American University Marxism and Communism Essay (A research problem is a definite or clear expression [statement] about an area of concern, a condition to

American University Marxism and Communism Essay (A research problem is a definite or clear expression [statement] about an area of concern, a condition to be improved upon, a difficulty to be eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or within existing practice that points to a need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation. A research problem does not state how to do something, offer a vague or broad proposition, or present a value claim. In philosophy, the research problem establishes the means by which you interrogate the relevant literature, and drives both your argument and implications for new knowledge and understanding).

A template for the problem identification essay includes:

Introducing the reader to the importance of the topic for study, and the uniqueness of your question.
Placing the topic into a particular context that defines or identifies the parameters of what would be investigated (if you were to write a full essay).
Anchoring the specific research questions, hypotheses, or assumptions that would follow in your study (if you were to write a full essay).
Fleshing or parsing out the question in its complexities.
Proposing new and better questions as a result of #4.
Providing the framework for reporting the results and indicating what is probably necessary to conduct the study and explain how the findings will present this information(if you were to write a full essay).

A template for the abstract to a researched argument essay should:

1.Convey the study’s importance, benefits, and justification

2.Demonstrate a researchable topic or issue—the feasibility of conducting the study is based upon access to information that can be effectively acquired, gathered, interpreted, synthesized, and understood

3.Identify what would be studied, specifically, while avoiding the use of value-laden words and terms,

4.Identify an overarching question or small set of questions accompanied by key factors or variables

5.Identify key concepts and terms

6.Articulate the study’s conceptual boundaries or parameters or limitations

Convey more than the mere gathering of descriptive data, or providing only a snapshot of the issue or phenomenon under investigation

An introduction to a researched argument essay should contain:

A lead-in that helps ensure the reader will maintain interest over the study
A declaration of originality—how your study adds to the prior literature
An indication of the central focus of the study—establishing the issue and boundaries of analysis
An explanation of the study’s significance or the benefits to be derived from investigating the research problem

NOTE: An introductory statement describing the research problem of your essay should not be viewed as a thesis statement with which you may be very familiar. Instead, you establish the philosophical problem, present the research, and then offer a very soft claim.

There are four general conceptualizations of a research problem in the social sciences:

1.Casuist Research Problem — this type of problem relates to the determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by analyzing moral dilemmas through the application of general rules and the careful distinction of special cases.

2.Difference Research Problem — typically asks the question, “Is there a difference between two or more groups or treatments?” This type of problem statement is used when the researcher compares or contrasts two or more phenomena. This a common approach to defining a problem in the clinical social sciences or behavioral sciences.

3.Descriptive Research Problem — typically asks the question, “what is…?” with the underlying purpose to describe the significance of a situation, state, or existence of a specific phenomenon. This problem is often associated with revealing hidden or understudied issues.

4.Relational Research Problem — suggests a relationship of some sort between two or more variables to be investigated. The underlying purpose is to investigate specific qualities or characteristics that may be connected in some way.

RUBRIC:

INDIVIDUAL ESSAY RUBRICS

Section 1) Extracting the question(s):

a) As far as you are concerned, what ethical question(s) arose from the film of your/the group’s choice?—parse out the intricacies of the question(s) as you see it/them

b) As far as you are concerned, what ethical question(s) were addressed insufficiently or not at all (but should have been)?

Section 2) Response to the question(s):

a) Having identified and fleshed out your question(s), what are your thoughts?

In what ways would you (would you?) claim responsibility for these ethical issues?
How does this response square with your worldview?

Section 3) What soft claim can you make toward some resolve of the ethical issue(s)?

Section 4) What new questions arise for you from sections 1-3? A Marxist Approach to Business Ethics
Author(s): J. Angelo Corlett
Source: Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 99-103
Published by: Springer
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Business Ethics
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A Marxist Approach
to Business Ethics J. Angelo Corlett
ABSTRACT. This paper contains a philosophical
explication of some of the essentials of a Marxist
approach to business ethics. A Marxist approach is
construed as a moral critique of capitalism. This paper
hopes to lay the groundwork for a more detailed
analysis of Karl Marx’s critique of capitalist
economies.
correct. A purportedly adequate and compre
hensive approach to business ethics which fails to
take into account at least some of what is foun
dational to Marx’s philosophy can hardly be taken
seriously. Moreover, it would demonstrate a
fundamental ignorance of such an approach
concerning the basicality of a study of political
Given the paucity of serious philosophical con
sideration of Marx’s critique of capitalism by
most business ethicists in the United States, one
might hastily infer that a Marxist approach to
business ethics is not a live option. In the United
States, many seem to believe that the restruc
turing of the former Soviet Union amounts to
the death of communism. From this assumption,
they go on to infer that Marxism is dead.
Of course, no such inferences are valid as
stated. After all, a significant percentage of the
world population is still dedicated to some form
of Marxist politics and economics. Whatever
happened or is going to happen to the former
Soviet Union, Marxism is still alive. Furthermore,
it is as wrongheaded to insist that Marx has
nothing valuable to say about business ethics as
it is to maintain that everything Marx posited was
J. Angelo Corlett is currently an Assistant Professor of
Philosophy at San Diego State University. He is the
author of Analyzing Social Knowledge (Rowman &
Littlefield, 1996), the Editor of Equality and Liberty:
Analyzing Rawls and Nozick (Macmillan, 1991),
and is completing the following books: Racism and
Reparations and Terrorism and Secession. He
has written widely in the areas of epistemology, moral,

