The name is absent

Doctrine of Natural Rights

V. BOURGEOIS OR CHRISTIAN MORALITY AND THE

EVERLASTING MAN

A

It seems reasonably clear from the foregoing where the
deepest issues of modern life lie. There are indeed funda-
mental economic issues, and with these are bound up other
problems of the most fundamental kind, both practical and
philosophical. It is impossible to change our economic and
political structures without affecting the moral values which
they presuppose. But the issue is deeper than this, namely,
whether the degradation of democratic dogma, and all that
it involves, does not mean ultimately the derationalizing
and dehumanizing of man.

But it may be asked why not destroy these values : why
should the loss of the democratic dogma mean necessarily
degradation? Why not destroy bourgeois morality and sub-
stitute what Sorel calls proletarian morality, or Nietzsche
the morality of the higher man? Why not abandon the no-
tion of universal rights and justice and substitute racial con-
ceptions of justice? Man’s moral codes and values have
changed in the past. Why not a complete change in the
future ?

Well, I may be dreadfully wrong, but I do not believe
that there is any such thing as proletarian morality; any
such thing as racial morality or any “new morality” of any
kind. There is only human morality and, as a philosopher
who has given a great deal of thought to this question, I be-
lieve that human morality expresses the laws of nature and
of God.

Leon Trotsky wrote a book making fun of proletarian art
and the ridiculous and artificial attempt to create it. “There
is,” he said, “no such thing as proletarian art—only human
art.” I think he is right and that the same holds for moral-

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