Vanessa Wills’s research program centers on the question of how ethical values such as freedom, equality, and human development are inhibited or promoted by the social and economic arrangements that we as human beings produce for ourselves. To that end, Dr. Wills grounds her work in an ongoing inquiry into the normative dimensions of Marxist theory. This is most especially the case in her book, Marx’s Ethical Vision (2024, Oxford University Press).
Her writings fall into two intimately interrelated categories. Much of her work sits squarely within the subdiscipline of history of philosophy, with a special focus on Nineteenth Century German philosophy, and most particularly, on Karl Marx and theorists in his milieu (indeed, all of her research is firmly anchored in this historical work). Other of her work is helpfully understood as applying the Marxist ethical perspective she’s developed, in writings such as Marx’s Ethical Vision and elsewhere, to a range of contemporary problems and debates in philosophy of race, philosophy of gender, and ethics more broadly.
Her work in the history of philosophy, in ethics, and in the philosophy of race and gender is unified by the principle that social ills are never merely “natural” and much less “necessary” aspects of human life, but rather contingent, historically emergent social phenomena that have been made by us and can, therefore, also be unmade. If the domination of some human beings over others is not an ineliminable feature of human social existence, then a number of ethical apologias for that domination (and included here is any fatalistic insistence on the permanence of such domination) begin to lose their seeming plausibility. Other values have to be considered, ones that emerge from considering human beings as genuinely the creative authors of ourselves.
Descriptions of some of Dr. Wills’s recent and ongoing research projects are provided below.
Marx’s Ethical Vision (2024, Available for pre-order.)
“The communists do not preach morality at all”; this line from The Communist Manifesto might seem to settle the question of whether Marxism has anything to offer moral philosophy. Yet, Marx issued both trenchant critiques of “bourgeois” morality and thundering condemnations of capitalism’s “vampire-like” destructiveness. He decried commodity-exchange for corroding our ability to value one another for who we are, not how much our lives could be traded away for. He expressed apparently ethical views about human nature, the conditions necessary for human flourishing, and the desirability of bringing such conditions about—views that are interwoven throughout his life’s work, from his youthful philosophical poetry to his unfinished masterpiece, Capital.
Renewed attention to Marx’s distinctively “dialectical” and historical materialist approach to conflict and change makes sense of this apparent tension in his thought. Following Marx, Vanessa Christina Wills centers labor—human beings satisfying their needs through conscious, purpose-driven, and transformative interaction with the material world—as the essential human activity. Working people’s struggles reveal capitalism’s worst ravages while pointing to a better future and embodying the only way there: rational transformation of our relationships to ourselves, to one another, and to the natural world, so that the human condition emerges not as a burden we must bear but as life we joyfully create. The purposiveness of labor gives rise to a normativity already inherent in the present state of things, one that can guide us in knowing what sort of world we should build and that further prepares us to build it.
Rather than “preach morality,” the key task for moral philosophy is to theorize in the light that working peoples’ struggles for survival shine on capitalism—an existential threat to humanity and the defining ethical problem of our time.
“The New Normals: Solidarity, Recognition, and Vulnerable Selves in the COVID-19 Pandemic”
“What is already clear as the day just begins to break on this disaster, and what was clear even in those first uncertain weeks and months of 2020, is that COVID-19 is not simply a biological illness that can beset and destroy particular bodies, but a complex of systemic social failures that have colluded to produce something very much like the worst-case scenario. Without widespread poverty; without lack of healthcare; without racist, ableist, and classist notions rendering some lives wholly expendable; without capitalism’s insistence that short-term profits trump human well-being; without imperialism and antagonism among nation-states; without systematic miseducation and abuse of reason; and without the facile opposition of individual liberty to social responsibility, it is difficult to imagine that the novel coronavirus would have snowballed into the global threat it has become.
