Ideology, Equity, and Structure: Comments on Tzu-wei Hung’s ‘Equity and Marxist Buddhism’

Abstract

In his essay, ‘Equity and Marxist Buddhism’, Tzu-wei Hung argues that Marxist Buddhism brings a commitment to social justice together with a distinctive form of virtue theory. In my commentary, I raise several questions from a Marxian perspective: (1) Might it be argued that Marxist Buddhism is (in the critical sense) ideological (similar to religion) because the spiritual goal of ‘transcendence’ distracts us from the need to fight for emancipation? (2) Can justice as equity be achieved by promoting individual altruism? (3) Aren’t both mainstream accounts of justice and Marxist Buddhism aspirational and so need to rely on non-ideal theory to achieve justice?