Professor George E. McCarthy is an American and Irish philosopher and sociologist who teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy, classical and contemporary social theory, ethics and social justice, philosophy and sociology of science, and critical political economy at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Manhattan College (1968), an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College (1972), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research (1979). At a particular stage early in his academic career, there was a time when he was enrolled simultaneously in two different universities, in two different graduate programs, in two different academic disciplines -- Philosophy and Sociology -- in two different cities, in two different states, while he was also under federal indictment, prosecution, and trial at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, New York City for draft evasion and moral resistance to the Vietnam War. And, in between these two American graduate school experiences, he spent two years studying the critical social and political theory of the Frankfurt School at the University of Frankfurt and the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt/Main, Germany (1973-1975).

           Academic Experience, Study, and Research in Germany: McCarthy has been a DAAD Research Fellow (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität (University of Frankfurt) and the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt am Main. He has also been a guest research professor at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the Katholische Sozialwissenschaftliche Zentralstelle in Mönchengladbach, and the department of Philosophie und Erziehungswissenschaft-Humanwissenschaften at the Gesamthochschule, Universität Kassel, Germany. In 1994-1995, he was a Senior Fulbright Research Fellow in Germany.

          In the spring of 2000 he received the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship in Sociology at Kenyon College. More recently, he has been the recipient of a twelve-month National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship (2006-2007) for his project, "Aristotle and Kant in Classical Social Theory," which examined the relationship between nineteenth-century European social theory and Greek and German philosophy.

          His main educational goals are: (1) to investigate the philosophical foundations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European social theory with a special focus on the integration of the Ancients (ancient Hebrews, Hellenes, and Hellenists) and the Moderns (German Romantics, Idealists, Historians, and Critical Materialists); (2) to help rediscover the nature of sociology as an empirical/historical and practical/ethical science; (3) to reintegrate Philosophy, History, and Political Economy back into a Critical Social Theory; (4) to expand the nature of 'social science' beyond traditional quantitative and qualitative methods to include the full range of critical social science, including interpretive and hermeneutical science ( Hermeneutische Wissenschaft or verstehende Soziologie), cultural science (Kulturwissenschaft), historical science (Geschichtswissenschaft or sociology of social institutions and structures), human or moral science (Geisteswissenschaft), historical materialism (political economy), dialectical or critical science (Kritische Wissenschaft: immanent critic of the values, logic, and dialectic of capital), and depth hermeneutics (Tiefenhermeneutik: neo-Freudian analysis), while rejecting the methodology of the natural sciences: positivism, empiricism, naturalism, and nominalism; (5) to develop a critical social theory that incorporates classical and contemporary European social theory -- philosophy, history, and political economy -- into a comprehensive theory of social justice; (6) to integrate the vision and ideals of philosophy with the structures and historical reality of economic and social theory; (7) to expand quantitative and qualitative methods while liberating them from the narrowness of analytic philosophy and positivism (scientism and naturalism); and (8) to interpret Marx's labor theory of value, abstract labor, surplus value, and exchange value, as well as his theory of the structural contradictions (Widersprüche) and economic crises of capitalism in his later writings, not as part of a theory predicting the inevitable breakdown of the economic system, but as a critical theory of ethics and social justice. The main goal of these eight points in education and scholarship is to revive the spirit of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century European social theory and their classical horizons at a time of the decline and "eclipse of reason" in the American academy.

          More specifically, his goal is to draw the connections between Ancient philosophy and the Greek polis and Modern social theory and political economy in order to reconfigure and reinterpret Aristotle's major works Nicomachean Ethics (Philosophy: happiness and the good life of moral and intellectual virtue from courage, moderation, and wisdom to friendship and citizenship) and The Politics (Sociology: institutions and structures of political economy, moral economy, and political democracy) for the modern age. This rewrite will take the form of joining together Ethics, Social Theory, and Social Justice. The main academic goal behind this effort is to fuse the intellectual horizons (Horizontverschmelzung) of Philosophy and Sociology, Ethics and Social Theory, Virtue & Natural Law and Political & Economic Democracy, and Social Justice and Social Science, thereby creating a critical and dialectical discipline or Science with Heart (Herz: ethics, virtue, and moral/social principles) and Spirit (Geist: politics, reason, social institutions, and empirical/historical research). The future of a democratic, egalitarian, and just society within a moral economy is open to those who can dream with critical insight and practical vision, while also looking back to the Ancients for inspiration, compassion, and hope (Griechensehnsucht).


