ABSTRACT
In the Anglo-American philosophical world in recent years there has been a flood of articles and several books roughly in the analytical mode explicating, interpreting, and not infrequently defending Marx and some forms of Marxism. According to Miller, when Marx spoke of the Paris Commune, it was patently evident that the Communards who risked their necks had no good reason to believe that their families and close friends would profit by their actions. Morality, as Miller characterized it—and this characterization seems to the author distinctively modern—has three basic characteristics: equality, general norms, and universality. However, the exact, or inexact, nature of the standard of equality is a matter of controversy. Sufficient equality of productive resources is ephemeral, at best, in a modern setting of physically interdependent production. Wood saw Marx, in the domain of normative argument, fastening on working-class oppression.
