Zhang Liang: Tracing the Historical Formation of the Moral Dimension in "British Marxism"
For "British Marxism," or more broadly for contemporary British Left thought, the initial five to six years of the New Left movement's rise starting in 1956 constitute the most important period of intellectual explosion. The basic contours and major themes of the developmental history of British Left scholarship over the subsequent half-century were created during these few short years; almost any intellectual or academic debate with a broad British foundation can find its direct origins in this period. This means that only by consciously returning to this period of explosion can one form a deeper understanding of contemporary British subjects of great practical relevance. During my time as a Senior Visiting Scholar in the UK from 2009 to 2010, I discovered through literature and academic exchanges that after the end of the New Left movement in the early 1980s, the focus of the British Left began to shift. Theoretical themes of morality and ethics, rarely discussed previously, warmed up significantly. A moral dimension of "British Marxism," whose traces were previously difficult to discern, became clearly visible and began to exert influence on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2014, I visited the UK again as a Senior Research Scholar. Upon returning to China, I found that the issue of Marxism and justice had become a hot topic of debate domestically, yet participants in these debates knew very little about the original intellectual-historical background of the topic, failing to recognize the intertwined relationship between this theme and the moral dimension of "British Marxism." At a seminar in 2019, I was asked to state my position on the relevant debates. This prompted me to sketch out, for the first time, my basic views on the study of contemporary Anglo-American Marxist political philosophy: namely, that the problem of justice in Anglo-American academia cannot be understood in isolation from the moral dimension of "British Marxism," and the latter originated directly from the debate over "socialist humanism" during the early stages of the British New Left movement. My perspective caught the attention of colleagues and encouraged me to return once more, after many years, to the gestational stage of the British New Left to systematically explore the historical generation of the moral dimension of "British Marxism," thereby providing a more complete intellectual-historical background for related domestic debates.
I. Why Edward Thompson Sought to Restore Britain's 19th-Century Tradition of Ethical Socialism
In the summer of 1957, the New Left historians Edward Thompson and John Saville, having just resigned from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), co-founded the journal The New Reasoner, subtitled "A Quarterly Journal of 'Socialist Humanism'." The lead article of the first issue was Thompson's lengthy masterpiece, "Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines." This article not only presented a comprehensive theoretical interrogation and critique of the dogmatic Marxist tradition upheld by the CPGB but also developed a theory of socialist humanism closely linked to the 19th-century British tradition of ethical socialism. This immediately sparked heated discussion within the New Left and ultimately facilitated the historical generation of the moral dimension of "British Marxism."
What, then, was this 19th-century British tradition of ethical socialism? As the birthplace of the First Industrial Revolution, 19th-century Britain naturally formed and developed its own socialist tradition from its social reality. A defining characteristic of this tradition was its stubborn refusal to accept the beneficial influences of other socialist ideas. Consequently, when Marx went into exile in Britain following the failure of the 1848 revolutions, British socialists did not welcome him with open arms; instead, they treated the scientific socialism founded by him and Engels with neglect or even hostility. In his later years, Engels sharply criticized the socialists of the Fabian Society, attacking them because "their fear of the class struggle is the reason for their frantic hatred of Marx and all of us." At the same time, this tradition maintained close ties with "Feudal Socialism," which attacked modern capitalism from the standpoint of traditional society. In Marx and Engels' era, the primary representatives of British "Feudal Socialism" were Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, both of whom condemned the destruction of morality, humanity, and freedom by modern capitalism based on moral or religious sentiment, calling for the advent of a more humane society. In 1883, the famous British designer and social activist William Morris turned to socialism under the influence of Marxism. He subsequently dedicated himself to combining Marxism with the critical doctrines of Carlyle and Ruskin, developing a critique of capitalist morality and aesthetics with distinct Marxist overtones. Scholarship usually identifies this tradition as the British tradition of ethical socialism.
The British ethical socialist tradition established by Morris was, to a large extent, a recent "invention," and this "invention" was primarily completed by Thompson in his 1955 book William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. Why did Thompson, as a member of the CPGB in 1955—a year before the Great upheaval in the International Communist Movement—seek to "invent" this British ethical socialist tradition, which was quite distinct from the tradition of scientific socialism?