Marx and Social Justice: Ethics and Natural Law in the Critique of Political Economy

          There have been a number of social theorists within the Analytical Marxist and Anglo-American traditions during the 1980s who have argued that Marx did not have an ethical or moral philosophy or a theory of social justice, at least comparable to Rawls and Nozick. They offered a number of different reasons built on the famous Tucker-Wood thesis for this idea that Marx rejected moral thought: (1) there is no need for the liberal ideals of justice in socialism since justice was an ideological concept of the capitalist economy; (2) justice was simply a juridical category applicable only within liberalism and capitalism and referred mainly to issues of the state (historical materialism); (3) Marx's goal was to leave behind the old ideals of liberalism and by rejecting natural rights and medieval natural law he also was rejecting the use of the idea of justice -- in the process, they separated ethics and politics or civic morality, moral economy, and the democratic polity; (4) moral philosophy was viewed as ahistorical and therefore was incompatible with the principles of relativism and historicism in historical materialism; (5) justice did not refer to issues of worker's self-determination, creative freedom, moral community, the laws of beauty, and human need; (6) they reduced justice, rights, and liberties to legal and civil rights; (7) justice was a form of religious or false consciousness and moral ideology justifying capitalism; (8) following neo-classical economics and rational choice theory, they thought that the market was ultimately fair, wage labor was not exploitative or unjust, and that surplus value was necessary for economic expansion -- in the process they missed the ethical importance of the distinction between labor and labor power by maintaining that profits came from the exchange process and not production and labor exploitation; (9) by rejecting justice, Marx was simply reduced by some Analytical Marxists to demanding fair wages and fair economic distribution -- others argued that because of his criticisms of Proudhon and Lassalle he also rejected distributive justice; (10) Marx was focused more on developing a positivistic and naturalistic science of economics and the prediction of the structural crises and inevitable collapse of capitalism -- science in the form of naturalism and nominalism is contradictory to ethics. They denuded Marx of his critical and dialectical theory of capital, his labor theory of value, secular natural law, theory of work, human potentiality, and human need, historical materialism, theory of exploitation, alienation, and surplus value, and his theory of economic democracy; (11) the Analytical Marxists replaced German Idealism (which they saw as speculative and false metaphysics), German and British Romanticism, French Socialism, and Classical Economics with neoclassical economics and critical rationalism (Popper) -- they reduced Marxism to a form of neoliberalism and positivism; and, finally, (12) they thought Marx's ideal was "beyond justice" and in a socialist society, there would be no need for justice.

           Marx concluded his famous work Capital not with an analysis of the historical and economic inevitability of the breakdown of capitalism as is generally believed, but with the recognition of the structural, logical, and ethical contradictions (Widersprüche) of the capitalist system that cannot be negated or overcome. His writings ended where they began in the mid-1840s with an emphasis on Aristotle and Hegel and an ethical critique of the moral and political failures of modern society -- the economic system is alienating and exploitative, irrational and immoral. In the final analysis, the analytical tradition mistook his rejection of isolated and ahistorical moral philosophy and their separation of Ethics and Politics for a critique of social justice. They eliminated any theory of justice in Marx by misreading and misinterpreting his critique of ideology and moralism and his theories of science, dialectics of ideals and economic structures, the logic of history, historical materialism, and political economy. Finally, and perhaps their most serious error, was to forget the Ancient and Modern traditions upon which Marx developed his theory of modern industrial society. And in so doing, they lost the soul (Ancient Hebrews and Early Christians), the heart (Ancient Greeks), and the spirit (Modern French and Germans) of his social theory, ideals, and vision -- they lost his ability to imagine and dream. As an alternative to this analytical perspective, Professor McCarthy recently published a book outlining Marx's six-point theory of social justice (see below) while integrating the latter's early and later writings into an ethical and political whole. Marx's understanding of the nature and breadth of social justice includes issues of democracy, rights, fairness in distribution, individual freedom, human creativity, self-determination, and dignity in work, and the elimination of class oppression, alienation, and exploitation of unnatural wealth acquisition. An outline of the various Forms of Justice in Marx's writings include the following:

PART I: Marx's Theory of Social Justice Based on Aristotle's Ethics and Theory of Happiness, Practical Wisdom, and Moral and Intellectual Virtue