social and political philosophy. Corlett is Founding
Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Ethics, a Kluwer
publications.
philosophy for a viable approach to business
ethics. An approach to business ethics which
unintentionally omits a significant consideration
of Marx’s critique of capitalism is simply incom
plete. But an approach that knowingly does so is
not only incomplete, but represents the height of
philosophical arrogance! What business ethics
needs is not more of the ethicist’s new philo
sophical clothes, presented in the biased, cold
war garb of anti-Marxist assumptions one heaped
upon another. For this is precisely the sort of
theoretical presumptuousness which will drive
the field of business ethics into disrespect by the
mainstream of philosophy.
It behooves us, then, to consider the nature
and function of a Marxist approach to business
ethics. What might a Marxist approach to
business ethics look like, and why? This is a
rather difficult undertaking because so much of
this problem rests on issues of profound social
and political philosophical importance. Never
theless, some things are pretty obvious. One is
that a Marxist approach would not require the
elimination of all forms of business enterprise in
favor of some anti-business Utopian social ideal.
Marx himself deplored utopianism, as we know
from his harsh criticism of the “critical-utopian”
socialists and communists.1 But Marx did not
criticize business per se. Thus the Marxist need
not, and should not, see it as being intrinsically
evil. Furthermore, a Marxist approach to business
Journal of Business Ethics 17: 99-103, 1998.
? 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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100 J. Angelo Corlett
ethics should not hold that business ethics is an
arena to which Marxian philosophy does not
have an important contribution to make.
If Allen Wood’s thesis2 concerning the nature
of Marx’s critique of capitalism is false, then
Marx did offer a blistering moral condemnation
of capitalism forms of production.3 It was
descriptive of many of the sorts of problems
underlying capitalism. However, it was also nor
mative in the manner in which it suggested to
us how we ought not to conduct business. ?
Marxist approach to business ethics, it seems, will
consist of a moral challenge to the problems
facing capitalist business enterprises. It will seek
to accurately describe various workplace contexts
in order to then provide a moral critique of
uniquely capitalist forms of business.
The general argumentative strategy of a
Marxist approach to business ethics, then, is to
criticize capitalism by way of pointing out how
morally incompetent it is at the very core of its
being, e.g., the heart and soul of its business
communities. More specifically, a Marxist
approach will seek to undermine capitalist claims
to adequacy and superiority by exposing funda
mental flaws in the ways in which businesses do
and can operate under capitalism. In so doing, a
Marxist hopes to lay bare the essential facts of
capitalist business practices, ones which are
inimical to it. For instance, if it turns out that
moral responsibility (liability), punishment and
the like are crucial for any morally viable socio
economic regime, and if it also turns out that
capitalism, or at least certain forms of it, are
simply unable (without contradiction) to ade
quately accommodate the respecting of these
moral ideals, then a Marxist can argue for the
moral inadequacy of such capitalisms. There is,
then, a critical role or function that a Marxist
complex these categories might become in
today’s world. For a Marxist, the capitalist
business context is one in which employees are
alienated from each other, the products of their
labor, employers and from themselves. They are
oppressed in a variety of other ways, as a Marxist
approach must point out with crucial detail to
particular business situations. A Marxist approach
will see capitalist business as a setting for power
struggles between the several classes of business
persons, a struggle and instability which will last
until the end of capitalism and the dawning of a
new era in which the problems of capitalism are
minimized and eventually eliminated.
But in the scathing moral indictment of
capitalist business workings is the normative
feature of a Marxist approach to business ethics.
Here there is much in common with Robert
Solomon’s Aristotelian approach to business
ethics, where the individual is seen as being
embedded in a community and where the
ultimate importance for one is happiness and
where happiness is the sole measure of success,
both individually and collectively.4 There seems
to be no reason to think that at least this much
of Aristotle’s ethics of virtue is incongruent with
the positive message of a Marxist approach to
business ethics.
However, unlike Solomon’s Aristotelian
approach to business ethics, a Marxist one will
focus very much on power relations between
individuals within the business communities,
between corporations, businesses, partnerships,
etc. within those communities, and between the
business communities and non-business commu
nities. For it is power, at the very least, which
effects the lives of both individuals and collec
already alluded to, a descriptive one. In its
tives in society. A Marxist approach to business
ethics will analyze socio-economic and political
power internal and external to business commu
nities and devote attention to matters of justice
(retributive and distributive) and fairness. In the