First, there had always existed within the CPGB a "bourgeois tendency" that valued and cherished British indigenous Romantic traditions; in the early 1950s, this tendency began to revive after enduring long-term suppression by Stalinism. After the Nazis took power in 1933, the CPGB persisted in leading the domestic anti-fascist struggle and actively supported the Left coalition in the Spanish Civil War, thereby greatly enhancing its political appeal and moral influence. Numerous intellectuals from various fields joined the CPGB as a result. A group of talented young writers, such as W.H. Auden, Christopher Caudwell, and George Orwell—often referred to as the "Auden Generation"—joined or drew close to the Party during this period. Intellectual members, especially the "Auden Generation," cherished the theoretical exploration of the 19th-century British indigenous anti-capitalist Romantic literary tradition and the tradition of spontaneous struggle by the common people. Their preliminary findings had a significant impact, attracting a younger generation of intellectuals like Thompson to the Party. After the late 1930s, Stalinism became dominant within the CPGB, subsequently defining the former as a "bourgeois tendency" and subjecting it to long-term theoretical criticism and suppression. In the early 1950s, the smoke of the Cold War spread into the cultural sphere. To oppose the cultural colonization of American mass culture, the mainstream of the CPGB began to extol British culture, particularly those parts involving spontaneous popular opposition to capitalism. This allowed the criticized and suppressed "bourgeois tendency" to return in a new guise. The task of reviving the British humanist tradition and seeking a native Marxist imagination thus gained political legitimacy and fell upon the shoulders of "Comrade Thompson."
Second, British bourgeois academia consciously obscured Morris's later Marxist revolutionary faith, and the CPGB hoped to reclaim Morris from the bourgeoisie. As a pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, Morris was hailed as the father of modern design and possessed immense social influence. However, bourgeois scholars, including the author of his 1899 standard biography, clearly disliked or even loathed Morris’s later Marxist revolutionary beliefs. Consequently, they mostly chose to focus selectively on Morris’s art, design, and literary thought, consciously avoiding his political thought—especially his Marxist socialism in his later years. Since reviving the British humanist tradition and seeking a native Marxist imagination had become urgent political tasks, it was necessary to reclaim Morris from the bourgeoisie and restore his proper status as a Marxist revolutionary. The purpose of the research and publication of William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, which Thompson was commissioned to undertake, was to prove—through an in-depth reading of the "failure of bourgeois researchers to deal adequately with the political activities and writings to which Morris devoted his full energy during his mature years"—that Morris "was a Marxist, and at the same time a Utopian." The objectives of the CPGB and Thompson were clearly achieved: upon the publication of the book, bourgeois reviewers immediately remarked with sensitive acidity that the work used nearly 900 pages to prove Morris was indeed a Marxist.
Third, beginning with Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 publication of "Existentialism is a Humanism," humanist philosophy gradually gained traction in Western intellectual circles, objectively driving the formation and diffusion of the trend of humanist Marxism within the International Communist camp. In his essay, Sartre emphasized that his existentialist philosophy was a philosophy for realizing human freedom—a philosophy that connects every individual in society through human freedom and responsibility—and was thus a form of humanism. Sartre’s views sparked heated debate, to which Martin Heidegger, Georg Lukács, and others responded with various positions. This propelled the rapid spread of humanist philosophy across the Atlantic, making it an international philosophical trend. It exerted direct influence on the contemporary Marxist camp; Marxists in France, the United States, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and even the Soviet Union intervened to varying degrees. Some directly interpreted and argued theoretically that humanism is the core content and highest goal of Marxism, while others proved that humanism is an inherent part of Marxism by reinterpreting Marx’s early works, such as the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. After Stalin’s death in 1953, the de-Stalinization movement emerged within the International Communist Movement. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union also began to reflect on Stalinism and, to a certain extent, permitted or even supported the spread of humanist ideas. This granted the trend of humanist Marxism a degree of legitimacy within the International Communist Movement and led to its wide dissemination and acceptance within European Communist parties, such as those in France and Britain, during the mid-to-late 1950s. It was precisely because of this internal atmosphere that Thompson, as a Party member, could consciously excavate the humanist elements in Morris’s thought and achieve the "invention" of the British ethical socialist tradition. He attempted to use this to fill the moral vacuum in Marx’s theory of social critique: "The injuries caused by advanced capitalism and the market economy restricted human relations to basic economic relations. Marx dedicated himself to orthodox political economy, taking the revolutionary 'economic man' as the solution to the exploited 'economic man.' But in Marx, especially in his early works, this was not yet clear enough... whereas in Blake and Wordsworth, this critique of industrial capitalism was very clear, and it exists likewise in the works of Morris. Thus, it is entirely complementary to the Marxist tradition, rather than in conflict with it at all."