(1) Civil and Legal Justice and Political and Human Rights: Critique of Political Alienation: human emancipation and the political "rights of the citizen" of free speech, assembly, public participation, and political democracy as articulated in the French Constitution and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was originally drafted by Abbé Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette in consultation with Thomas Jefferson in 1789 and then expanded in 1791, 1793, and 1795. At the same time that Marx accepts these political freedoms and human "rights of the citizen," he rejects the corresponding economic and bourgeois "rights of man" found in these same French documents which included the narrow and egoistic rights of property, liberty, equality, and security of civil society and a market economy (On the Jewish Question, 1843). Some of the political ideals and human rights of socialism arise from within liberalism itself in dialectical fashion as these very principles push beyond the contradictions and limits of the old social system to call for greater freedom and human emancipation. The "rights of man" and the "rights of the citizen" -- the economic and political rights of the French Revolution -- are incompatible with each other leading Marx to move beyond them to a greater understanding of the political potential of humanity. The economic "rights of man" are chrematistic rights of a market economy, whereas the "rights of the citizen" provide us with the beginnings of the foundation for the political institutions of a moral economy (oikonomike). This critical social theory at the early stage of his philosophical development represents a dialectic of culture and ideas as Marx rejects central elements of the French Declaration of Rights in order to reveal the internal ethical contradictions between market rights and democratic rights. Later he will apply this same method to the empirical and historical study of industrial and class production to reveal the internal, structural contradictions of capitalism leading to the irrationalities of economic exploitation, overproduction of capital, unemployment, and economic crises in an expanding economy. Marx's focus is on the ethical and rational conditions of economic development.
(2) Workplace Justice, Workers' Control, and Civic Virtue: Critique of Economic Alienation: worker ownership of private property and the means of production along with revised and inclusive economic and human rights, equality and freedom, and the civic and moral virtues of a species being (Gattungswesen) which include concern for the common good, general welfare, individual human dignity, self-determination, and worker creativity and beauty in a moral community of artisanship and industrial production. These ethical principles and political ideals were derived from the traditions of Aristotle to Kant, Schiller, and Hegel in his early writings (listen to the 5-H lecture from the course "Social Justice"). Marx's early philosophical writings continue where Hegel's Objective Spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit left off -- with the French Revolution and Kantian philosophy but within a new and expansive interpretation of historical materialism and a new theory of legal and workplace justice (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).
(3) Ecological Justice and Nature: Critique of the Alienation of Nature: non-exploitative, non-alienated, organic, and ethical view of nature based on Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics. Marx views the physical environment as a reflection of the deeper problems of capitalist production and class oppression requiring a radical transformation of society to overcome the alienation of nature and its corresponding ecological crisis.

PART II: Marx's Theory of Social Justice Based on Aristotle's Politics, Economics, and Theory of Democracy and Political Wisdom

(4) Distributive Justice and Human Needs: from the Paris Manuscripts of 1844 to the Critique of the Gotha Program of 1875, Marx responds to the French socialists' call for distributive justice with his own theory of wealth distribution, economic reciprocity, fairness, and redistribution based on human needs within a moral economy.
(5) Political and Economic Justice and Democracy: decentralized politics, workers' communes, producer cooperatives, economic democracy, and self-government "of the people, by the people" expressed in the Paris Commune of 1871 (Civil War in France, 1871).
(6) Economic Justice, Dialectics, and the Irrationality and Immorality of Unnatural Wealth Acquisition and Capitalist Production: critique of the structures of political economy, the logic of capital, and the political incoherence, ethical immorality, and economic contradictions of the alienation, class exploitation, and human misery of a market economy and capitalist production in his later writings of the Grundrisse (1857), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), and Capital (1867, 1885, and 1894). Traditionally, these later economic writings have been misinterpreted through the positivist prism of naturalism and scientism that predict economic crises and the historically inevitable breakdown of the capitalist system. However, on closer investigation, these writings reveal that, when viewed from within the framework of the German Idealism of Hegel and Schelling and the political and economic theory of Aristotle, they expose the structural irrationality, social immorality, and dialectical contradictions of capitalism. For Marx, the logic, structures, and contradictions of capital or unnatural wealth acquisition, as with Aristotle, are incompatible with a society based on virtue, practical wisdom, freedom, equality, self-determination, and democracy, that is, they are morally incompatible with Ethics and Politics.

Liberalism and capitalism are incompatible and inconsistent with the ethical values and political ideals of the Ancients and the Moderns. With its materialism, consumerism, market morality, class oppression, workplace alienation and exploitation, political authoritarianism, global colonization and militarism, and racism, modern industrial society offends the heart, soul, spirit, and reason of humanity and democracy. Marx used his early and later ethical, political, and economic theories, along with his historical and empirical research, in a manner similar to Aristotle -- they were to provide the foundations for his theory of social justice, and not the foundations for a positivistic, Enlightenment, and economic science. Note: Corresponding to each chapter and aspect of social justice, there is a different understanding of the nature of social science and social research methods -- historical science, hermeneutical or interpretive science, human or moral science (universal humanism), phenomenological science (historical materialism and the history of Western consciousness and ideas), critical science (immanent critique), dialectical science (contradictions in the structures, logic, and ethics of political economy), etc. -- that goes beyond the boundaries, questions, and methods of modern positivism and contemporary American sociology and that integrates Science and Social Justice.