end, a Marxist approach to business ethics will
share a great deal with Solomon’s Aristotelian
approach. But Solomon’s approach seems not to
dwell so much on matters of distributive and ret
critique of capitalist political economies, it will
ributive justice as might the Marxist approach.
between employees and employers, however
approach to business ethics and that of Solomon’s
approach to business ethics serves relative to cap
italist business life. It is to serve as the moral
gadfly of capitalist business practices and ideolo
gies.
A Marxist approach to business ethics will
contain at least two primary features. One is, as
construe the business context as a battlefield
Another difference between a Marxist
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A Marxist Approach to Business Ethics 101
is that, while Solomon does not seem to say
much about whether or not the private owner
ship of the means of production is morally
justified, a Marxist approach would explicitly
deny that it is. In fact, that it allows for and
promotes the private ownership of the means of
production is a defining and morally condemna
tory feature of capitalism, according to Marx. If
this is the case, then while Solomon might think
that capitalism with moral character is plausible,
a Marxist would not. Not as long as capitalism
is defined, at least partly, in terms of the moral
permission or right to the private ownership of
the means of production.
Furthermore, a Marxist approach to business
ethics will share some features of a fundamentally
Kantian approach. For example, the Marxist
condemnation of workers being forced (under
capitalism) to sell their labor power is congruent
with the importance Kantian ethics attaches to
human freedom.3 Also, the Marxist criticism of
capitalism exploitation of workers is consistent
with the “end in itself formula” of the Cate
business ethic, there are some crucial points that
follow from the Marxist condemnation of capi
talism’s allowance of or right to the private
ownership of the means of production. First, a
Marxist approach to business ethics would say
that, to the extent that such a right or liberty is
morally problematic, certain claims can be made
regarding employee rights. For example, the
question of whether or not corporations, com
panies, and so forth have moral duties to their
respective employees is answered in the affirma
tive. This follows to the extent that employees,
on a Marxist account, have a valid moral claim
or interest to be treated with respect, dignity, and
absent alienation and exploitation due to the
capitalist class structure.7
Another feature of a Marxist approach to
business ethics is its commitment to a commu
nity-oriented sense of moral and legal responsi
bility. In a Marxist regime, the structure of
business organizations might be such that they
are highly democratic. And there are at least two
general ways in which business organizations can
gorical Imperatives.6 There are, however, some
differences between a Marxist approach and a
Kantian one. Perhaps the most conspicuous one
is that the former decries the idealism of the
be democratized. One is representatively, the
latter, seeking rather to study ethical problems
represent the employees on matters of institu
tional obligations, rights, etc. However, repre
in the light of the human experience than by the
other is directly. When a corporation is democ
ratized in a representative manner, a corporation’s
top managers are elected by its employees to
idealism and certain absolute moral rules. More
light of practical reason rooted in German
sentative corporate democracy provides the
employees with insufficient opportunities to
specifically, it is difficult to find in Kant’s idealism
significantly determine corporate policy which
the revolutionary praxis of Marx. So while a
Marxist approach to business ethics would share
some features with a Kantian one, it would differ
in crucial respects.
Thus far the focus of the nature of a Marxist
approach to business ethics has been on its
critical role in relation to capitalist business ethics
and some ways in which a Marxist approach
compares to and contrasts with some other
approaches. But a Marxist approach must also
provide a positive account of business ethics in a
Marxist society. It is one thing for the Marxist
to successfully critique capitalism in the context
of business ethics. It is quite another thing for
her to set forth and defend a Marxist business
ethic.
in turn effect employee’ activities.8 Thus directly
democratic corporate structures are preferred
over less direct ones insofar as the empowerment
of all members of the corporation is concerned.
This might mean that “some form of codeter
mination” of corporate policy, “in which boards
of directors contain in equal numbers represen
tatives of employees and nonemployee investors,”
is preferable to representative corporate democ
racy.9 To the extent that structural democracy
obtains in business organizations, they as collec
tives can be legitimately held morally account
able for wrongdoings so long as the conditions
of collective moral liability are satisfied to some
meaningful extent. This would not mean that
persons in business contexts are not individually
By way of a positive account of a Marxist
responsible for their own wrongdoings. It means,
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102 J. Angelo Corlett
rather, that on a Marxist account, there is in
general good reason to hold both certain indi
viduals and collectives responsible for untoward
