Vol. 6 No. 5 1939 - page 28

28
PARTISAN REVIEW
sense, we can say that socialism has an ethical content which is not
to be confused with the morals of socialist parties, even though it
more or less contributes to the shaping of these morals.
This way of putting it may not be clear to those who have not
thought very much about these matters. Let me give an illustration.
We should look for the same relationships between ethics and
morals as between a work of art and its beauty. Every authentic
work of art is beautiful, but it is not only and not solely beautiful.
More often than not, it has been conceived with an end
in
mind
which is useful or educational or amusing or didactic or religious
or political or patriotic or humanitarian. A work of art is thus
beautiful quite apart from the intentions of the artist, the school,
the party, the church or the government which called it into being.
It retains its beauty even after the utilitarian ends it was designed
to serve have become obsolete. None of us venerate Zeus or
Minerva or Apollo, but the ancient statues which represent them
still move us with their pure beauty. They have lost, these statues,
their original function, and now they are only beautiful. There are
certain art critics who dishonor Marxism because, in the name of
their sham Marxism, they see in works of art only fortuitous
sociological influences. Poor men and indeed to be pitied, poor
pe~ple
who do not know the meaning of beauty!
The same influences shape and deform the ethical ideal of
man, whether it be inherited or whether, because of existing con·
ditions, it includes the need for reform or revolution. That which
results and which serves more or less as a guide in practical life,
that we call "morals." A valuation of morals which confined itself
exclusively to judgments of utility would be inadequate and, in
fact, contrary to their nature. Morals must also be considered in
relation to the ethical ideal which they embody-or pretend to
embody. I consider all utilitarian morality bourgeois and reac·
tionary. Being utilitarian, it is not morality. It is a theory which
is helpful in criticising the decadence of the bourgeois order, but it
is entirely inadequate for the construction of a new society. That
is to say,
it
becomes the opposite of utilitarian. A socialist move·
ment which, in order to win and keep power more easily, makes
hay of the ethical principles of socialism, is doomed to see the chief
~prings
of its vital force dry up. Behind the mask of the most
democratic constitution in the world, the new society without pri·
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