Page - 82 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

82 chapter 2 referencepointwas theoppositionbetweenbeingandought, rather thanthe coexistenceofdifferentvaluesinsociety.Theyaptlypointedoutthatanethics that contented itselfwithdescribingmodesofmoral behaviourdidnotoffer anycriteriaformoralbehaviour.Themereobservationthathumansmakeone choice or another under certain conditions did not saywhether that choice was right or wrong. Bauer andAdler’s critique of Kautsky revealed another important contradiction: on the one hand, Kautsky deduced amoral ideal from the class struggle. Yet at the same time, he recognised the interaction of frequently opposedmoral ideals, all ofwhichwere rooted in the position of the respective classes. This left open the question as to which of these idealsone shouldendorse if therewerenoobjectivecriteria for judging their validity. To illustrate the poverty of naturalist ethics and to prove the necessity of normativeethical reflectioninMarxism,Bauerconstructedtheexampleofan unemployedworkerwho contemplateswhether he has the right to become a strikebreakerwhenhis family’s livelihood isunder threat.When individual interestconflictswithclassinterest,Bauerargued,Kautskyanarguments–such as ‘the struggle for existence triggers social drives fromwhich themoral law emerges’, ‘theproletariat is a force thatenters the stageofhistoryembodying the highestmorality, aswell as the future’, or ‘socialismwill comeby virtue of the necessary laws of social development’ – did not help to determine theworker’smoral duty. In Bauer’s opinion, Kautsky’s theory didnot offer a justificationforaproletarianethics.This ledtheAustromarxisttoposeamore generalandfundamentalquestion:didthetheoryofsocialismcontainavalid criterionformoraljudgement?CouldMarxismethicallyjustifysocialismatall? Here,Bauerbroughtanotherimportantelementintotheopen:ifMarxismwas toserveasa theory for theconsciouschangeof reality, then ithad tocontain normative judgements pointing to objective criteria bywhich the validity of actionsmightbe judged.He solved thisproblem inaKantian spirit, drawing onasimplifiedformoftheMarburgians’arguments. Asmentionedearlier, Bauer, inspiredbyKantianism, argued in favourof a dualismbetweenbeingandoughtandthedifferentiationbetweentheknow- ledgeofvaluesandtheknowledgeof facts.71Thelatterbelongedtothesphere ihmnurdengeschichtlichen Inhalt, sie entscheidenüberdieArt seinerRealisierung’ – M.Adler1913,p. 135. 71 InMarxismusundEthik (MarxismandEthics, 1906),hewrote: ‘Thematterof imperatives belongs to thehistorian’s fieldof research– inthis, thematerialist conceptionofhistory istheguidelineofresearch.Eventhere,however,Kantturnstotheformallawofmorality. Histaskiscompletelydifferentfromthatofahistorian.Becauseheoperatesinadifferent