Species being, the good, and Leon Trotsky: A response to the Chris Cutrone / Benjamin Studebaker exchange regarding ideology critique

Tom Canel

Platypus Review 183 | February 2026

“But the pursuit of the emancipation and transformation of social relations is very different from that of the good. For the issue is not the good that resides in every body, but rather the social relations that develop the subjectivity of everyone.”

— Chris Cutrone^[1]

THE ASSERTION ABOVE constituted an important moment in the recent highly edifying exchange between Chris Cutrone and Benjamin Studebaker^[2] over ideology critique. A key bone of contention in this exchange has been whether Marxists (and everyone else for that matter) need a conception of the good as well as one of freedom; Studebaker suggests that everybody, including Marxists, should ground their politics on the twin abstract values of the good and freedom, while Cutrone has argued for an emphasis on freedom, arguing if freedom is taken care of, the good will take care of itself.

The quotation above suggests three claims that seem essential to Chris Cutrone’s argument: (1) the good is taken to reside somehow in the body, if it resides anywhere. (2) Residence in the body separates the good from social relations, while, in contrast, social freedom is generated by social relations. (3) Marxism concerns itself exclusively with that generated by social relations and is therefore uninterested in anything that is abstracted from those social relations, such as the good supposedly residing in the individual body.

The claim that the human body is separable from social relations deserves an immanent Marxist critique. While I would accept the claim that the good would reside in the body if anywhere, I think it is un-Marxist (not that I claim to be a true Marxist myself!) to conceptualize the human body as separate from human social relations. Any good residing in the individual body would also be inseparable from social relations As a result, a Marxist conception of the good cannot be ruled out a priori. Indeed, such a conception is implicit in Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844). This conception of the good, I shall argue, is taken up by at least one controversially canonical Marxist: Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, in works such as Problems of Everyday Life^[3] and “Their Morals and Ours,”^[4] appropriates this notion of the good and derives from it a politicized and historicized account of the human virtues that are demanded of us at different social conjunctures. Studebaker astutely stresses the salience of the virtue of “practical wisdom” (prudentia in Latin and phronesis in Ancient Greek). I will argue that even in an emancipated communist society, this virtue will need to be prioritized.

If we take the early Marx to be as canonical as his older iteration, the notion of “species being” should be seen as Marxism-friendly. For the early Marx, the body of any animal is a particular incarnation of that animal’s species being. Thus, the individual human body will be a particular incarnation of a general human species being. Since Marxists aver that there is no transhistorical human essence, they will see human species being as being specified at a particular moment in history but changing as social relations develop historically. If Human species being does not exist apart from social relations, and a historicized notion of the good could be derived from a historicized notion of species being, then the Marxist-friendly notion of the good could be derived. That a Marxist understanding of the human body must be conceived in essentially historical terms, related to historically specific relations, is actually affirmed, implicitly and explicitly, throughout Marxist philosophical texts. For example, Georg Lukács, in his 1967 preface to History and Class Consciousness (1923), acknowledges that in the book he frequently made the claim that nature is a social category.^[5] If the “human body” is a natural category, it must also be a social one, at least for the “middle” Lukács.

One arguably less canonical Marxist also can usefully be cited here. In his book Illusion and Reality (1937), Christopher Caudwell writes, “We must repeat the warning against mechanically separating genetic individuality from social differentiation. One is a means of realizing the other.”^[6] I must admit I am not certain that “genetic” is being used in the biological rather than the psychoanalytic sense, but, since Caudwell would have had a materialist understanding of psychoanalysis anyway, in either case “genetic individuality” would relate to human bodies. For Marxists analysis of human bodies should not be abstracted from social relationships. Thus, if a notion of the good is derived from notions associated with the human being’s body being inseparable from social relations, it is plausible to claim that we could develop a rigorously Marxist conception of the good.

In identifying human species being with human nature and historicizing Aristotle’s natural ethics, but historicizing them, it can arguably allow one to derive a Marxist notion of the good. For Aristotle what was good for something or someone was determined by natural purpose. Fulfilling something’s nature would be what was good for it. Aristotle’s natural ethics imputed teleological ends to things and kinds of things. A thing’s final end was understood to be its “good.” For example, since involvement in a polis^[7] was considered natural for humans, civic virtue was considered a natural good. Clearly a Marxist conception of what is natural for humans can be expected to be different from the Aristotelian conception; Marxism demands that we historicize concepts in a way that Aristotle, bound by his own pre-modern context, was unable to do. It behooves us to investigate the historicity implicit in Marx’s understanding of “species being.” We can then investigate how the social relationships that structure the body’s existence and hence, its species being, might suggest a Marxism-friendly notion of the good.

