Ethical critiques of capitalism undermine the very socialism they advocate

Evidence

In effect, Michaels here replays the great debate about the ethical (and vaguely Kantian) nature of Second International socialism: among others, but with greater precision, Lukacs diagnosed it as a moral imperative that summons us to create something which does not exist and can therefore virtually by definition never be realized. The projection of “socialism” as a radical ethical alternate to the existing order virtually ensures the impossibility of its coming into being: and this, not despite its plausibility and power as an ethical critique of capitalism, but virtually in proportion to it. On an empirical level (but Lukacs’s is also a telling critique of the very category of the ethical in Kant’s thought), it is clear that the more corrupt and evil the existing order is, the less likelihood for anything better to emerge from it. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 466

Categorization

• XREF: This is the ‘pregnant future’ versus ‘ethical utopia’ distinction — connects to the reader’s goal of mapping their own position; echoes older debates about utopian thinking versus emergent structures. — connects to: Scientific and ethical appraisal of capitalism are compatible, contrary to Jameson — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 492; Socialism lacks an intrinsic art of government and must invent one — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 586; Moral critiques of capitalism only strengthen its realism — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 36
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does this distinction between ethical-utopian and dialectical-emergent forms of political hope map onto how contemporary movements actually operate?