Morality

The theory of the right way of life, and the basis of judgments concerning right and wrong, good and bad, better and worse in human conduct and social institutions. Morality is also used to denote the system of norms and rules for the behavior of people in their relationships with one another and with society at large. All moral theories rest on one or another philosophy or world view. Spiritualism, for example, derives moral values and standards from the commandments of a god or of a transcendental moral law. Mechanical materialism derives them from some theory of the human being considered atomistically and divorced from all social-historical conditions. Dialectical materialism bases morality upon the actual material conditions of life, upon men living in society and entering into definite relations with one another and with nature, in accordance with changing social historical conditions. Marxism believes that morality is a human creation, a reflection in consciousness of the needs and desires, hopes and aspirations of actual men. It views this reflection as arising always out of the concrete material conditions of life, the actual processes and relations whereby men produce the necessities for their life. It holds that men’s moral conceptions change as the material conditions of life, the forces of production and the production relations change, and that they are limited at any given time by the economic structure of society. Marxism believes that such concepts as good, right, justice, and the like derive their meaning from the actual conditions of men in society and must refer to these conditions or propose changes in them in accordance with the needs and interests of the various strata of society. It follows that for dialectical materialism, as opposed to other philosophies, ethical considerations cannot be used to explain historical evolution but rather are the products of social development upon which, like all other ideologies, they react and exert an influence. It follows that since all historical society has been class society, all ethical theories reflect the needs and interests, hopes and aspirations of one or another social class. Marxism believes that the actual situation of the working class in the modern world impels it to struggle for the abolition of classes and hence possesses higher moral values than other classes which are not so impelled to eliminate the exploitation of man by man. The victory of the proletarian revolution in the U.S.S.R. brought with it the victory of a new ethics or morality—that of communist society. Communist morality takes the position that only that which contributes to the abolition of human exploitation, poverty, and degradation, and to the building and strengthening of a system of social life from which such inhuman phenomena will be absent is moral and ethical.