II. Edward Thompson: "Socialist Humanism" is an Inherent Part of Marxism
After the 1956 Hungarian Uprising [7], Thompson concluded that it was no longer possible for the British Communist Party (CPGB) to develop in a positive direction as intellectual members like himself had hoped. Consequently, he chose to leave the Party and commit himself to the non-institutionalized British New Left movement. The New Reasoner, founded by Thompson and John Saville, together with another New Left publication, the Universities and Left Review, historically assumed a certain organizational and leadership function, becoming the primary public spokespersons for the New Left movement. In the founding editorial of The New Reasoner, Thompson and others made it clear that their goal was to adhere to and develop Marxism in continuity with British reality and the British Marxist theoretical tradition: "We have no intention of breaking recklessly with the Marxist and socialist traditions in Britain. On the contrary, we believe that this tradition—stemming from William Morris and Tom Mann, and find expression in the cultural field later in such journals as Left Review and Modern Quarterly—is exactly what we need to discover and reaffirm. It is our hope to build some bridge-bonds between this tradition and those Left Socialists who have grown up outside it." It was precisely based on this proposition that Thompson published his famous article, "Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines," attempting to prove through a reflection on Stalinism that "socialist humanism" is an inherent meaning of Marxism.
In June 1956, Khrushchev’s "Secret Report" titled On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences was made public in the West, triggering a strong reaction within the Left camp. Prevailing opinion thus simplistically negated Stalinism, viewing it as a false and erroneous ideology. Thompson opposed this view, arguing that it not only underestimated the power, logic, and consistency of Stalinism—failing to explain the immense influence Stalinism had on the ideas and actions of Communists—but also fell into the theoretical fallacy of economic determinism, "ignoring the role played by human ideas and moral attitudes in the process of creating history." In Thompson's view, Stalinism was indeed an ideology, but one rooted in a specific socio-historical stage of Soviet Russia, possessing internal historical foundations and legitimacy. Thompson believed that Stalinism was the natural result of the Sinicization-style [8] localized development of Marxism in Soviet Russia; in terms of localization, Stalinism could be called a success, but in terms of the accurate understanding and interpretation of Marxism, it was a failure. This was because it ran counter to the Marxism born in Western Europe in three important respects, leading to anti-intellectualism, moral nihilism, and the denial of the masses' role as historical subjects—three areas that had been well-inherited and developed within the British tradition of ethical socialism.
The first is anti-intellectualism, namely the loss of the capacity for rational thought and critical consciousness. The predecessor of The New Reasoner was The Reasoner, a journal of theoretical debate founded by Thompson and others within the CPGB. The name The Reasoner was derived from a publication of the same name founded by British Romantics in the early 19th century to promote Jacobin radicalism. One hundred and fifty years later, when Thompson and others prominently inscribed "The Reasoner" on their intellectual banner, they primarily intended to highlight the importance of rational thinking, secondly to oppose the irrational characteristics of Stalinist thought (anti-intellectualism), and finally to emphasize the internal connection between the British ethical socialist tradition and rational inquiry. Thompson argued that the inevitable result of anti-intellectualism is the prevalence of dogmatism. Taking the relationship between the economic base and the superstructure as an example, Thompson pointed out that this was originally a metaphor used by Marx; its advantage was being intuitive and graphic, but its disadvantage was being simple and static, easily leading people to ignore the processual and complex nature of social development. Stalinism accepted and reinforced Marx’s literal meaning, ignoring or even severing the dialectical interaction between the economic base and the superstructure, and between social existence and social consciousness, which Marx had always advocated. Thus, it simplified vivid historical materialism into a rigid, mechanical economic determinism.