Marx's theory of justice follows closely Aristotle's broad theory of social justice found in his Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics:

PART I: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Happiness, and the Virtuous Life

(1) Rectificatory Justice: Civil Law and Politics
(2) Ethics, Virtue, Love, Friendship, and Practical Wisdom
(3) Environmental Justice: Physics and Metaphysics of Organic Nature

PART II: Aristotle's The Politics, Political Economy, and the Democratic Polity

(4) Particular Justice: Economic Reciprocity and Fair Distribution in the Oikonomike
(5) Universal Justice: Politics and Democracy
(6) Chrematistike and Critique: Critique of a Market Economy of Private and Unnatural Wealth Acquisition

Summary: Marx was a nineteenth-century critical social theorist who redefined and retranslated Aristotle's theory of virtue, natural law, moral economy, democracy, and social justice for the modern age. Comparing Marx and Aristotle using a hermeneutical mapping system from a distance (compare to archaeological mapping and terrestrial laser scanning using LiDAR) provides the analyst with a broad survey and outline of the general landscape and depth structures of their views of social justice that are not immediately visible on the surface -- Outline of the Various Forms of Justice. The historical and social content of Marx's theory of social justice comes from a critical understanding of the history of the Western intellectual traditions from the Ancients to the Moderns. By this means the broader outlines of the various Forms of Justice are integrated into the historical and political economic Content and Substance of Justice. However, with the alienation, disenchantment, repression, and eclipse of reason, these traditions and connections (Horizontverschmelzung) have been lost and must be imaginatively and systematically reconstructed for the modern audience. In order to accomplish this task, Marx integrates and expands Aristotle's ancient theory of ethics (happiness and virtue), and politics (rectificatory, particular, and universal justice) into his modern theory of socialism and social justice. Socialism is an economic and political democracy characterized by the following: a democratic and egalitarian social system grounded in the ethical principles of a moral economy and secular and historical natural law that was to be based on universal human and political rights; productive worker creativity and spirituality, individual freedom and self-determination, respect for the dignity and productive contributions of each person as a species being, and individual fulfillment of sovereign artisanship and the aesthetic laws of beauty in the workplace; political and economic democracy grounded in workers' associations, and the self-government of the people, by the people, political decentralization, and general participation in public, rational discourse; fair economic redistribution, reciprocity, equality, and the realization and satisfaction of fundamental human needs and the common good; and, finally, respect for the integrity and being of the natural environment.

Socialism represented a critique and rejection of the isolated, lonely, and lost individualism of liberal society; the existential crisis of a disenchanted and meaningless world based on alienated, powerless, and exploited labor, and the free choice of consumer goods and personal utility in a market economy; limited market legal rights protecting class and corporate power and privilege; possessive individualism based on a distorted notion of meritocracy, legal ownership, and individual effort and freedom of choice, work, and accomplishment; false liberal democracy which only hides, represses, and protects the irrationality, waste, dehumanization, and poverty of capitalism; the logical (dialectical) and structural contradictions and continuous crises of capitalist production; consumer economy based on false consciousness, distorted human needs, and corporate advertisement; centralized and authoritarian state that undermines true democracy; state militarism, war, and colonialism; and the further abuse and exploitation of nature, class and racial differences, foreign populations, and the human potential for true political and economic freedom and self-realization. The rights of life and liberty in a moral economy are reduced to the market rights of property, wealth, self-interested competition, mindless consumption, and the limitless acquisition of political and economic power (Bellum omnium contra omnes). True democracy is fundamentally contradictory to the principles, values, ideals, and institutions of modern liberalism; natural law and natural rights are incompatible ethical and political doctrines, just as a moral economy and market economy are incompatible social systems; and individual freedom within a market economy is impossible and ultimately destructive of the potentialities of human life. According to the ethics of socialism, human life should mean more than price, profits, power, and consumption.


