AH, -ENGELS BEST ! ( 4)

" The conception of good and bad have varied so much from nation to nation and from age to age that they have often been in contradiction to aech other. Bu all the same ,sameone may object, good is not bad and bad is not good; if good is confused with bad, there is an end to all morality and everyone can do and leave undone whatever he cares... If it were such an easy business there certainly would be not dispute at all over good and bad. But how things stand today? What morality is preached to us today? There is first Christian feudal morality, inherited from past centuries of faith, and this again has two main subdivision, Catholic and Protestant moralities, each of which in turn has no lack of further subdivision,from the Jesuit Catholic and orthodox Prothestant to loose "advanced" moralities. Alongside to these we find the modern burgeois morality,and with it,too,the proleterian morality of the future, so that in the most advanced European countrie alone the past, present and future provide three gret groups of moral theories which are in force simultneosly and alongside of each other, Which is then the true one ? Not one of them in the sense of havig apsolute validity, but certainly that morality which contains the maximum of durable elementis the one which, in the presentss the overtrow of the present, represents the future- that is, the proleterian. But when we see tha the three of modern society,,,,, the feudal aristoracy, the bougeosie, and the prleterian have their special morality, we can only draw the one conclusion, that men, conciously or unconcious, derive their moral idea in the last resort from the practical relation, on which their class position is based-from the economic relations in which they carry on production and exchange. But nevertheless there is much that is in common to the three moral theories mentioned above. Is this not at least a portion of morality which is esternally fixed? These moral theories reprsent three different stage of the same historical development, and have therefor a commom historical beckground, and for that reason alone they necessarely have much in common. Even more. In similar or aproximtely simlar stages of economic development moral theories must of necesarelity be more or less in agreement. From the moment when private property inmovable objects developed,in all societies in which this private property existed there must be this moral law in common: Thu shalt not steal. Does this law thebay become an eternal moral law? By no means. In a society in which the motive for stealing has been done away with,in which therefor at the very most only lunatics would ever steal, how the teacher of morals would be louhet at who tried solemly to proclaim the eternal truth: Thu shalt not steal !.....