“It is true in principle, of course, that every human person has a body and that therefore every human person is vulnerable to biological assault just by virtue of having a body that is delicately and intricately arranged in the way that bodies are. Every human being can become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and become sickened with COVID-19. In reality, however, each human body is socially, economically, politically, and geographically located in ways that significantly determine that body’s susceptibility to neglect and harm in general and to the ravages of the pandemic in particular…. (In Responses to a Pandemic: Philosophical and Political Reflections)
“Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in Marx’s Materialist Conception of History”
“Marxist theory—historical materialism—takes a definite side in the political struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie that it analyzes. If that is so, then it might seem reasonable to suppose that Marxism is inherently subjective and particular in a way that renders it non- or even anti-philosophical and calls into question any respectability it might have as a mode of real scientific inquiry. It might seem reasonable then to regard it as fundamentally mistaken to think of Marxist theory as having any pretensions to philosophy at all. Marxism, this line of argument goes, disdainfully rejects philosophy altogether as a kind of fool’s errand in search of necessarily false and misleading universalism, as odious false consciousness, and as an attempt to obscure and mystify human social relations and make seem harmonious what is fractured into sharp political battle.
“So the question, ‘What is the relationship among philosophy, politics, and economics in Marxist thought?’ leads us here to investigate two related subquestions. The first is whether Marx’s turn to economic study in his later career is at odds with, and represents a departure from, the philosophical concerns of his earlier writings. The second is whether Marx’s method of taking up a proletarian ‘standpoint’ as his lens, and his seeming indifference to any supposed rigid division between analysis and advocacy, makes Marxist theory particular rather than universal, and subjective rather than objective, in a way that disqualifies it from being philosophical (or, for that matter, objective or scientific at all).
“It can be tempting to characterize the development of Marx’s ideas over the course of his career as a departure from one field of study and wholesale abandonment of it for another. However, to do so is to fail to grasp the central significance of Marx’s and Engels’s “materialist conception of history” as a theoretical method. Historical materialism—Marxist theory—is a unifying, integrative approach to comprehending a reality whose character can be fully grasped only as its elements come to be, develop, and cease to be, as the result of more or less rational and conscious human intervention carried out in the course of time….” (In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy, Poltics, and Economics)
“‘And He Ate Jim Crow’: Racist Ideology as False Consciousness”
Why do racist oppression and capitalist exploitation often seem so inescapable and intractable? To describe and explain adequately the persistence of racist ideology, to specify its role in the maintenance of racial capitalism, and to imagine the conditions of its abolition, we must understand racist ideology as a form of false consciousness. False consciousness gets things “right” at the level of appearance, but it mistakes that appearance for a “deep” or essential truth.
This chapter articulates a novel, positive account of first-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about the world that are sustained and superficially justified by objective social arrangements, and of second-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about how one has come to hold the beliefs that one does.
To dismantle racist ideology requires political movements that craft theoretical interventions highlighting the inessentiality and contingency of despised racial groups’ oppressed status, as well as practical interventions aimed at directly undermining the oppressive conditions that are reflected in racist beliefs about the “naturalness” or “appropriateness” of these groups’ degraded status. (In The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press)
“What Could it Mean to Say, ‘Capitalism Causes Sexism and Racism’?”
Marxism is a materialist theory that centers economic life in its analysis of the human social world. This materialist orientation manifests in explanations that take economic class to play a fundamental causal role in determining the emergence, character, and development of race- and sex-based oppression—indeed, of all forms of identity-based oppression within class societies. To say that labor is mediated by class in a class-based society is to say that, in such societies, the class-based division of that activity which produces and reproduces the human species is the definite form in which labor appears, and that the human life which is the product of that self-making activity bears its stamp. Marxism’s emphasis on economic factors as central in the constitution and development of human life has been seized upon as evidence of its alleged “class reductionism”—its supposed tendency to think of all aspects of human life as direct and simple expressions of a class relation. No such thing follows; quite the opposite, a correct understanding of the relationships among capitalism, racism, and sexism only further highlights how central the struggle against each is to the struggles against any of the others. (Published in Philosophical Topics, “Gendered Oppression and Its Intersections,” edited by Kate Manne and Bianka Takoaka.)
