André Comte-Sponville wrote a best-selling book in 2004 (reprinted in 2009) in which he defends the idea that capitalism does not have to be judged morally on an economic level, that it is therefore neither moral nor immoral, but "amoral". He does so in a subtle way: inspired by the theory of the three orders of Pascal (body, mind, charity), he distinguishes four: technical-scientific, juridico-political, moral and finally that of love. It integrates the economy into the former, in the form of mechanisms obeying domestic laws to which its agents are subject and which, therefore, are exempt from any judgment of moral value, important productive efficiency alone.
This approach (which does not exclude that the system can be somewhat regulated from the outside) is part of a general movement of moral withdrawal in the sphere of interindividual relations, cutting its link to politics and social relations. And it contains a serious error: it forgets that, as Marx pointed out, the economy is made up of practices by which some men behave in a certain way towards other men, for example by exploiting them. It is therefore not exempt from the moral judgment, which is entitled to say that capitalism is immoral. This conference aims to demonstrate this.
29 сен 2024