events for which they are at fault.10
A Marxist might argue that the democratiza
tion of corporations and other businesses and in
critique of capitalism. However, was not Marx a
scathing critic of moral theory? If so, does this
not work against the idea that a Marxist approach
to business ethics serves as a moral critique of
capitalism?
also serves as a basis for the Marxist idea of
An adequate answer to this line of thinking
would require an all-out refutation of the claim
that Marx condemns moral theory and that he
subscribes to some form of moral relativism,
collective and public ownership of the means of
moral subjectivism or even moral scepticism. But
a non-capitalist way does more than effect certain
corporate-collective moral liability ascriptions. It
production. And it is this idea which most
separates Marxists from those who do business
ethics from a capitalist standpoint. And it is the
capitalist notion of the private ownership of the
means of production which makes capitalist
exploitation possible. In other words, the private
ownership of the means of production is morally
wrong because it enables capitalists to extract
value from what workers alone produce.11
One might argue that the alleged exploitation
of workers by capitalists is undermined in that
workers willingly sell their labor power to capi
talists. And if labor is sold freely, then it repre
sents a morally justified exchange between two
or more parties.
But as Marx argues, workers under capitalism
are forced to sell their labor power.12 G. A.
Cohen has argued that workers are collectively
forced to sell their labor power.13 For as a class
they are incapable of escaping the working class.
I have argued that even individual workers are
forced to sell their labor power in capitalism to
the extent that the capitalist mode of produc
tion affords workers with forced choices, or ones
which do not constitute a worker’s “ability to
work elsewhere.”14
since my intent is to present an outline of a
Marxist approach to business ethics, and not a
comprehensive account, I will say only a few
words in support of the claim that Marx offers a
moral critique of capitalism.
There is inadequate reason in Marx’s writings
to warrant the idea that Marx had no moral
condemnation of capitalism. One can scarcely
make sense of his critique of capitalism unless
one interprets it in light of Marx’s underlying,
but unstated or unrecognized, assumption that
what is wrong with capitalism is its fundamental
immorality. How else, except by attributing to
Marx the implausible doctrine of complete his
torical inevitability, could one make sense of
Marx’s charges of capitalist exploitation, immis
eration, oppression and the need for revolu
tionary change from capitalist to communist
modes of production?
One concern about a Marxist approach to
business ethics is whether or not it can be com
prehensive in scope. Can a comprehensive theory
of business ethics be extracted from the writings
of Marx? This is an important question. For if
the answer is negative, then it follows that a
comprehensive approach to business ethics will
That workers are in a significant way forced to
sell their labor power relates to the Marxist
charge of capitalist exploitation. But what Cohen
shows is that these phenomena are made possible
by the capitalist doctrine of the private owner
ship of the means of production. A Marxist
approach to business ethics will seek to provide
need to include and go beyond Marx’s critique
of capitalism.
There is reason to believe that Marx’s philos
ophy is incapable of supplying for us sufficient
reason to say that a Marxist theory of business
ethics which relies solely on what Marx wrote
could be comprehensive. As far as I am aware,
substance to these criticisms of capitalism,
perhaps using case studies from capitalist busi
nesses to illustrate each point.
It might be argued that the picture I have
drawn of a Marxist approach to business ethics
Marx does not place sufficient emphasis on
wrongly presupposes that Marx sets forth a moral
all but ignored by Marx. To the extent that a
environmental factors both in his critique of
capitalism and in his words concerning its
replacement society. The question of how impor
tant the environment is in business contexts is
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A Marxist Approach to Business Ethics 103
comprehensive approach to business ethics
requires some account of the role of environ
mental concerns for businesses, then, a Marxist
approach will be found somewhat wanting. This
is not to say, however, that a Marxist approach
cannot and should not supplement Marx’s
critique of capitalism with a strong and reasoned
environmental concern. It is important for a
Marxist approach to remain ever open to change
and new issues having moral import. Like any
other approach to business ethics, it too must
seek to provide plausible answers to an increasing
array of difficult questions facing those in the
business communities, both locally and globally.
If my outline of a Marxist approach to business
ethics is on target, then business ethics in the
United States must become ever mindful of the
fundamental moral problems with capitalism.
This is especially true given that the capitalist
mode of production seems to be a naive assump
tion on the part of most business ethicists in the
United States. Surely one moral of the story here
is that business ethics is inescapably political. That
is, to do business ethics well means t…
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