The second is moral nihilism. Thompson pointed out that because Stalinism misunderstood historical materialism, it failed to accurately recognize the real social process and the essence of human beings. The result was amoralism (justifying means by ends) and immoralism (aversion to moral means), leading to an abstract understanding of humanity. "But the Roundheads, the Levellers and the Royalists, the Chartists and the members of the Anti-Corn Law League... did not abandon their creeds because of economic stimuli; they loved, hated, argued, thought, and made moral choices. Economic changes drive changes in social relations and the relations of real people; these are understood, felt, and revealed in the sense of injustice, anger, and the desire for social change. All of these are resolved through the mode of struggle within human consciousness, including moral consciousness." Thompson noted that although Marx and Engels’ mature works rarely discussed moral issues, they resolutely opposed moral nihilism. They were convinced that "human moral consciousness can profoundly affect the forms taken by social antagonism, and can mitigate or exacerbate conflict; likewise, the degree to which theoretical concepts approximate reality will influence the course of history." All of this stemmed from the influence of humanist thought in European history on them: "Humanism not only runs through their writings from beginning to end but also provided inexhaustible momentum for their epic and magnificent theoretical creations." As early as when writing William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, Thompson was shocked by the degeneration of dogmatic Marxist theoretical vocabulary, believing that "it takes as its basis those categories which negate the valid existence of moral consciousness (historically or presently), such that the imagination and passion overflowing in William Morris’s later works are compressed to the point of non-existence." In "Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines," Thompson even more clearly pointed out: "For Marxism, William Morris’s insight into the discovery of human's potential moral nature is not a 'gilding of the lily,' but a 'timely assistance' [9] that supplements Marx’s discoveries."
The third is the denial of the subjectivity and creativity of human labor. Thompson believed that moral nihilism prevented Stalinism from seeing that "every person is an intellectual and moral being," and that every ordinary laborer who develops themselves through material labor is an "intellectual and moral subject." Therefore, although Stalinism also claimed that the masses are the creators of history, it was essentially elitist. "In Stalinist ideology, man is an appendage to the 'instruments of production.' In fact, man stands at the heart of labor, from which all instruments of production, politics, and institutions derive; yet this concept disappeared from Stalinist ideology."
Thompson criticized Stalinism in order to establish "socialist humanism." Based on Marx and Engels' discussion of "real individuals" in The German Ideology, he emphasized that Marxism must truly adhere to the mass viewpoint of history, recognizing that laborers are the real subjects who create history, and that socialism can only become a reality by relying on their historical actions. Therefore, in contrast to capitalism, which demeans laborers and merely hopes to satisfy them with commodities or physical needs, "'socialist humanism' demands the liberation of man from the slavery of things, the slavery of profit-seeking, or the slavery of 'economic necessity.' As a creative being, the liberated person will not only create new ideas but also a great outpouring of things."
III. Charles Taylor: Critique of Stalinism Cannot Solve Fundamental Problems
After the publication of "Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines," it triggered heated discussions within the New Left camp. "Orthodox" Marxists criticized "socialist humanism" as heterodox, falling into the quagmire of idealism. Former Communists who had shifted toward "left social democracy" demanded the establishment of clearer moral principles and denied the feasibility of "socialist humanism," arguing that Thompson was merely mixing Marxism with some diluted Christian seasoning, entirely unaware that this was a very eccentric dish. Charles Taylor, a young New Left scholar from Canada, was then at Oxford University pursuing a PhD in philosophy under Isaiah Berlin and Elizabeth Anscombe. Berlin excelled in the history of political thought; his early work Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (1939) pushed Western "Marxology" to a new height of standardized research and trained a large number of world-renowned Marx specialists. Anscombe excelled in analytical philosophy and moral philosophy, and was then writing her representative work Modern Moral Philosophy. Based on this highly specialized academic training background, Taylor published the article "Marxism and Humanism" in the second issue of The New Reasoner, questioning and debating the accuracy of Thompson's understanding of Marx and Engels' thought, although he did not oppose "socialist humanism" in general.
In Taylor's view, the relationship between Stalinism and communism is highly complex and cannot be judged simply with a "yes" or "no." Regarding human subjectivity, Taylor believed that Stalinism theoretically seemed to belong to "mechanical economic determinism," denying human subjectivity; yet in political practice, Stalinism seemed to believe in absolute voluntarism—the belief that "to possess ideas, ambitions, and intentions is to possess an objective historical role that the possessor can exercise." "In fact, Marx understood man as a complete unity of limitation and breakthrough, of being determined and being creative. Therefore, the two components of Stalinist dialectics—extreme economic determinism and absolute voluntarism—are equally irrelevant to Marxism." Based on this theoretical perspective, Taylor agreed with Thompson, arguing that Stalinism in fact turned subjectivity and creativity into the privileges of the political elite, while turning the flesh-and-blood, concrete working class into a mask for the former.
