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I believe it makes sense to say that I am a Marxist and a deontologist, even though the former is staunchly materialist, and the latter has the connotation of being deeply idealist. But my understanding of deontology is less about free-floating ideals, and more like the logical, pragmatic conclusions of a few basic definitions that I think essentially everyone accepts. I value Marxism, in large part for of reasons that are described by deontological ethics.

I do not think it is a coincidence that Marx comes from a Hegelian intellectual history, and that Hegel was elaborating on Kant. The core of deontological ethics seems clearly imprinted on much of Marx’s political motivations, even though he was not a fan of using the terms of “ethics” or “idealism”. He instead preferred a material analysis of how events unfold in the world.

I nevertheless think there is value in deontological ethical thinking, even as a Marxist.

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One of the arguments Kant makes about morality is that, pretty much by definition, people take morality to be an internally consistent thing. For example, “doing the right thing” only makes sense if “doing the right thing” never involves having to do two incompatible actions simultaneously. Nor would it make sense for “doing the right thing” to oblige everyone to act in ways that would ultimately undermine our ability to “do the right thing”.

Kant’s arguments are idealist, with big metaphysical concepts of things like “good will”. But they are nevertheless powerful arguments when understood / translated into more pragmatic, materialist language. To talk about things like “morality”, we might begin with a pragmatic understanding of what it means to be ourselves at all. We are different from things like rocks and animals because we have some quality like “personhood”—which means we have a significant degree of agency over our actions (our observations of the world, and how we reflectively translate those observations into our effects on the world).

We can enter into Kant’s arguments about morality insofar as we accept two things:

1. Insofar as we believe that “We have an amount of meaningful agency over our actions”, and

2. Insofar as we value our status as free agents (i.e. we are not nihilists).

I accept both of those. I believe that “we have free will” in a meaningful pragmatic sense. I also find it valuable to maintain and nurture that part of ourselves which can exercise free will—which promotes our ability to make use of our meaningful freedom. Because of these two things, I find it useful to follow the deontological ethical thought process and uncover a few ethical practices which might otherwise not have been as obvious.

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In fact, being logically bound to deontological ethical obligations doesn’t even really require our explicit acceptance of these two things. So long as one acts as though one has some degree of free will, and acts as though having such free will is a valuable thing—then these sorts of revealed preferences may indicate that one would find value in deontological ethics.

As an extreme case, imagine a nihilist who nevertheless acts as if they can make choices, and acts as though they value their ability to make choices. They might as well be a deontologist, so long as they believe that the motivations for how they act should have some internal logical consistency (in the ways I described in the first paragraph). The nihilist might say that they don’t believe that there can be such a thing as a moral code! And yet, they still make choices, and their choices reveal parts of what is, in practice, their internal moral code.

If the nihilist, or really, anyone, acts without trying to have an internally consistent motivations, and they don’t care to, then they are essentially denying their personhood—their own agency. Which, sure, go for it—but I think that would be such a waste.

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I think deontology essentially asks us to value the things that communists also happen to value. Given the world we live in, we are obliged to act as communists if we value meaningful freedom for all.

Insofar as we value ourselves, we must value our freedom: Our freedom is a necessary condition of having a self at all. We want freedom from the impositions of capitalism’s domination and coercion. We want the freedoms to develop ourselves in the ways that express our agency, our ability to choose the path of our lives among other free people. We want to recognize ourselves and our freedoms, through our relations with each other.

Deontology is founded on the core belief that we have agency, and that insofar as we accept that there is any way of acting that is valuable, our agency is therefore also valuable and worth promoting. Marxist politics attempt to promote exactly that, paired alongside a largely convincing analysis of capitalism.