" EXPLOITATION."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 227, 25 September 1934, Page 9

" EXPLOITATION."

RELIGION AND MORALS

THE COMMUNIST PHILOSOPHY A PROFESSOR'S VIEWS. (By PROFESSOR W. AXDERSON.) Have the consequences of the official repression of religion in Soviet Russia finally disproved thp doctrine that morals depend upon religious belief'? This is the conclusion of Mr. H. D. Dickinson, who finds that "out of the day-to-day necessities of a Socialist society in the making" there has been developing a moral code or outlook, based simply on "reason and humanity," without the help of religion. This new morality does not suffer by comparison with the old. According to Mr. Dickinson it is much more healthy than that which is based on the fears and taboos of the "obscure semi-nomadic race which invaded Palestine about 2000 years 8.C." The superiority of the new morality to the old is made evident to Mr. Dickinson by the fact that while the greatest sin according to the old is the sin against the Holy Ghost, in the new it is "exploitation." The Old Morality. To say, as Mr. Dickinson does, that such a morality has grown.up out of the Russian attempt at Communism is about on a par with the statement that the rabbit grows up out of the conjuror's silk hat. The rabbit is found there, because it was put there beforehand. Exploitation is not something first discovered by the Russians as the result of trying to get Communistic institutions to" work. Reprobation of the sin of exploitation was one of the antecedents, not the consequences, of the Bolshevik revolution. The sin of exploitation is an idea borrowed from the old morality; so is the idea that it is the greatest sin. It was, for example, defined in the most precise terms by Kaut nearly two centuries ago; namely, the act of treating a national being as a mere means to an end, and not as an end in himself. Do the Soviets themselves practise this? The founders of Communism did indeed contribute something towards defining the idea of exploitation, and should not be grudged the credit that is their due. What they did was to empty the idea of exploitation of all moral significance whatever. Marx and Engels, in the Communist Manifesto (whose principles, as stated, are the sole and final test of success or failure in the Bolshevik revolution) are at especial pains to refute the contention that changing economic conditions merely determine the particular, form that moral standards, from time to time, assume. The authors insist that the very existence of moral standards at all expresses some fact of class-domination. Ihe essence of morals is obedience to the ruling class, so when there are no classes there will be no morals. It is true that in his economic works Karl Marx refers to the rate of "exploitation.": But this has no moral import t it does not mean that the surplus product of industry after wages have been paid is something that '•duffht" in justice to have gone to the hUrtaH operatives: The contention is merely that the necessity to find some other use for this surplus must nev£ tably'wrcck the economic system and the civilisation "based" thereon. Christian Ethics. On this view there is nothing distinctively "human," in the sense of rational, about the operatives, taW** of which they are "worthy" of better treatment But next it is shown with the true Macliiavelian touch, that one of the contributory factors in hastening the catastrophy of capitalism will be the psychological reaction of the operatives themselves. This will take the form of moral indignation against "exploitation," which they, as mere human animals, cannot help conceiv.ng in just those "moral" forms which have no objective validity, but enormous driving force. Probably, then, what Mr. Dickinson means when he says that a new morality is being developed in Russia with "exploitation" in the role of the unpardonable sin is that its present rulers find exploitation talk the most effective form of propaganda. It is somewhat remarkable that Mr. Dickinson should have been led to choose the sin against the Holy Ghost as the type of primitive superstition to set against the "rationalistic" sin of exploitation. For in Christian ethics they mean exactly the same thing. The only difference is that the Christian statement is the rationalistic one of the two. It maintains that the possibility of reason in a man,, which enables us to respect him ae a person, is actually realised in the nature of things.