“Bad Guys and Dirty Hands: Ethical Policing in the Presence of Racial Injustice”
In the United States, policing that is “ethical,” according to standards internal to the practice and culture of policing, just is policing that disproportionately targets people of color for violence and domination. This is obviously not to say that such policing is ethical in any more general sense. A key function of police in an unjust society is to hold together, as much as possible, what Martin Luther King, Jr. called a “negative peace”: acquiescent stillness in the absence of justice. Social injustice regularly inspires righteous liberation struggle and resistance from its victims. Modern-day policing immorally frustrates and opposes that struggle.
In taking contemporary police ethics as my subject matter, I address the relationship among three factors: the specific area of applied ethics research that pertains to policing; the moral psychology of police officers; and the interaction among police ethics, police moral psychology, and white supremacy as a system of social control in the United States.
A typical feature of police officers’ moral psychology is their acceptance of the notion that policing is “dirty work”; that is, they commonly believe that policing regularly and necessarily requires the violation of universal moral codes that the officers might themselves endorse. However, the violation of those norms is seen to be a necessary evil in the course of observing the police officer’s duty to “get bad guys off the street”.
Because racist policing is “good policing” according to standards internal to the practice of policing, the crisis of racist policing cannot easily be resolved by entreating individual police officers to discharge their role expectations while also operating according to what the officers themselves might regard as applicable moral standards, since violating those standards is considered part of the responsibility one takes on as an officer, in service of a perceived greater good. (In The Critique)
“The ‘We’ in a State of Becoming: Comments on Etiénne Balibar”
“It is impossible, Marx and Engels readily admit, to justify communism on an ethical basis that feigns neutrality and yet codifies, protects, and represents as universal the special interests of a small economic elite. The bourgeois state and its official morality are organized in such a way as to stand in opposition to the interests of the masses.
“As such, there are definite limits to the capacity of the masses to exercise their will in and through the apparatus of the state. Insofar as the laws of civil society are ‘but the will of [the capitalist] class made into a law for all,’ they themselves constitute, for Marx and Engels, a kind of undemocratic bourgeois despotism.
“What rises up against it can, from a bourgeois point of view, then only appear as itself unjustified, unjustifiable, and despotic.” (In Critical Times)
“Marxism and White Privilege”
The concept of white privilege can and should be articulated in a manner that is both true to its common, everyday usages and compatible with a Marxist, class-based analysis of capitalist society that understands racial hierarchy in its context as a weapon of elite class domination. Skepticism regarding the place of the white privilege concept in Marxist analyses of race is often motivated by perfectly legitimate concerns about whether it obscures the fundamental character of that class domination. Yet, one gives up much more than one gains in rejecting this concept and failing to appreciate its significance—indeed, its indispensability—to a Marxist analysis of race, racism, class, and class exploitation. As absolutely crucial as it is for Marxism to retain its specific character and distinctness, Marxists must also be prepared to make common cause and find points of overlap with all committed fighters in the struggle against racism.
In this paper, I explore the grounds of disagreement among Marxists regarding white privilege, and then go on to develop an analysis of white privilege that both addresses the skeptics’ reasonable concerns and preserves the concept’s essential insights and usefulness in theorizing the concrete manifestations of racial capitalism. I discuss two important sources of inspiration for present-day privilege theory: Du Bois’s “public and psychological wage,” and McIntosh’s “invisible knapsack.”
“Towards a Concept of Revolutionary Admiration: Marx and the Commune”
Here, I offer an account of “revolutionary admiration,” drawing heavily upon Marx’s admiring remarks on the Paris Commune, the popular revolutionary republic that governed Paris from March 1871 until May of that same year.
It may seem surprising to ground in Marxist theory as affective, subjective, and inherently psychological a phenomenon as admiration. Marx, after all, the “mature” Marx, the “serious” Marx, is oft perceived as a theorist wholly unconcerned with the aspects of human life having to do with spirit and ideas. It is too typical to split Marx into two theorists opposed to one another: an “early” humanist poet, and a “later” economist who eschewed his youthful interest in abolishing alienation and concerned himself rather with ascertaining only the inexorable, iron laws of history that drag human beings along in their wake to the end of history.