Marx’s discussion of how domination through the external imposition of labor imposes an alienation of species being is, I shall argue, a valuable starting point. The key difference between an Aristotelian conception of the natural and any Marxist conception of species being is, as we have already noted, that the latter will be radically historicized, while the former is not. Remembering Chris Cutrone’s insight that the historicization of truth need not imply epistemic relativism (even if truth changes over time), specific truths may still be essentially valid for specific times. Similarly, a Marxist could argue that humanity’s natural end is our human potential. Therefore overcoming alienation is good for humanity. The possible overcoming of such an alienation of species being will look different at different times, according to the predominant social relations. Different stages of history will generate different forms of disalienation and therefore different forms of the good.

Marx argues that having labor imposed upon one, rather than the act arising out of self-determination, inevitably generates the alienation of species being from itself.^[8] As material subjects, living, like Madonna, in a material world, it is part of human species being to labor in order to produce the means to survival. The bodily activity of labor is integral to our species being. When that activity is imposed independently of, or especially against, our will, its provenance is external to us, and it appears as something alien to us. This makes the labor alienated. But our labor consists of the movement of our bodies, so if we are alienated from our labor, we are also alienated from our own bodily activity, and therefore from our body as such. Marx saw the starkest results of this alienation under capitalism in the degradation of the industrial worker in capitalist factories, where the real subsumption of labor under capital had been enacted. For Marx, an emancipated communism would overthrow not only the alienation of labor, but also the alienation of each person from others. The alienation overthrown would not be that of our bodily activity and bodies alone. Exclusion from ownership of natural resources makes nature itself an alien force to the propertyless. The exploitation of another’s labor makes social relations an oppressive alien force for the propertyless, and therefore human beings are alienated from each other. The transcendence of alienation from nature and each other can be seen as a good, so long as we regard the disalienation of species being as inherently good.

In “Their Morals and Ours,” Trotsky outlines a notion of what the Marxist sense of the good might be: “But the end in its turn needs to be justified. From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man.”^[9] Elsewhere in this text, Trotsky attacks any ahistorical moralism that would tie the hands of the revolutionary party by denying it the right to engage in violence or repression, even when such action was necessary for overthrowing class society and moving toward emancipatory communism. Trotsky is arguing that what is good or moral cannot be understood ahistorically (through ideals not derived from the realities of the class struggle); he is not arguing against the notion of the good altogether, just calling for a Marxist, or in this case, Leninist historicizing of our understanding of it. An end can be justified as “good” if it serves the goal of human emancipation from the domination of each other as well as from nature. (A zero-sum game seems to be assumed here: either we dominate nature or nature dominates us; notions of relations with nature are, if only for the moment, overlooked.)

At this point, Chris Cutrone could have a legitimate beef with my argument: why should the “end” Trotsky conceived be thought in terms of the good (a justified end) rather than in the terms of universal freedom? In terms of Marxist canon, Chris could trump me here by citing Marx himself. In the passage below, Marx seems to be talking about a very similar “end” to that referenced by Trotsky, but in terms of freedom rather than what can be justified to be good:

In fact, however, when the narrow bourgeois form has been peeled away, what is wealth, if not the universality of needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive powers, etc., of individuals, produced in universal exchange? What, if not the full development of human control over the forces of nature — those of his own nature as well as those of so-called “nature”? What, if not the absolute elaboration of his creative dispositions, without any preconditions other than antecedent historical evolution which make the totality of this evolution — i.e. the evolution of all human powers as such, unmeasured by any previously established yardstick — an end in itself?^[10]

The argument that I would want to make for a Marxist conception of the good is that the Marxist conception of freedom assumes a notion of the good, since it requires the virtue of practical wisdom, as Studebaker makes it clear, we should always do. Consider Engels in Anti-Dühring:

Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely by this that it is not free, that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control. Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development. The first men who separated themselves from the animal kingdom were in all essentials as unfree as the animals themselves, but each step forward in the field of culture was a step towards freedom.^[11]

