ABSTRACT
IN THE field of ethics, the work of Karl Marx has become largely identified with the “exposure” of moral injunctions and codes. His materialist treatment of ideologies is rightly taken to mean that historical moral codes and beliefs should not be treated as true or false, valid or invalid, but simply as “expressions” of the “material” demands of specific social classes. His own theory, Marx insisted, was not an ideology, but a “scientific” socialism based on positive discoveries in history and economics. It was not derived from any postulation of abstract, immutable moral principles or codes.
