Morality is a central factor to the operation of any society. The issue we materialists come to when we discuss prevailing conceptions of morality is when an attempt to impose metaphysical, universal concepts of morality and history is attempted. When I became an atheist, I had already rejected many such metaphysical concepts as God, Divinity, Holiness, and such. But what I didn’t realize is that I had not truly become a materialist. I still subscribed to such ideas as a universal constant, a universal standard, a metaphysical body in other forms. What were these? Justice, Fairness, Purpose, and so on. These ideas are not objective. No two societies defines each the same. One cannot properly measure any of them within the material world. Of course, societies produce conceptions of them. But they do not exist beyond these social constructions. We materialists, in contrast to these Platonic, metaphysical ideas, acknowledge that morality is simply a social construct. We materialists further acknowledge that while these principles are nothing but ghosts, that a need for human social wellbeing exists. With this addressed, let us ask where morality comes from, how it is constructed, and whether it can be abolished.
Morality arises as a codification of social intercourse wherever individuals exist in relation to each other in particular forms of society. It is necessary so that they may maintain a degree of order and coexistence among each other through the regulations of morality. In species with little social interaction, such as among praying mantises, there is less of a need for morality. The mantises are known for having no qualms about killing or devouring each other, and are not a very cooperative species. By contrast, humanity is a very social, very cooperative species. Thus, it needs a system of morality in order to survive as a species and promote social cohesion. One of the most universal moral principles among human societies is that one should not kill or steal. This is because they are among the fundamentals for maintaining social cohesion. The specificities of it are influenced by the conditions of people’s place in relation to each other. In other words, the social system they dwell within. The particular character of a morality in a time or place depends on the degrees or forms of the means of subsistence, means of production, and relations of production which exist in that society. In short, its material conditions. For example, in a society which lacks a reliable means of subsistence, such as a nomadic society in a barren landscape, their moral systems would develop to encourage cooperation in order to maximize their capacity for survival in the face of their conditions. In patriarchal society, the relations of production surrounding women’s labor, that is, her condemnation to domestic and reproductive labor for the benefit of the dominant male of her life, influence morality regarding women’s conduct, like vindication of women who are unable to or refuse to bear children. In a feudal society, wherein the peasant often labored on church-owned lands and paid tithes to the Holy authority, morality developed wherein such payment was seen as an obligation for any pious Christian. To revolt, to refuse to pay the dues, would be to insult God. By these latter two examples, we see how morality, as an extension of its development as a basic means of maintaining social cohesion, is also be constructed with the influence of a ruling class in the interests of maintaining and legitimizing its power within the social system being reproduced. Certain characteristics of modern day Western morality can be observed to hold this trait. For example, churches, especially the Methodist Church, played a major part in manufacturing the social taboos against perceived idleness, a refusal to sell one’s labor, which still dwell within modern capitalist society. This moral value came to be known as the Protestant Work Ethic.
So, the question comes, can we abolish morality? According to certain individualists, we can and should, and this is done merely by doing away with the concepts within our minds. They say that we can emerge in a totally amoral society, free of all the “phantoms” associated. This is incorrect. The idea does not create reality, reality creates the idea. Even if one casts off the spectral ideal form of a social system, said system still exists, one merely understands it better. The social system creates the idea, and one cannot fully eliminate said specific idea without eliminating the system which births it. The majority of people continue to express themselves in the realm of the idea, even the proletariat. By definition, only the most advanced sector of the proletariat, the Marxists, truly understand and reject morality in understanding the world. But, as it stands, the population broadly will continue to express themselves within a moral framework.
We must remember that morality develops according to the material interests of classes, and the material conditions of each society. How can we evaluate particular moral values as related to their class origin? By evaluating whose experience such values reflect, and whose interests they are in. We must first change the mode of production of society in order to challenge this morality. The challenge to bourgeois morality already exists among workers. The proletariat naturally develops a morality which values cooperation and empathy, because they exist in a relation of production wherein they constantly work alongside other laborers, collaborate in the process of production, and frequently require assistance from their fellow workers when they’re down and out. This is an expression of their class interests in the ideal realm, an immature version of what has the potential to become scientific analysis and elucidation of the proletariat’s role as a revolutionary class, one which will abolish class distinctions as a whole. In contrast, bourgeois morality values competition and anti-social individualism, reflecting bourgeois existence and encouraging reproduction of their rule. While some proletarians may accept certain bourgeois principles, such as Social Darwinism, this is not an inherent result of their place in the relations of production. Rather, it is artificially imposed by the bourgeoisie. As Marx said in The German Ideology (1846), “[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production.” So, the proletariat, when it seizes the means of production, will become the ruling class. As a mass class, it has no need of ideological smokescreens as the bourgeoisie does, since it doesn’t need the bourgeoisie as the bourgeoisie needs the proletariat. With regards to the bourgeoisie, the proletariat seeks its abolition, not the reproduction of a system of exploitation of it (impossible by their definition as classes). Thus, the leadership of the proletariat, the vanguard party, has no need for moralizing, and makes no illusions about its dictatorship. Where it sees morality, it must explain its roots in material reality and how it is a response or reflection to it. While morality cannot be abolished in society as a whole within the foreseeable future, it can and should be among socialists if they desire correct scientific analysis and corresponding correct practice.