Thus, practical knowledge or wisdom (the virtue upon whose importance Studebaker insists), is, from the canonical Marxist viewpoint, the basis and prerequisite for freedom. (This Marxist claim, it will be pointed out, has a Hegelian provenance.) But the Western philosophical tradition has, since Socrates at least, seen practical wisdom as a key virtue. Marxists, so far as they value freedom and see practical wisdom as a personal characteristic essential for freedom, will see practical wisdom as a virtue too. The notion of virtue is inseparable from a notion of the good, therefore the Marxist valuing of freedom requires an acceptance of the notion of the good, even if only indirectly. Although he rarely if ever invokes the specific word “virtue,” the notion is central for Trotsky’s understanding of what is, for example, essential for the dictatorship of the proletariat to achieve its historical task. In his Pravda article “Habit and Custom” (1923), Trotsky writes:

The critical transformation of morals is necessary so that the conservative traditional forms of life may not continue to exist in spite of the possibilities for progress which are already offered us today by our sources of economic aid . . . even the slightest successes in the sphere of morals, by raising the cultural level of the working man and woman, enhance our capacity for rationalizing production and promoting socialist accumulation.^[12]

Ironically, the cultural backwardness of the Russian proletarian meant that there was less resistance to Bolshevik agitation among Russian proletarians before the Revolution than there was in the Western European proletariat, which was more inculcated with bourgeois norms. However, the challenges of socialist construction post-October required of Russian proletarians that they acquire some of the ostensibly bourgeois virtues that their Western counterparts had already acquired. These included punctuality, efficiency, and a commitment to accuracy.^[13] Trotsky also deplored, for political reasons, insufficient levels of “cultured speech” (too much swearing by Russian workers!): “Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity — one’s own as well and that of other people.”^[14] In order to keep workers from the taverns and churches, Trotsky asks, “Why should not the government of the workers establish a net of state cinemas? This apparatus of amusement and education could more and more be made to become an integral part of national life. Used to combat alcoholism, it could at the same time be made into a revenue-yielding concern.” ^[15]

As well as blocking the penetration of Orthodox Church canon and dogma (which Trotsky as a dialectical materialist deplored) into proletarian consciousness,^[16] state-run cinemas could promote the virtue of sobriety. Trotsky adopts the view that in order for the proletariat to abolish itself as a proletariat it must first incorporate bourgeois virtues. The abolition of class society will lead to a communist society that would need no class-based virtues, and therefore under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletariat will move from embodying bourgeois virtues to communist living without a midway point of embodying proletarian virtues along the way. (Trotsky writes these lines during the Bolsheviks’ reintroduction of market mechanisms, with the New Economic Policy.) This is not to say that there is not a historical period where proletarian values are essential, but only to say that this is primarily the case before the proletariat overthrows the bourgeoisie. Proletarian class struggle under capitalism requires class hatred of the bourgeoisie; a fighting proletarian class consciousness is proletarian practical wisdom as the contradictions of capitalism intensify. The dialectic of proletarian revolution takes the class from needing proletarian virtues to needing bourgeois virtues, before abolishing the proletariat and the bourgeoisie alike by establishing an emancipated classless society under communism, which would be beyond class-based virtues.

Would an established emancipatory communism leave any moral / historical tasks unfulfilled? If not, there might not be a need for any communist virtues. Arguably, once human species being is no longer alienated from itself, the world historical task that the conjuncture would task us with would be to continue to perfect our species being by constantly extending human potential. In the Trotskyist journal International Viewpoint, Daniel Tanuro includes a quote from Trotsky that makes clear the ongoing goal of expanding human potential under communism: “Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and more subtle; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.”^[17]

Let us assume that our natural makeup, our physical bodies, impose some limits beyond which human potential cannot develop. Does the goal of perpetually expanding human potential justify the application of technology to human biological makeup? Before citing a text where Trotsky ostensibly at least calls for precisely that, I will try to show that Trotsky’s other writings more or less require that he advocate biological engineering of humans with the end of enlarging human potential (and perfecting our species being).

In the article cited above, Tanuro attributes this passage to Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution: “Once he has done with anarchic forces of his own social organization, man will throw himself into the task of mastering the elements, of conquering the weather and the climate, of taming the rivers and the oceans, and of improving on the biological species, not excluding his own.”^[18] What means would be acceptable for improving the human species? If Trotsky were to be consistent with his positions in “Their Morals and Ours,” any means that truly furthered the ends of enhancing human potential would be acceptable and indeed appropriate. Thus, Trotsky writes in “Should America go Communist,” “you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men — the first worthy of the name of Man.”^[19]

Trotsky is arguing that while the application of eugenics in an exploitative class society is likely to be pernicious (as one would expect, Trotsky just earlier denounces the Nazis’ abuse of eugenics) once class exploitation has been overthrown, the possibility of applying eugenics for emancipatory purposes will emerge. A key point for Trotsky is that post-revolution, the new society must take up pre-existing technologies, overcoming any squeamishness one might feel deriving from their abuse by previously ruling classes. After all, even the most ostensibly toxic technologies can be appropriated for emancipatory purposes:

