Gilbert, Alan. “Historical Theory and the Structure of Moral Argument in Marx.” Political Theory, Vol. 9 (1981), pp. 173–205.

From the Publisher:

“Marx’s critique of prevailing moralities can, however, be mistakenly

interpreted as denying any separable sphere of moral argument and re-
flection. In this view, which I will call the historicist critique of morality,
Marx saw all moral judgments including his own as inextricably
context- or origin-dependent.2 Not only do prevailing moralities shift
with changes in the mode of production, but according to the historicist,
the appropriate norms for moral judgment must change as well. Since
historicists see “justice” as the system of law which suits the needs of the
prevailing form of production, they consider slavery, feudalism and
capitalism each as having been “just” social orders, but the term just no
longer carries much weight. It refers merely to that system of law valid
for a certain mode of production. (Allen W. Wood has offered the best
presentation of this view.)3 As a defender of historicism might note,
Marx often warned against substituting moral outrage at injustice and
an accompanying inaccurate social theory for a materialist analysis of
social and political forces and of realizable alternative courses of
development.”

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