The core reason Taylor opposed using a simple "yes" or "no" to judge the relationship between Stalinism and communism was his belief that Marx's theories, positions, and viewpoints underwent changes in works from different periods. This made it possible for interpretive traditions, including Stalinism, to undergo distortions, departures, divergences, and conflicts. Stalinism opposed humanism and refused to understand communism as an ethical concept, its textual basis being The German Ideology, which explicitly states: "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." The reason Thompson and others held high the banner of humanism was that the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 proclaimed: "Communism is the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore is the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; it is the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being... This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man—the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species." Accordingly, Thompson insisted on reintroducing morality into Marxism, noting: "The specific crude Marxist amoralism or moral relativism is incompatible with Marxism. The proposition that morality is 'class-bound' is not only a historical observation but also an implicit, incomplete condemnation of all previous moral systems. It is also a call for a higher, more conscious morality."
Although Taylor sympathized with Thompson's position, as a philosopher he immediately identified several problems that were not merely the fault of Stalinism. First was the issue of the relationship between ends and means. After The German Ideology, Marx and Engels effectively sublated the dichotomy of ends and means through their theory of historical laws. However, "socialist humanism" reintroduced the problem of the relationship between ends and means and asserted that "moral ends can only be achieved through moral means," which was bound to provoke controversy. Second was the relationship between justice and rights. Communism seeks to build a new society through violent revolution, which constitutes the most fundamental social justice. However, does violent revolution infringe upon the rights of those unwilling to accept communism? This is a pivotal question for humanism. Third was the relationship between liberation and freedom. The proletariat pursues the liberation of all humanity as well as its own: "They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions... The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." But do people have the freedom not to accept liberation? Consequently, it seems "socialist humanism" is forced to add a clarifying sentence: "The proletariat cannot liberate itself without depriving some people of their status as human beings." Fourth was the relationship between goals and processes. Taylor cited the example of collective farms during the Soviet industrialization process to illustrate how the interests of certain social groups are inevitably infringed upon before communism is realized.
In short, Taylor argued that while Stalinism was indeed riddled with problems, merely criticizing Stalinism could not truly resolve them. In Taylor's view, Marxian communism is an "uncompleted humanism"; Stalinist ideology reflected both the inadequacy of Marxism and a distortion of that very inadequacy. Therefore, the critique of Stalinism could not simply be a return to the original tradition; it also required a reconstruction of the theory of Marxian communism.
IV. Alasdair MacIntyre: We Must Exit Our Own "Moral Wilderness"
Among the many participants, it was Alasdair MacIntyre who truly pushed the debate over "socialist humanism" to a new height. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, MacIntyre briefly joined the Communist Party of Great Britain during his university years but later left due to dissatisfaction with Soviet politics. As an academic philosopher with systematic training in indigenous British philosophy, MacIntyre dedicated his life to "after virtue," attempting to resolve the fundamental disagreements between various contemporary Western moral philosophies. In his 1953 publication Marxism: An Interpretation, MacIntyre sought to integrate Marxism with the indigenous British Christian tradition, proposing a Christianized view of Marxism. His core idea was that Marxism is a humanist worldview that originates from and transcends Christianity—a historical and moral alternative to capitalism that can solve the ethical problems of contemporary capitalism. Thus, MacIntyre arrived at the threshold of "socialist humanism" via a different path than Thompson. Following the rise of the New Left movement, MacIntyre became a member of The New Reasoner [10] circle, though he did not intervene in the "socialist humanism" debate immediately. As the controversy intensified, MacIntyre serialized "Notes from the Moral Wilderness" in the final 1958 issue and the first 1959 issue of The New Reasoner, systematically elucidating his views on Stalinism and his support for "socialist humanism."
"Notes from the Moral Wilderness" begins by pointing out that neither Stalinism nor its various moral critics realized that their fierce, inconclusive polemics merely indicated the existence of different moral choices in the real world. It was as if people were exploring an unfamiliar moral wilderness individually; the key was to overcome their respective limitations and find a truly realistic moral path: "To overcome and transcend their limitations, errors, and 'false needs' on moral issues is our need to find the way out of our own wilderness."
In the first section, "Morality and Desire," MacIntyre summarizes the debate between Stalinism and its moral critics from a philosophical height, arguing that both sides were trapped in a "means-end model of morality" and were two sides of the same coin. Stalinism avoids talking about morality or "ought" because it "equates what is morally right with what actually becomes the result of historical development." For Stalinism, "history is the realm where objective laws operate, within which the individual's role is predetermined by their historical situation. The individual can accept their role and play it willingly or unwillingly, but they cannot rewrite the script. The individual is nothing in history but an actor; even their moral judgment of historical facts is part of the performance. The 'ought' principle is submerged by the historical 'is'." Meanwhile, the moral critics of Stalinism talk about morality and "ought" from a position outside history, like God: "All questions are judged by their moral standing. The 'ought' principle is placed entirely outside the historical 'is.' ... To the moral critic, the historical process—what actually happened and what should happen—are entirely irrelevant questions." The Don Quixote-like struggle between the two sides indicated the necessity of surpassing the "fruitless confrontation between moral individualism and amoral Stalinism" to seek a "third moral position."
