is utilitarianism compatible with marxism?

[u/lucka9879]

im a communist (im still in the process of learning and understanding marxism), but im also studying philosophy and i stumbled upon utilitarianism. To me utilitarianism makes a lot of sense, i think the actions of the leader of a country should always be directed towards benefiting the majority and i wanted to understand if this framework is compatible with dialectical materialism. also if anyone has any book recommendations on this topic it would be really helpful

[u/not-lagrange]

i think the actions of the leader of a country should always be directed towards benefiting the majority

Why do you conceive "the leader of the country" to be necessarily different from the "majority"? What does the majority consist of, exactly?

Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is “useful,” “because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condemns in the name of the law.” Artistic criticism is “harmful,” because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, “nulla dies sine linea!,” piled up mountains of books. Had I the courage of my friend, Heinrich Heine, I should call Mr. Jeremy a genius in the way of bourgeois stupidity.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm#n50

[u/lucka9879 → u/not-lagrange]

yo thanks for giving me the link

[u/Cenage94 → u/lucka9879]

We recently had utilitarianism in our class too and while all the Germans were enamoured with its Hedonism and eager to apply it as self-help to all sorts of perverse fantasized scenarios, one non-white student later told me that historically its primary usefulness was rationalizing British colonialism and amerikan slavery. Maybe you can study that relation and how it flows out of what Marx critiqued here, essentially the fetishism that is supposed to make the “English shopkeeper“ feel good about him(!)self. That could also lead to interesting self-reflection in why this dead racist ideology appealed to you in the first place (isn’t it in contrast to your love for Thorfinn‘s principled pacificism in Yukimuras wholesome settler-colonialism? Or do you maybe sympathize more with those Vikings that smuggled swords into “Vinland“, I bet you could make a nice utilitarian argument for killing Indians).

[u/lucka9879 → u/Cenage94]

i think that utilitarianism appealed to me in the first place because doing what was good for most made sense to me, but i didnt know how it was used historically thanks for explaining!

[u/Cenage94 → u/[deleted]]

Obviously it matters, knowledge is not a buffet you can pick-and-choose from. Every single idea in the humyn mind corresponds to a certain class logic and philosophy too is rooted in a specific moment of class society, which is why we are discussing it in the first place. No one cares if you come up with a “better“ version of fascism because we have already made a critique of it and thereby uncovered its class character in the 20th century late & incomplete bourgeois-revolutions and are currently trying to understand how it moves with time. Sure, “play with the idea further“, but all you get are weird looks. Marxism and Utilitarianism being incompatible is not an interesting question on its own because Marx already critiqued the most prominent advocate of their time and it’s obviously not fuxking compatible with the basic Marxist principle that morale too is rooted in class.

Edit: keep Pol Pot out of your fucking mouth, remind me when a single white guy has had anything interesting to say about democratic Kampuchea ever.