Marx and the Traditions: Social Justice and the Politics of the Ancient Hebrews, Hellenes, and Hellenists

Karl Marx creates a theory of social justice grounded in an historical and secular natural law that evolves over time by reconstructing a materialist theory of the phenomenology of spirit in which the Ancient Hebrews, Hellenes, and Hellenists, Medieval Scholastics, and Modern German Romantics and Idealists, along with the Classical French and British political economists and socialists, are integrated into a critical theory of history, society, and the spirit. The goal of this social ethics and phenomenology is a dialectical understanding, moral critique, and political emancipation of human work, political economy, and economic democracy. Thus, Marx's theories of Natural Law and Ethics are framed within the history of Western consciousness and reason and integrated into a search for the moral principles of social justice and the social institutions of the good life and ideal community (Objective Spirit):

(1) Ancient Hebrews, Moses, and the Prophets in the Old Testament: The Covenant, Tzedakah, and Mishpat in Torah, Jubilee, and the Sabbath express the ideals of love, kindness, and compassion for the poor and weak espoused by Moses and the Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament. Their principal ethical goal was to maintain the integrity and institutions of an egalitarian and moral community based on the economic and social principles of helping the poor and the stranger, mercy and loving kindness (hesed), equality and primacy of the community, care of people and stewardship of nature, righteousness, compassion for the weak and needy, adherence to fair price and fallow land, the call for the timely redistribution of wealth and property, the right of release, redemption, and return of property to the original owner, freeing of slaves, and the forgiveness of debts [Genesis 1:26-27, Exodus: 22: 19-27 and 23: 10-11 (Sabbath Year); Leviticus 25: 8-13 (Jubilee Year) and 25: 25, 27, and 28 (Jubilee Year and Priestly Code); Deuteronomy 15: 1-4 (release of debts), 24: 14-15 (fair wages and against oppression of workers); Proverbs 22: 22-23 and 29-7 (rights of the poor); Amos 2: 6-8 and 5: 21-24; Jeremiah 7: 4-7 and 22: 15-16; and Ezekiel 16: 48 (sin of Sodom -- lack of compassion for the stranger, the poor, and the needy).
(2) Early Christian Followers of the "Way" and the Ethics of Primitive Communism in the New Testament: The Hebrew tradition was followed by the Early Christians (the Nazarenes) of the Hellenistic period in the New Testament. These first century Christians of the Synoptic Gospels continued the ethical ideals of the Old Testament in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught "the good news to the poor" which is the central moral doctrine of early Christianity that maintained that the ultimate and most important criteria for the Final Judgment rested on "feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and protecting the most vulnerable" (Matt 25: 31-46). They focused their attention on the following issues of political economy: giving up wealth, providing for the poor, fair distribution of wealth and power, wealth distribution based on human needs, the rejection of foreign oppression and military occupation by the legions of the Roman Empire, and the return to the ethical principles of the Torah and the Jubilee and Sabbath Year as they were reinterpreted in early Christian socialism and "the kingdom of God on earth" with its denunciation of idolatry and the worship of the god of money: Luke 2: 1-20 and Matthew 2: 1-2; Luke 6:17-26 and Matt. 5:1-10; Luke 8: 26 and Matt. 8:28; Luke 6: 26 and Matt. 8:28; Luke 12-16 and Matt. 10:1-4; Luke 11:2-4 and Matt. 6: 7-15; Luke 12:49-53, 22:35-38, and 47-51 and Matt. 10:34 and 27::27-31; Luke 16: 19-31, 18:18-27, and 20: 19-26 and Matt. 22:15 and 19:16; Matt. 25:31-46; Luke 19:28-38, 22: 35-38 and Matt. 21: 1-16 and 10: 34-39)]; and James 5:1-6. By the end of the fourth century under the influence of Platonism, the Constantinian Revolution, and the creation of an Imperial Church, Christianity had changed from its early emphasis on social justice, political economy, and helping the weak, poor, and dispossessed into an institutional religion with a focus on spiritual and ritual sin, metaphysics, salvation, and a heavenly kingdom of God. In the process, it lost its earlier focus on justice, wealth redistribution, and the kingdom of God within us on earth (story of Lazarus and the rich man, Luke 17:21).
(3) Ancient Greeks and the Athenian Ideals of the Polis and Oikonomike: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics -- his moral philosophy, political economy, and social theory -- outline the heart of Athenian justice of virtue, love, wisdom, happiness, the household economy, grace, reciprocity, and democratic polity. These ideas continue into the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages and the social philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and his theories of property, community, ethics, and value of human labor.
