Yes yes I know language changes, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be annoyed at a language trend that is damaging the ability to convey or even conceptualize information.
“Prison labor is a form of legalized slavery and that is bad.” 
“That’s just morals. To each their own.” 
The implication of “morals” as a summary of ethical and philosophical discourse tends to lead to such “morals” being dismissed as irrelevant or even irrational because they can’t be measured in a test tube in a laboratory environment (neither can the concept of logical positivism but that one gets a pass).
Less commonly but still in existence is this version that is used by right wingers for a different but still grating purpose.
“The problem with society today is there is not enough morals. That is why bad things happen. There needs to be more morals in the family and in the school.” 
It’s still a crude summary, but one with even less philosophical consistency, that takes the already crude idea of “morals” and turns it into some kind of currency of goodness that is measured between those that ostensibly have a lot of it 
and those that don’t. 
I think Engles touches on this point, as do many Anarchists with a distiction on how a bourgois morality of means above all pushes an immorality of both ends and current conditions.
I didn’t want to drop a monolithic “READ THIS YOU LIBS” link to Engels because that would only put off people that haven’t read Engels yet, but yeah that’s where I was going with that.
I’m feeling a bit tired, so I hope someone can correct me if I’m completely off base. I don’t think I care much about morals, at least not in the way the term is commonly used today. For instance, isn’t Neoliberal democracy often considered the greatest and most moral system ever created? If that’s the case, and I consider myself in opposition to neoliberal hegemony, does that mean I’m not a ‘good’ person? Does it make me a bad guy, an enemy of freedom, or an evil left-wing extremist simply because I advocate for housing the homeless and feeding the hungry?
I’m not saying I choose to be a ‘bad guy,’ but I’m aware that according to common sentiment, I may be portrayed that way. That’s why, outside of a philosophical discussion, I honestly don’t care much about traditional notions of morality.
I’m not challenging or condemning your position on “morals” there as much as I’m saying that summarizing all ethical/moral concepts into a single crude word like “morals” does arguments both for and against them a disservice.
Language changes and all that, and I know that and know it happens whether I like it or not, but I see it as a bad sign that it’s getting a bit harder for many people to even conceptualize some what they’re against… or even what they’re for.
Just using the word ‘morals’ might be oversimplifying things, I guess? Like I agree using the word “morals” can be quite reductionist when discussing complex political and ethical ideologies. It’s a broad term that often oversimplifies the nuanced perspectives people hold.
Then again im a baby when it comes to this stuff so keep that in mind
That’s all I was getting at in this thread.
For all you said that you might think you’d seen as unethical/immoral, you also stated:
If that’s the case, and I consider myself in opposition to neoliberal hegemony, does that mean I’m not a ‘good’ person? Does it make me a bad guy, an enemy of freedom, or an evil left-wing extremist simply because I advocate for housing the homeless and feeding the hungry?
To me, that means that you do have some ethical framework that I can vibe with, even if you don’t necessarily have the fancier terminology on hand to describe where you stand.
My issue with many in the “morals don’t real” crowd is where essentialist/eliminativist arguments are made, under pretenses of leftism or progress or even just raw scientism, that then dive deep into Nick Land territory where the only sensible outcome is atrocities for profit because at least there’s some materialist clarity to them even if it only benefits the rich.
you’re just rehashing moral relativism here, which is also what @[email protected] was getting at in terms of finding the concept of moral frameworks, and the use of morality as a substitution for a coherent ideology, insufficient for discourse
I’m not even trying to go that hard against moral relativism (outside of a mandatory dunk on liberal treatbrains that use the concept to justify atrocities worldwide because morals don’t real and those primitives have mud huts standing in the way of lithium treats) as much as I really, really dislike the sloppy catch-all packaging of “morals” to summarize complex and nuanced concepts in a way that removes most of the aforementioned complexity and nuance from them.