In the second section, "History and Morality," MacIntyre continues the critical logic of Thompson and others against Stalinism, emphasizing that Stalinism is merely a "secondary" Marxism and cannot represent Marxism itself. Therefore, the fact that Stalinism does not or cannot discuss certain issues by no means implies that Marxism cannot provide its own answers. Traditional questions regarding human nature and morality—the relationship between "I am," "I can be," "I want to be," and "I ought to be"—need to be answered by contemporary Marxists in a manner consistent with Marx's theory of human essence.
Next, in the third section, "The Unity of Morality and Desire," MacIntyre provides his own principled answers to these questions. Reviewing the history of morality, MacIntyre points out that achieving the unity of morality and desire, of "ought" and "is," and of the collective and the individual is a moral puzzle that modern Western society must solve, and Marxism is the only possible key to this puzzle. Based on the concept of "real individuals" in The German Ideology, MacIntyre points out that the formation of human essence is historical: "Human potential progresses in every age; this progress is specific to that social form and constrained by the class structure of society. Under capitalist conditions, a crisis emerges in the development of this potential," but "the growth of production makes it possible for humans to reappropriate their own essence, and for real people to realize human richness." Why can the development of production and class struggle realize human essence and solve the problem of the unity of morality and desire, "ought" and "is," and collective and individual? In MacIntyre's view, the working class achieves a transformation of consciousness through class struggle: "They first discover that what they want most is what most others want; moreover, sharing human life is not merely a means to achieve what they want, but the specific way they share life is indeed what they want most. ... By rediscovering the deep desire to share common humanity, people satisfy the disordered, individualistic desires bred in us by competitive society, thereby departing neither from humanity nor from the self. In this discovery, moral principles regain their importance. Because their satisfaction can now be seen as conducive to correcting our short-term selfish behavior, thereby helping to liberate desire. Moral rules and our basic needs are no longer diametrically opposed."
Finally, in the fourth section, "Communist Morality is Not Futurism," MacIntyre returns to reality, calling on the New Left to abandon empty talk and take active action. This is because communism is by no means futurism; morality without history is like a tree without roots. Real individuals can only realize their essence and achieve unity with others through real struggle. In other words, MacIntyre believes: "Any moral claim, if it is to be generalized in the real world, must be rooted in a historically conceived theory of human nature, and at the same time, it must be realized in the actual historical struggle of the oppressed for freedom."
V. Brief Commentary
Following "Notes from the Moral Wilderness," Thompson, MacIntyre, Taylor, and others continued to publish articles and engage in polemics, pushing the debate over "socialist humanism" deeper until it largely concluded around 1960. Although this debate lasted substantially for only three or four years, it produced profound effects in the history of ideas. First, the orthodox status of Soviet Marxism in British leftist intellectual and academic circles was completely overturned. On the ruins of its collapse, an indigenous British Marxist intellectual tradition began to take root and grow vigorously. Second, as indigenous British Marxism was continuously integrated, the moral vacuum in traditional Marxism was filled, and British leftist scholars' reflections on moral and ethical issues began to see significant development. Third, the relative isolation of British leftist intellectual and academic circles was broken; various Marxist trends from continental Europe began to arrive in Britain, thereby improving the theoretical "DNA" of the British Left. Fourth, with the emergence of a pluralistic competition of theoretical discourses, the British Left began to focus on interpreting the works of Marx and Engels. This on one hand promoted the prosperity of Western "Marxology" [11] in Britain, and on the other hand raised the Marxist level of the British Left, reducing pointless disputes over opinions and allowing for the gradual accumulation of academic and intellectual consensus. However, academic research is also a product of its time. These effects on the history of ideas were like seeds; to truly take root, sprout, and grow, they had to wait for the arrival of an age suited to them. History has proven that this suitable age could only truly begin after the end of the New Left movement.
(Author: Zhang Liang, Institute of Marxist Social Theory and Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University) Web Editor: Tongxin Source: Foreign Theoretical Trends (《国外理论动态》), Issue 2, 2022