(4) German Idealism of Kant and Hegel and German Romanticism of Goethe and Schiller: They create a new Copernican Revolution and transform our understanding of knowledge and the physical universe as subjectivity -- subjectivity (consciousness) creates the objectivity of the external world in perception and experience for Kant and self-consciousness and reason create the social world as the Objective and Absolute Spirit for Hegel. Just as in epistemology, moral philosophy is defined by the subjectivity of the categorical imperative for Kant, whereas, for Hegel, the social ethics of the System der Sittlichkeit is defined by the ethical community and public virtue of the family, civil society, and the state. German Idealism stressed the importance of consciousness and human creativity in knowledge, ethics, and society which Marx then joins together with the art, poetry, and literature of German Romanticism in the writings of Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and Hölderlin to form his ideas of the centrality of aesthetic beauty, harmony, self-determination, and ethical dignity in the creativity of human labor. Further building upon German Idealism, Marx creates his own theory of consciousness. ideology, historical materialism, dialectics and critical science, and the structural and logical contradictions of industry, private property, and capitalism.
(5) Modern French Socialism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: This was a working class movement which rejected the abuse, exploitation, inequality, and poverty of human labor and workers under capitalism. Its representatives called for a more egalitarian society based on the ethical principles of communalism, fairness, the common good, and the economic redistribution of wealth, power, and production based on workers contribution, workers control over production, and the end to private property. The fundamental values of equality, community, fairness, and economic justice are found throughout the Ancient and Modern worlds in the shared principles of economic distribution based on human caring, dignity and need embedded in the Old Testament: Genesis 1:26-27 (imago Dei), Exodus, and Deuteronomy (Jubilee) and the New Testament: Luke 18 and Acts 2 and 4.
(6) Modern British Classical Economic Theory in the 18th and 19th Century: The nineteenth-century French socialists provide an important counterbalance to the classical British economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo with the latter's understanding of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism articulated in the relationship between production and distribution; the rational balance among industrial production, individual consumer choice, and market price; the new mechanization of factory production and the technical division of labor; and the labor theory of value which some have argued has its origins in Aquinas' Summa Theologica. Marx will integrate these two modern economic traditions with the Ancients and German Idealism to develop a critical and ethical analysis of the inherent possibilities and social and economic contradictions (Widersprüche) contained within the labor theory of value and capitalist production itself -- alienation, exploitation, dehumanization, and the existential meaningless of human life all framed within the structural, ideological, and logical incoherence of capitalism itself. It is here that Marx is using Hegel's dialectic, adjusted in view of Friedrich Schelling's criticisms, and applying it to reveal the moral bankruptcy of capitalism (Aristotle's Ethics) and the structural and historical limits along with the internal and logical barriers of capitalist production to stability, expansion, and rationality itself (Aristotle's theory of household and moral economy [Oikonomike] and the rejection of immoral, irrational, and unnatural wealth acquisition [ Chrematistike]).
(7) Marx and the Phenomenology of the Social Spirit: The Ancient Hebrews, Hellenes, Hellenists, and Medieval Scholastics (Aquinas: Summa Theologica, especially in Second Part and Prologue to Pt. II) all played a central role in the development of Marx's critical social theory from his early Paris Manuscripts of 1844 to his later Grundrisse, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and Capital. Both Hegel and Marx reject the alienation of modern liberalism, utilitarianism, and the Enlightenment, but it is only Marx who creatively blends together classical ethics, political economy, and critical science in his moral critique of modern capitalism to create a new theory of social justice for modern society. In order to accomplish this Herculean task, he supplies the missing elements in Hegel's alienation of the Objective Spirit -- Ethics, Social Consciousness, and Politics -- by replacing his false idealism and second unhappy consciousness of the Absolute Spirit of philosophy, religion, and art with Aristotle's objective materialism and social theory of classical ethics and politics. Marx retranslates and restructures Greek political and moral philosophy into German critical social theory, thereby creating the modern Germanic form of "Aristotle with an Umlaut" -- Aristötle. In the process, metaphysics and idealism are replaced by historical materialism and critical science. The end product of this imaginative synthesis of historical and intellectual movements is a theory of social justice which integrates the classical ideals of the Ancient and Modern traditions by fusing together ethics, politics, and political economy in order to help the poor, weak, and dispossessed within a communal economy. This is accomplished by building the institutional framework for a moral economy and political democracy, workers control and economic democracy, the working conditions that respect the dignity, creativity, and beauty of human labor, a balanced social and natural ecology of production and nature, and a critical and ethical science. In the final analysis, liberalism, as a modern political and economic ideology, is fundamentally at odds with the central themes, principles, and traditions of social justice in the whole of Western thought.


