Marx, Morality and the Virtue of Beneficence

This book presents a reconstruction of Marx’ moral theory. Marx held a moral theory as the basis of his condemnation of capitalism. His theory relies on a normative view of human nature. On this view, humans have the potential to become free, creative, truly social producers. For Marx, this is the highest good for humans. On this reconstruction, truly social gets explicated as humans acquiring through historical development the virtue of beneficence. This virtue eliminates the need for a theory of rights for communist society and finds its beginning in proletarian revolutionary motivation within capitalism. In addition, Marx held the communist distribution principle to be normative though non-juridical.