>>> "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au> 08/18/99 09:50PM >>>
Chaz wrote:
> But from the perspective of the whole of society, capitalism creates
new wants, wildly, anarchistically, willy nilly, without an overall
plan.
we should _plan_ our wants? how does one go about doing that?
(((((((((((((((
Charles: "One" can't do it. "We" must do it. The planned wants are social , not individually, created. Wants can spring from the stomach or fancy , as Marx says. Our physiologically based wants , of course, come from nature, although, the advance of science even suggests those might be modified, but I for one do not trust science under capitalism to interfere too much with our naturally evolved, physiologically based wants.
The wants of fancy are developed historically, which is to say socially. Now they are "planned" behind most peoples' backs, and anti-socially, or privately in the interest of profiteers. Socialism would aim to plan them socially and openly.
The freedom of the individual in really creating new wants under capitalism is largely an illusion. It is part of the illusion of the power and freedom of the individual under capitalism. There also seems to be in your question something of a notion that the specialness of a "want" is that it is unique to each individual or orginates with each individual. But the individual is a social being. The specialness of human individuals compared to other animals is not their individuality , but their sociality.
Further, humanity is unique in that it plans. The planning of our wants is an expression of the humanity of them. The wants that spring from fancy and not the stomach are characterized by the role of imagination. Imagination, as when the human builds differently from the spider or bee, is forethought. This forethought is what distinguishes human labor from animal labor ( See Marx _Capital_ I on labor as cited in previous discussions we have had on the transhistorical characteristics of labor). Imagination is what allows forethought or planning. So, wants derived from fancy are characterized by having forethought or planning in them, at least in their humaneness. The wildness in wants in bourgeois society is characteristic of the unhumaness, or "jungle" tendency of capitalism.
To say that the socialization or division of labor under capitalism is greater than in previous modes of production means not only that production proper is more socialized, but consumption ( including the generation of wants) is highly socialized too. in fact; although consciousness is false in this regard, and many buy the bourgeois individualist ideology that wants are generated individually and not socially under capitalism.
CB