Sean Sayers

The extraordinary capacity of computers to hold text is familiar to anyone who uses a word processor: an average book will fit comfortably onto a 3.5" floppy disc. With the growth of easy means of communication between computers an immense quantity of information has become available on a world-wide basis. The links may not yet amount to a "superhighway", but they are fast, efficient and increasingly user-friendly. Moreover, like the roads, the system is free to users (though the Clinton administration has made some ominous noises about introducing charges). It is open to anyone with access to a computer connected to JANET (the Joint Academic Network in Britain), INTERNET, or one of the other electronic communications networks that now span the globe. That means almost everyone teaching at an institution of Higher Education in this country, often including postgraduate students, and sometimes undergraduates as well. The material available on-line falls into three broad categories.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF MORAL VALUES IN SOCIALISM? CAN SOCIALISM BE 'SCIENTIFIC' OR IS IT ESSENTIALLY AN ETHICAL DOCTRINE? IS THERE ANY PLACE FOR mORALITY IN Marxism? THESE QUESTIONS ARE CENTRAL TO MUCH RECENT CONTROVERSY ON THE LEFT. 'SOCIALISM AND MORALITY' CONTAINS A VARIETY OF ORIGINAL AND IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO THESE DEBATES BY A DISTINGUISHED GROUP OF PHILOSOPHERS AND POLITICAL THEORISTS. ALL THE PAPERS WERE SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THIS VOLUME AND MAKE A LIVELY, WIDE-RANGING AND VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION TO THE CURRENT DEBATE.

The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite. (Marx 1971, 820).

Has Marxism a future, now that communism has collapsed throughout Eastern Europe and is in crisis everywhere else? It is often said that Marxism is discredited and refuted by these events: they signify the triumph of capitalism and the free market, the `end of history'. At the other extreme, some Marxists in the West would like to believe that history has not yet begun. For them, socialism is still a distant dream. The old regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had nothing to do with true socialism. Their demise, therefore, has no bearing on Marxism: no rethinking is required.

Since 2007, capitalism has been going through its greatest crisis since the 1930s or before. In 2008, the banking system was saved from meltdown (at least for the time being) only by extensive government intervention in the USA, Britain, and a number of other countries. Stock markets all over the world plummeted. Then the crisis spread to the ‘real’ economy. A long and deep recession followed. Only now are we perhaps beginning to see what may – or may not – be fragile signs of recovery. Capitalism, it is sometimes said, has been on the verge of collapse

For Marx, work is the fundamental and central activity in human life and, potentially at least, a ful lling and liberating activity. Although this view is implicit throughout Marx’s work, there is little explicit explanation or defence of it. The fullest treatment is in the account of ‘estranged labour’ [entfremdete Arbeit] in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts;1 but, even there, Marx does not set out his philosophical assumptions at length. For an understanding of these, one must turn to Hegel. Marx is quite explicit about his debt to Hegel in this respect.