Marxism, morality, and social justice /

Peffer (University of San Diego) draws upon linguistic-analytic insights to formulate "an adequate Marxist moral and social theory"; he acknowledges special debates to Kai Nielsen and Allen E. Buchanan. Part 1 explicates Marx's implicit moral theory, concluding that Marx is a "mixed deontologist," for whom equal freedom, community, and human dignity are the key values. Part 2 argues the compatibility of this moral theory with Marx's "anti-moralism," moral historicism, and account of ideology. Part 3, revising John Rawls's Theory of Justice (CH, Sep'72), presents Peffer's own Marxist theory of social justice--which combines lexically ordered principles (starting with subsistence) with a set of "recognizably Marxist" empirical social-scientific theses. Peffer's approach is strenuously analytic: very helpful in the explication of ambiguous concepts and suppressed premises, but heavily burdened with the effort to keep track of and do justice to such a crowd of authors. Peffer's arguments are convincing; his book, with its very thorough bibliography, footnotes, and index, will be invaluable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and their professors. For most undergraduates, Milton Fisk's Ethics and Society: A Marxist Interpretation of Value (CH, Apr'81) or Arthur F. McGovern's Marxism: An American Christian Perspective (CH, Oct'80) might be better introductions. H. J. John Trinity College (DC)