

Che Guevara

The three most famous existentialist were all communists and they recognized how hard it was to reconcile the ultimate individualist philosophy with communism. If we are condemned to be free, we must not deny our freedom by delegating it to the rules of any moral system. Simon de Beauvoir was the only one who kind of succeeded to reconcile her existentialism with communism: by insisting freedom must be lived authentically. You can’t authentically live out your freedom by denying those of others.

I think it’s often important to sometimes (though dont get carried away and lose the kernel) discuss how Marxism is really at least 2 major schools/claims brought together. The method of analysis call dialectical materialism is a sort of ontological and historical claim about how the world works, which makes no prescriptive claims about what that exactly means for 'good’and ‘bad’. Then you have marxism as a normative system which discusses how the system of inefficiencies and exploitation are good to be removed through processes which the former side of marxism can describe. Marx was a much more interesting polemicist than many because he was able to freely move between these fields throughout a work, and really gives no indication that I know of that these are really separable to any meaningful extent.

But this reading means that the morality might not be central to scientific claims, but cannot be seen as apart from the whole of marxism, which makes claims about exploitation with the assumption that it’s bad (actually marx argues why, including in efficiency terms instead of morality)

On the topic of Marx and ethics, check out Marx’s Ethical Vision (2024) by Vanessa Wills.

Abstract

“The communists do not preach morality at all”; this line from The Communist Manifesto might seem to settle the question of whether Marxism has anything to offer moral philosophy. And yet Marx issued both trenchant critiques of “bourgeois” morality and thundering condemnations of capitalism’s “vampire-like” destruction. He decried commodity-exchange for corroding human beings’ ability to value one another for who they are, not how much their lives could be traded away for. He expressed apparently ethical views about human nature, the conditions necessary for human flourishing, and the desirability of bringing such conditions about—views that are interwoven throughout his life’s work, from his youthful philosophical poetry to his unfinished masterpiece, Capital. Renewed attention to Marx’s distinctively “dialectical” and historical materialist approach to conflict and change makes sense of this apparent tension in his thought. Following Marx, Marx’s Ethical Vision centers labor—human beings satisfying their needs through conscious, purpose-driven, and transformative interaction with the material world—as the essential human activity. Working people’s struggles reveal capitalism’s worst ravages while pointing to a better future and embodying the only way there: rational transformation of their relationships to themselves, to one another, and to the natural world, so that the human condition emerges not as something they must bear but as something they joyfully create. Rather than “preach morality,” the key task for moral philosophy is to theorize in the light that workers’ struggles for freedom shine on capitalism—an existential threat to humanity and the defining ethical problem of our time.

I think it sort of speaks for itself. An “elite” class that keeps a “lower” class in perpetual servitude is so blatantly immoral, the goal of freeing society is a natural response.

I like the emphasis on community and getting closer with from each other, resisting the alienation that has been thrust upon us.

“But look how many people died under communism!” some say. I have no idea why people think fascist authoritarianism is a necessary consequence of communism. It seems to be in direct opposition to me, but people seem to think “they did communism wrong” is not a good enough answer. I don’t want secret police or death camps, personally. I think we have more options than have yet been explored.

because then you can get really annoying people in there trying to facts-and-logic their way out of it, if that makes sense.

You mean, people who say things like “Planned Economies always fail” or that “How will anyone do anything without money?”, or “Marx’s Labor Theory of Value doesn’t work in the real world”, like those kinds of “Facts and Logic” types?

Right so, Marxism replaces objective morality with subject/object concretion. This does not mean removing people from the equation, on the contrary, it is a more comprehensive way of adding humans to “objective” analysis.

Where morality fails, is really well described by Nietzsche in “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Nietzsche is a really frustrating author and I really don’t recommend him as a philosopher (I do like his writing though), but he makes a really good point that objective morality ends up creating two moralities, one for the exploiter and one for the exploited. Like a shared set of principles that have different meanings based on who you are. This idea in the abstract maps pretty cleanly onto capitalist class antagonisms. Marx said that “in every era, the dominant ideology is the ideology by of the ruling class.” What a particular moral axiom means is determined by power, via hegemony, regardless of what we as leftists and workers want it to mean.

Marxism, rather than turning society and free will into abstractions, demands us to be not just teachers of conditions, but students. The Ricardian labor theory of value finds its truth in the way it centers people in every part of the economy, Marx expands on this by defining people not only as abstract parts of society, but thinking, feeling, experiencing subjects that change the world based in their experiences in it. The Marxist doesn’t tell people what is good and bad, the Marxist organizes people to go into the areas where oppression occurs and do the work of helping people understand our shared conditions. We organize people on the basis of their shared experiences, where capitalism alienates and isolates people from each other, from nature, from themselves.

Only when we understand how to organize our local conditions, can we organize localities and particular industries into regional and national delegations, who share experiences and coordinate action on the basis of class interests. Regional and national organizing is able to organize internationally, to achieve victories that local organizing can never accomplish. And we do it all by centering people and their experiences of oppression and exploitation.

Morality is cultural, and culture is part of the superstructure. We have an imperative to create counter hegemonies, which may include culture and morality, but achieving a “moral” society is not the strategy. We have to understand our place in society, as individuals who create society through our actions, that our actions are influenced by ideas, which are developed through our experiences in contemplation and in our lives. Morals are static, Marxism is dynamic. Morals hide contradiction, the world and people are inherently contradictory. The world can change because people can change. But people won’t change if we don’t first try to relate to them and understand how their experiences are, in fact, objective truth, even if the way they understand those experiences is backward and sometimes reactionary.

The fact is, we Marxists often have some weird ideas too, until we get involved in practical work. While hiding contradiction, morality creates new contradictions! If we are to commit to revolution we must commit to the truth. Not peoples idea of what the truth is, or “should be”.

There is ethical Marxism. By applying Marxist analysis to the field of biology Peter Kropotikin discovered the phenomenon of mutual aid, which he proposed in his book by the same name. Essentially, he observed that creatures that help each other are better off than those that don’t. This school of Marxism became known as anarcho-communism. Eventually this would merge with black anarchism and Maoism to become communalism (Modern anarchism)

If you’re interested in this you should read Post Scarcity Anarchism or The Conquest of Bread.