Fwd: Re: Anarchism / Marxism debates

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Wed Aug 18 10:22:54 PDT 1999


But from the perspective of the whole of society, capitalism creates new wants, wildly, anarchistically, willy nilly, without an overall plan. Capitalist establishment of new wants is only for the individual private enterprise and its maximalization of profits. Communism's creation of new wants takes into account the whole state of society at the concrete moment, the relation of all the parts (the private) of the economy to the whole ( the public or social) and consciously plans the creation of new wants.

The fundamental contradiction of capitalism is that production is social ( the division of labor is the greatest in the history of humanity) but appropriation is private. This contradiction infects production and the establishment of new wants in capitalism.

The transition is from the production of capitalism to the creation of socialism. A mode of creaton is conscious relative to a mode of production's unconsciousness. In the latter, new wants are established behind the backs of the "wanters", and some of these wants are objectively for "anti-use-values" rather than use-values. For uses and wants must always be defined in relation to the social whole, not only the individual and private. Uses and wants are always social uses and wants.

Charles Brown


>>> Michael Perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> 08/18/99 12:58PM >>>
Actually, Jim H. was correct. Marx's new wants, however, were not SUV's. He mentioned examples of newspapers, books, .... Not GM foods.

Fabian Balardini disputed what Jim heartfield wrote:


> >
> >This is what Marx celebrates in Capitalism, its tendency to increased
> >consumption and the creation of new wants, leading to an all-rounded
> >development of the individual, no less.
>
> Marx celebrating the creation of new wants???, Marx as an advertisement executive!!!!
> you gotta be fucking kidding!!!!!!

--

Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901



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