GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

* STHIGS
and privilege for the few and poverty and injustice for
the many, whose deliverances reflected and supported
a civic code which .sanctioned this same property and
privilege, which enforced this same poverty and injustice
it is difficult, I say, to maintain that the deliverances of
such amoral sense were based upon an accurate judgment of,
and a nice discrimination between objective right and wrong.
A communist would inevitably take the same view of
a moral sense which was commended to his respect on the
ground that its deliverances tended to support societies
which embody the capitalist, economic system. It is
impossible in this connection to avoid reflecting upon the
significance of the fact that most socialist political theory
regards almost every form of society which has hitherto
existed as a device for oppressing the mass of the people,
and enabling the privileged few to maintain themselves
on the fruits of the labour of others. Marx, for instance,
regarded the State as an organization of the exploiting
class for maintaining the conditions of exploitation that
suit it, 1 and held that the moral sense of the proletariat
was deliberately moulded and perverted by the capitalists
into a readiness to accept those regulations and institutions
which would secure to the latter the surplus value of the
labour of the former. Those who adopt this view must
necessarily regard the moral sense not as a force of progress,
but as one of the most powerful instruments of oppression.
The morality which is enjoined by the Christian religion
is often singled out for special censure in this connection. 8
It is charged with inculcating the Christian virtues of
humility and contentment, because their observance by
the poor makes for undisturbed possession by the rich.
It is not necessary to subscribe to these extreme views
as to the nature. of the State, the utility of Christianity
to the rich, and its consequent popularization among the
poor, to recognize that the value of any existing form of
social organization is not sufficiently established to enable
1 See Chapter XVII, pp. 683-685, for * development of this view*
See Chapter XVII, pp. 672-676.