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/239/ Against Justice ft. Ross Wolfe (Patreon)

Published:
2022-02-01 07:01:02
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

On the critique of egalitarian ideology.

We talk to writer Ross Wolfe about his essay "Marxism Contra Justice". Given that struggles for justice have been central to all sorts of radical movements, why is it important to cleave Marxist politics away from this notion? How are contemporary notions of 'social justice' already degraded versions of earlier egalitarian ideology on the left? Is it possible to conceive of any popular working-class movement that doesn’t begin with people’s sense of indignation and desire for redress?Links:

Marxism Contra Justice, Ross Wolfe, Datacide

The Charnel House, Ross Wolfe's blog

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Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

Ah. A fellow of tankie descent. I just wish I could get my father to admit what he is.

kd

I generally agree with the argument Ross makes here but I find that the lack of positive vision as to how Marxism should be conveyed programtically a little frustrating. These questions aren't entirely relevant until you're engaged in some form of project where you are actually trying to win people over to something, then you can't really just critique how Marxism is portrayed, you'd have to suggest pretty specifically what your line is. You guys keep saying there's no working class movement, it's true of course, but it's always left at just that. Other elements and forces in society are constantly taking advantage of that void and leading sections of the class in all sorts of directions. If "the left" especially the portion of it that I'd consider not fucking crazy doesn't think about how to engage society, especially in this moment, we'll keep talking about how a working class movement doesn't exist forever and I find that dismaying.

Alex McAuliffe

In addition to the pessimism / lack of program kd already mentioned re: the 'lack of working class movement', I wondered at Ross's offhand remark about a world revolution in the 'capital of global industry', emanating from 'Berlin, or London, or Paris... or Washington". That struck me as rather fantastically dated, an intellectual arm-chair rehashing of the global status quo of the late 19th century. What of Beijing. an actually communist power, or the rest of the increasingly industrial, muscular but horribly unequal East? For a professed internationalist, Ross's flippant regionalism and myopia are baffling. The promise of Marxist thought surely lies in constantly returning to specific, grounded criticism of the world and industrial development *as it is*, not retreating to ever-more-esoteric positions in the universes of Theory.

Ran Heilbrunn

I think that what makes this episode particularly interesting is that underneath the official discussion, which is in itself fascinating, there’s a kind of not-fully-articulated meta-level tension between two different attitudes toward the question of the relationship between theory and reality. To put it very crudely, it seems to me that Ross prioritizes theory over engagement with current affairs, whereas your attitude uses theory in order to analyze the present. While you do push him on several specific points, it seems that you are generally overwhelmed by his erudition. I wonder if there’s a way to appreciate the complexity of his arguments without abandoning the healthy suspicion towards the tendency of many on the educated left to collapse their politics onto their intellectual tastes and interests. Listening to Ross, I was reminded of something that Tod McGowen said when you had him on – that theory always comes after politics. It seems to me that for Ross and many other brilliant theorists, it’s the other way around – he got his theory all figured out, now he’s just waiting for reality to catch up. Like the good theorist that he is, he can theorize his way out of any contradiction. But the problem is that this theoretical virtuosity can never bridge the gap with reality, often it just makes it wider.

Grant Baird

Agree with what other commenters say with regards to the gap between theory and reality and the lack of any working class movement is perhaps a conclusion of this, amongst various other reasons obviously. Ross’s opposition to the sanders and Corbyn projects and electoral politics in general may seem like a solid position but, in my view, in order for reality to catch up with theory and perhaps push institutions and mindsets leftwards, albeit incrementally, voting for either would be worthwhile even if the long term goal can never be achieved through electoral politics.

dshamz_

On the question of justice, the notion that you can’t critique a society on the basis of ideological conceptions that arise from that society strikes me as being incorrect, because if it was, the critique would be coming from nowhere, from pure thought, which would be undialectical and unmaterialist. It seems to me that the only basis from which you can critique a society is actually with ideas that *are* produced from that society (which we do not stand outside of), including notions of justice, because in a society that has material contradictions, those contradictions will also be embedded in the contradictory ideas that the society generates. It’s not that justice is a capitalist idea, it’s that the capitalist idea of justice is contradictory, which means that it contains a kernel of truth - and the meaning of justice will be struggled over by contending class forces regardless of whether we think such a thing exists or not. I know Marxism is about interests and is not moralism, and ‘social justice’ is an entirely bullshit concept, and I’m not saying that we should take the notion of justice to be key to any given organizing strategy, but so long as contradictory conceptions of justice exist - which they will so long as class society exists - contradictory conceptions of injustice will exist, and this is terrain we have to navigate in practice.