In fact, there is no such sharp “break” to be found in Marx’s theoretical development but rather an ongoing deepening of his understanding of how it is that human beings make their own history, albeit not under circumstances of their own choosing.
Proceeding from the informed presumption that Marx the poet and Marx the scientist remain always one and the same, an account of revolutionary admiration is salutary in its highlighting of the interplay between objective description and subjective affective response in Marx’s treatment of revolutionary moments. (In The Moral Psychology of Admiration, eds. Alfred Archer and André Grahle, Rowman & Littlefield)
“Marx” or “‘Man is the Highest Being for Man’: Marx’s Radical Irreligion”
As unstintingly irreligious as he was, Karl Marx was not an atheist. He was a staunch opponent of supernatural belief, yet neither did he embrace agnosticism as the position of claiming no answer to the question whether or not God exists. Rather, Marx argued that it was incoherent and pointless even to pose that very question. His irreligion is best understood not primarily as an ontological stance on the existence or nonexistence of God, but rather as part and parcel of a philosophical worldview radically committed to sweeping such questions aside, to centering the human perspective ontologically and epistemologically, to overthrowing “all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being,” and to taking as its core principle that “man is the highest being for man.” A “religious worldview” for Marx includes not only the plainly divine, but any perspective that subordinates the value of human beings to a superior entity, operating externally to human beings and imperviously to their influence.
I begin by explaining the relationship between Marx’s historical materialism and his position on the existence of God. It may seem obvious how irreligion would follow from a philosophical materialist stance. I show that Marx’s historical materialist irreligion, however, warrants a closer and more nuanced assessment than we might at first realize. I go on to discuss why Marx’s historical materialism leads him to regard questions about the existence of God as fundamentally misguided. I then unpack the meanings of Marx’s infamous statement that religion is “the opium of the people.” I conclude with a discussion of Marx’s pronouncement that “the criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man,” a teaching that separates mere atheism from radical irreligion. (in A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy, ed. Graham Oppy)
“‘What Are You Doing Around Here?’: Trayvon Martin and the Logic of Black Guilt”
In 2012, I contributed to an edited collection titled, Pursuing Trayvon Martin, edited by George Yancy and Janine Jones. This volume brought together scholarly reflections on racism in the U.S., “Stand Your Ground” laws, and the killing of Martin. In my chapter, I criticize the notion of an essential criminality in Black people and assess the ways in which Blacks are frequently held responsible for the anti-Black racism targeted against them.
I argue that this victim-blaming on a mass scale occurs not only in mainstream discourses but also in Black politics, couched in the language of “personal responsibility.” I conclude by proposing means of anti-racist struggle that recognize the agency of Black people in opposing racism while resisting a narrative of self-blame.
“The ‘White Privilege’ Concept in Marxism and Critical Race Theory”
Authors such as Mike Cole and Charles Mills have asked whether a rapprochement between Marxism and Critical Race Theory is possible. I investigate the possibility of such a reconciliation of the two methods by analyzing their distinct approaches to the development of the “White Privilege” concept.
I argue that in this case, rapprochement would require that CRT adopt a concept of “White Privilege” more closely aligned with W. E. B. Du Bois’s original concept of a “public and psychological wage,” and argue that Du Bois’s concept has more in common with Marxist method than it does with CRT’s Roediger-inspired analysis of “White Privilege.” (Draft available upon request.)
“Human Nature and the Ethics of Human Enhancement”
Can questions about the ethics of human enhancement be answered by appeal to facts about what it is to be a human being? An ongoing debate about this issue has brought renewed attention to a 1986 paper by David Hull, who argued that biology’s critiques of species essentialism showed that human nature did not exist and therefore could not serve as a basis for morality. I argue that Hull and his more recent interlocutors take too much for granted a strictly biological conception of human nature–a conception that diminishes our view of the social aspects of our nature that render us distinctively human.
I argue that by broadening our conception of human nature to include both the biological and the social, we can develop a theory that would give us guidance as to the morality of specific types of enhancement when conceived as conscious interventions into our own ongoing development as a species, with standards of flourishing that are determined by our nature. (In preparation.)