Let us take another example, the instruments of militarism, the means of extermination. In this sphere, the class nature of society is expressed in an especially vivid and repulsive way. But there is no destructive (explosive or poisonous) substance the discovery of which would not in itself be a valuable scientific and technical achievement. Explosive and poisonous substances are used also for creative and not only for destructive purposes, and open up new possibilities in the field of discovery and invention.^[20]

These words were written well before Nazi atrocities in the Holocaust generated in all decent people an all-embracing revulsion at the very idea of eugenics. As Tanuro argues,  “That Trotsky could have been tempted by such ideas is not so surprising when we know that numerous progressive intellectuals of the era, including H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and even Alexander Graham Bell, were favorable to certain eugenic practices in the name of scientific progress.”^[21]

Admittedly, Trotsky seems to agree with Chris Cutrone that once freedom has been taken care of (an emancipated communism established), the good will take care of itself. Therefore, while an automatic revulsion against eugenics is understandable and perhaps even advisable in the context of class society, under communism, Trotsky would aver, such unthinking revulsion would be irrational and potentially an obstacle to the flowering of human potential.

Tanuro regards Trotsky’s lionization of the domination of all (including human) nature as highly problematic. He cites not only contemporary eco-Marxism but also some of Marx’s own writings to suggest that there is nothing necessarily un-Marxist in having reticence about disrupting the existing biological and chemical metabolisms of nature (human and otherwise).^[22] If he is right, there is nothing necessarily un-Marxist about saying that even under communism, practical wisdom — remember, this is a virtue — is required as we mess with both human and non-human nature. Even under communism, an understanding of what is good must condition our free actions, since significant and perhaps difficult choices, such as balancing deference to existing natural metabolisms and transforming human species being, will have to be made. |P

[1] Chris Cutrone, “Social relations and ideology: An anti-critique,” Platypus Review 180 (October 2025), <https://platypus1917.org/2025/10/01/social-relations-and-ideology-an-anti-critique/>.

[2] Benjamin Studebaker, “Beyond ideology critique,” Platypus Review 179 (September 2025), <https://platypus1917.org/2025/09/01/beyond-ideology-critique/>.

[3] Leon Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life: And Other Writings on Culture & Science (New York: Monad Press, 1973).

[4] Leon Trotsky, “Their Morals and Ours,” The New International 4, no. 6 (June 1938): 163–73, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm>.

[5] Georg Lukács, “Preface to the New Edition” (1967), in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), xvi.

[6] Christopher Caudwell, Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry (New York: International Publishers, 1966), 28.

[7] [Ancient Greek] City-state, city, country, body of citizens, etc.

[8] The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, second ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), .

[9] Trotsky, “Their Morals and Ours,” 172.

[10] Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, ed. E. J. Hobsbawm, trans. Jack Cohen (New York: International Publishers, 1965), 84–85.

[11] Friedrich Engels, “Freedom and Necessity,” in “Morality and Law,” in Anti-Dühring (1877), <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch09.htm>.

[12] Leon Trotsky, “Habit and Custom” (1923), in Problems of Everyday Life, 30, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/women/life/23_07_11.htm>.

[13] Leon Trotsky, “Not by Politics Alone” (1923), in Problems of Everyday Life, 16, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/xx/alone.htm>.

[14] Leon Trotsky, “The Struggle for Cultured Speech” (1923), in Problems of Everyday Life, 52, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/women/life/23_05_16.htm>.

[15] Leon Trotsky, “Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema” (1923), in Problems of Everyday Life, 33, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/women/life/23_07_12.htm>.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Daniel Tanuro, “The Heavy Legacy of Trotsky,” International Viewpoint (August 25, 2025), <https://internationalviewpoint.org/The-Heavy-Legacy-of-Leon-Trotsky>. Tanuro quotes Leon Trotsky, “Revolutionary and Socialist Art,” in Literature and Revolution (1924).

[18] Ibid.

[19] Leon Trotsky, “If America Should Go Communist” (1934), Liberty (March 23, 1935), <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm>.

[20] Leon Trotsky, “Culture and Socialism” (1926), in Problems of Everyday Life, 230, <http://wsws.org/en/articles/2008/10/cult-o23.html>.

[21] Tanuro, “Heavy Legacy.”

[22] Ibid.