Silence of Reason and the Flight of Theory from the Academy: Transition from Social Theory to the Primacy of Research Methods and Technical Reason

By the end of the twentieth century, classical and contemporary social theory in the American academy had been replaced by the scientific methods of natural science (Naturwissenschaft) and formal rationality (Zweckrationalität) as theory became a convenient and conventional afterthought and a rationalized research tool. It now serves as a technical utility and validation for the questions and problems to be resolved in research designs and techniques, hypothesis creation, deductive and causal analysis, and the formation of intervening variables and predictive inferences in empirical research as it supports a particular naturalistic logic, theory, and methodology of science, its narrow and specialized questions, and its limited conclusions. Theory can frame a particular problem or issue under scientific investigation; it can confirm and legitimate the problem; it can provide an overview of similar investigations within the history of sociological thought; it can expand the variables and our understanding of the constructed hypothesis; it can actually help create, articulate, and validate the objects of investigation; and it can make the history of social concepts and traditions operational and functional in order to explain contemporary issues and problems. The focus then is on the present and not the past. The central and crucial point here is that social theory helps create the objects of inquiry but is itself not the object of inquiry. The goal of social theory is not historical, exegetical, hermeneutical, or interpretive, but rather, its goal is the illumination and application of social traditions to the explanation and clarification of contemporary problems. Social theory is no longer based on Understanding, Hermeneutics, and Critique, but now rests upon Explanation, Utility, and Application. It is no longer part of the neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophical tradition, but the Anglo-American tradition of naturalistic science. The emphasis is not on the understanding of ideas of the past or their explication, but its technical and utilitarian application to contemporary social problems and issues. Theory creates social objects and questions within the paradigm of positivism. That is, it doesn't expand theory or our understanding of social theory. It only uses theory for the purposes of creating or articulating a problem or the variable of an hypothesis. Its ultimate goal is the justification of positivism; theory has limited value in itself because its true worth lies in aiding the scientistic and naturalistic method. Theory is only an introduction or prelude to Method. It is a way of stating a problem in order to construct an hypothesis based on a universal law and particular circumstances that can empirically test the problem in order to confirm or falsify the original thesis and universal law. Theory has lost its broad and comprehensive critique of modern society; it has lost its dreams, imagination, and critical traditions to initiate a movement toward social justice.

What is rarely done is to investigate the historical and hermeneutical context of the theory itself as a way of understanding and broadening it. Although much of social theory lies beneath the surface and takes an enormous amount of time and energy to reconstruct its archaeological foundations in the intellectual history of Western thought, this is rarely undertaken. It is a forgotten art form since the traditions that feed into the theory are unknown and lost. European social theory, in particular, has a complex integrated web of different theories, methods, epistemologies, traditions, and approaches that are not recognized or viewed as legitimate from the naturalistic perspective. In reality, theory has little value in itself since it real contribution is to validate and aid the positivist method of inquiry. Since theory is only used as a mechanism of justification for particular methods and research. The history of theory, the content of theory, and its application for social critique and social justice are lost. Even when taught, European social theory is reduced to a formal, mechanical, and uninspiring history of isolated and particular ideas, literature review, or simple content analysis which act only as a prelude or introduction to the perceived legitimate questions and methods of an explanatory and deductive science. Ideas and issues are cherry picked from traditional theories for those concepts helpful in expanding research problems and technical methods; the alternative and critical substance and methods of the theories themselves are ignored and forgotten. In the process, the history of social theory's varied and distinctive methods, different approaches to epistemology and science, connections to ethics and philosophy, and its comprehensive critique of the values, culture, and institutions of modern society are lost and forgotten. And, in the end, there is only silence. We live in a post-theoretical, voiceless universe unable and unwilling to conceptualize or understand the grand traditions from the Ancients to the Moderns. And without theory, there are no dreams; without dreams, there is no justice; and without justice, there is no future -- no way to think about or act against injustice in the world or to reflect upon the possibilities of alternative forms of political economy and social systems. Unfortunately, theory is rarely taught and understood in the American university system today because philosophy has been replaced by observation, theory by methods, reflective thought by science, and ideas by the accumulation of empirical data. And because sociology is so tied to observation, data collection, prediction, and natural science, it cannot generate the social theory that is holistic, integrative, historical, and critical that could generate ideas for social change and social justice.

Now into the third decade of the twenty-first century, theory is no longer a serious consideration or intellectual focus in the lecture halls of our academic institutions resulting in the loss of reason, collective consciousness, and the ancient ideals of Western society. One can only sadly recall Max Horkheimer's fears in his lecturers at Columbia University in the spring of 1944 about the eclipse of reason, the fragmentation of the academy, the decline of the critical traditions, the rise of fascism in the United States, and the inability to recognize or resist these dramatic changes. Due to its acceptance of this positivism, scientific naturalism, and cultural nominalism resulting in the disenchantment of reason and moral nihilism, sociology as a discipline is in a precariously existential crisis and visionless state -- a concern anticipated by the classical social theorists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. And even more problematically, it is only the latest of the disciplines to go down this self-destructive, dark, and perilous path. This is the contemporary social variant of Dante's and Camus' Inferno -- silence in the face of unspeakable political and economic oppression with its corresponding abuse, degradation, and exploitation of humanity -- silence in the face of an infinite and impenetrable void of moral, spiritual, and theoretical emptiness creating an unimaginable intellectual wasteland with no focus or future. These are the academic conditions that provided the fertile ground for Horkheimer's reasonable and terrifying fears years ago that have only intensified and become more real and more dangerous today.

