Marx on Bentham - The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

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Writes Karl Marx,

To know what is useful for a dog, one must investigate the nature of dogs. This nature is not itself deducible from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would judge all human acts, movements, relations, etc. according to the principle of utility would first have to deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as historically modified in each epoch. Bentham does not trouble himself with this. With the driest naiveté he assumes that the modern petty bourgeois, especially the English petty bourgeois, is the normal man. Whatever is useful to this particular kind of normal man, and to his world, is useful in and for itself. He applies this yardstick to the past, the present and the future. 

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, footnote 51 to Ch. 24, p. 758

My comment:

If Bentham is crude in applying his “yardstick”, he is in good company with Marx, whose visions of class struggle and communism presuppose the crudest and most uncaring idea of human needs. Marx’s “yardstick” turned out to be far more dangerous to the human race than Bentham’s awkward reasoning. 

In his blog, Geoffrey Hodgson has a readable piece entitled is “Marxism right-wing?" 

http://newpolitics.apps-1and1.net/is-marxism-right-wing 

It is time for the left to become seriously self-critical, like Hodgson, rather than wallowing in the promise of their long discredited Marxian heroes.

[Marx macht sich über Ungereimtheiten in Benthams utilitaristischem Menschenbild lustig. Nur ist diese Kritik nichts wert, wenn sie verstanden sein will als eine Antwort, die Marxens eigenem, mindestens ebenso krudem Menschenbild entspringt. Marx kennt nur Menschenmaterial, an dem sich die Prophetie seiner deterministischen Geschichtsvision vollzieht — Staffage, die abzuschlachten ist, wenn sie sich auf der falschen Seite der Geschichte befindet. 

Es ist Zeit, dass sich die Linke in Selbst-Kritik übt, so wie Hodgson dies tut, statt sich am Versprechen zu laben, das sie noch immer ihren längst diskreditierten Heroen abgewinnen.

Hodgson bringt es auf den Punkt, wenn er argumentiert, dass das Marxsche Dogma von der Herrschaft der Arbeiterklasse, das Prinzip allgemeiner Menschenrechte aushebelt und damit das Fundament der originären Linken verlässt.]

[T]he Marxist dogma of working-class rule faces unavoidable problems that impel it towards totalitarianism rather than democracy. The Marxist notion of class domination removes rights from major segments of the population. Gone is the original Left defence of universal rights. Removing rights from a segment of the population – whether it is to suppress a social class, an ethnic group, or followers of a particular religion – undermines universal rights and liberties that apply to everyone.

Quelle.

See also Is the Left Reactionary?