Right so, Marxism replaces objective morality with subject/object concretion. This does not mean removing people from the equation, on the contrary, it is a more comprehensive way of adding humans to “objective” analysis.

Where morality fails, is really well described by Nietzsche in “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Nietzsche is a really frustrating author and I really don’t recommend him as a philosopher (I do like his writing though), but he makes a really good point that objective morality ends up creating two moralities, one for the exploiter and one for the exploited. Like a shared set of principles that have different meanings based on who you are. This idea in the abstract maps pretty cleanly onto capitalist class antagonisms. Marx said that “in every era, the dominant ideology is the ideology by of the ruling class.” What a particular moral axiom means is determined by power, via hegemony, regardless of what we as leftists and workers want it to mean.

Marxism, rather than turning society and free will into abstractions, demands us to be not just teachers of conditions, but students. The Ricardian labor theory of value finds its truth in the way it centers people in every part of the economy, Marx expands on this by defining people not only as abstract parts of society, but thinking, feeling, experiencing subjects that change the world based in their experiences in it. The Marxist doesn’t tell people what is good and bad, the Marxist organizes people to go into the areas where oppression occurs and do the work of helping people understand our shared conditions. We organize people on the basis of their shared experiences, where capitalism alienates and isolates people from each other, from nature, from themselves.

Only when we understand how to organize our local conditions, can we organize localities and particular industries into regional and national delegations, who share experiences and coordinate action on the basis of class interests. Regional and national organizing is able to organize internationally, to achieve victories that local organizing can never accomplish. And we do it all by centering people and their experiences of oppression and exploitation.

Morality is cultural, and culture is part of the superstructure. We have an imperative to create counter hegemonies, which may include culture and morality, but achieving a “moral” society is not the strategy. We have to understand our place in society, as individuals who create society through our actions, that our actions are influenced by ideas, which are developed through our experiences in contemplation and in our lives. Morals are static, Marxism is dynamic. Morals hide contradiction, the world and people are inherently contradictory. The world can change because people can change. But people won’t change if we don’t first try to relate to them and understand how their experiences are, in fact, objective truth, even if the way they understand those experiences is backward and sometimes reactionary.

The fact is, we Marxists often have some weird ideas too, until we get involved in practical work. While hiding contradiction, morality creates new contradictions! If we are to commit to revolution we must commit to the truth. Not peoples idea of what the truth is, or “should be”.