Aristotle was the first true social theorist who combined the study of virtue, happiness, wisdom, moral philosophy, and ethics in the Nicomachean Ethics with the historical and empirical analysis of the structures of a moral economy, forms of the best and worst governments, and political democracy in The Politics. Following closely centuries later, Marx combined his early inquiry into philosophical anthropology, social ethics, and human need in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 with the critical examination of industrial production, labor theory of value, economic exploitation, and political economy in his later economic writings in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Capital. In the twenty-first century this integration of the humanities and social sciences must continue to combine the moral and social values which give meaning and purpose to human life with the social institutions which make them concrete, real, and possible. A failure to integrate classical Greek Politics with Ethics or integrate modern Sociology with Ethics creates real problems for the development of a critical social theory: Sociology without Ethics makes Sociology blind, irrelevant, and meaningless since it is unable to understand or challenge the given reality of the times, whereas Ethics and Philosophy without Sociology are metaphysically speculative, theoretically abstract, and politically empty. In both cases a critical theory of social justice becomes impossible since one has ideals without an historical and economic context to make them alive and relevant or has a detailed empirical and historical understanding of social reality without ethical and political ideals to serve as the basis for an incisive social critique and a call for comprehensive, structural social change.

With the narrow fragmentation and scientization (naturalism, nominalism, and positivism) of the American academy, this integration seems unlikely and difficult in the near future. The academy has truly become an iron cage of thought and imagination; this situation of the closed and abandoned mind is a result of the dark shadows of the Enlightenment. It is not simply a question of interesting and competing theories and ideals of social reality that can be articulated and publicly debated within the academy. Rather, the very ability to articulate and discuss differences are made impossible since many of the concepts, methods, and orientations of classical and contemporary European social theory have been repressed into a social unconsciousness or state of collective amnesia. Those intellectual traditions spanning the ancient and modern thinkers within sociology that are grounded in different epistemologies, philosophies of science, methodologies, and social theories are lost and forgotten because they do not conform to the accepted standards and textbook definitions of social science and research methods today. And if these social traditions cannot be reassembled and incorporated into a naturalistic and positivistic science, they are left behind and forgotten resulting in the loss of a number of critical schools of thought that could help us better understand and explain the world we live in. This specialized and scientific paralysis keeps us publicly and academically speechless as we are unable to ask substantive and informative questions about the structures and morality of contemporary political economy.

Liberal Arts have been transformed into a defense of the given institutions and values of liberalism, resulting in an unfortunate and unavoidable continuation of classical disenchantment, moral nihilism, alienation, and the eclipse of reason, logic, and science. Without these critical traditions, ideas, and concepts and without our moral, ethical, social, and political values, reason is silenced, thought is lost, and reflection remains mechanically and causally reflexive. Horkheimer has insightfully written that the rise of positivism and the displacement of the humanities has resulted in a situation within the academy and the public sphere where "reason has liquidated itself as an agency of ethical, moral, and religious insight." And it is clear from history that the liquidation of reason precedes the liquidation of human beings. Heinrich Heine presciently wrote in 1820-21: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" -- "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people." This is true today even when the idea of "burning of books" becomes more subtle, complex, and metatheoretical as it is transformed into the repression of ideas and the exile of thoughts, theories, and traditions from consciousness. And, with the loss of these principles and ideals, we lose our heart, spirit, and intellect, along with our ability to change history and society for the better. This liquidation of reason has produced both the iron cage and the holocaust of the mind and the body. In the end, silence is an ethical and political betrayal of humanity, our inherent dignity, our ultimate purpose and meaning in life, and, finally, our dreams and future. There is only existential nothingness and the end of our hopes for true enlightenment, justice, and democracy as we descend deeper and deeper into the morass and confusion of authoritarianism and plutocracy.

           More recently, Professor McCarthy has turned his attention to the interaction among science, nature, and society as he attempts to integrate issues of ecological justice with social justice. To date, he has published ten books mainly in the area of 19th- and 20th-century German social theory. Three of these books have been translated into foreign languages -- Chinese and Japanese.