ABSTRACT
Given Marx’s concept of justice, it is obvious that for him the question whether capitalist exploitation should be abolished or not does not turn on whether it is just or unjust. Instead, it turns on whether capitalist social relations correspond to the existing stage of society’s productive powers and whether they are conducive to the further development of these powers. Engels’ interpretation of Hegel is correct. Hegel sees morality as basically a conservative social force, an aspect of human culture which periodically must be violated and overthrown by the movement of history to make way for what is novel, higher and more rational. Marx and Nietzsche both approach morality by attempting to identify the role it actually plays in human life, and to evaluate moral values themselves according to the way they promote or impede the development of humanity’s nonmoral potentialities.