Ok im gonna be 100 with you Im not even sure I understand what moral relativism really means. I just stated that I dont care “much” for the concept of morals because I feel its often used to deny minorities the right of self defense because when black people fight back and its not a toothless protest its amoral. Im not a man of learning but Im open to learn… so feel free to enlighten me if you have anything else to say.
well, that’s basically it - is it morally correct to steal a loaf of bread? what if the baker beats his children? what if without that loaf of bread you will die? etc.
moral relativism at its most basic is just the idea that depending on perspectives and circumstances, what is or is not morally correct will differ. every conversation about “is it wrong to go back in time and kill baby hitler” is an exercise in moral relativism.
the sticky thing about moral relativism is that since both the cop and the protester think they’re acting in a morally correct way, morality becomes kind of a worthless way to talk about injustice and inequality, like you’ve said here. All three of us, you, me, and UlyssesT, are on the same page about this, it’s much clearer to talk about ideologies and class and identity relations than to boil it down into “morality” where it could mean something different to anyone who hears it.
My point of contention and the point of this thread is when all such discussion, that you just mentioned, gets crudely and roughly packaged as “morals.” This can be done to dismiss all such discussions (which does class struggle as a leftist concept a gross, treacherous disservice. Why stand for anything as leftists if we can’t even stand for that?) or it can be used to weaponize them into a crude superiority currency where chuds say they have “morals” and we (slurs here) leftists don’t.
Without the blocks of TL;DR links, I’ll say that you seem to have a cool and good ethical foundation already because you see the class struggle inherent to our system and value people over codified (and easily exploited by those with means) codes of conduct that typically say it’s always wrong to use violence against violent threats (and what is a police force, or a military, but a legalized monopoly on violence?).
Okay so maybe this helps you, but I came from a very similar place as you and yeah I agree that morality and ethics are just used to shut down further discussion. “I think its bad!” Conversation over.
The problem I want to argue isn’t with morality and ethics but (as other people have pointed out) there is a problem with the way that morality is defined/commonly understood and we miss it because the problem isnt with morality, but the problem of splitting things into categories and then assigning a relative “value” to those categories. Its a direct descendent of bourgeois enlightenment philosophy, Christian conceptions of good and evil, and catalysed with a healthy dose of residual cultural puritanism. However, it is the primary way that most people define most things, as having a subject/object value relation, rather than a dialectical one. Things are in a good group, which is my accepted group, and the other group. This is popular way of constructing an argument because it completely ignores projection – if I can imagine the other wants to kill me then I can justify killing the other, which short circuits human risk calculation.
IMO dialectical morality and philosophy doesn’t get anywhere enough study and attention, so what you end up with is a bunch of leftists who can do dialectical materialism, but still view morality as an objective value relation. Or we get accused of it (purity tests) and we have no response because we don’t understand the problem with the way the argument is framed.
In a nutshell, dialectical morality would be something more like “good and bad define each other.” I get a lot of this from the Dao de Ching, but its effective because it allows us to critique other people’s moral arguments by escaping the limitations that are causing people to reach shitty conclusions, while not abandoning ethics as one of the people with the most consistently ethical beliefs, surely a contradiction that shuts down all engagement as well. Also, there are times when something is clearly right/wrong so a mastery of many different forms of constructing an argument helps us to be on the right side at the end of our analysis. We also know that dialectics helps to make class analysis as well, so the more time we spend in that headspace, the more natural it becomes.
The problem I want to argue isn’t with morality and ethics but (as other people have pointed out) there is a problem with the way that morality is defined/commonly understood and we miss it because the problem isnt with morality, but the problem of splitting things into categories and then assigning a relative “value” to those categories.
“Utilitons.” Not even once.
Morality in its common presentation and push was invented by the bourgeois
No arguments there.
So was the vulgar kind of materialism, for the most part.
personal conspiracy theory: vulgar materialism was invented to confuse and discredit materialist analysis
“That sounds like something a meat computer in meatspace would say, not like that meat computer had any choice in saying that, because it’s all just chemicals anyway.”
