> rob wrote:
>
> >Well, we're obviously talking the post-1857, Althusser-approved Marx here,
> so I'd ask you to accept that there is at least sustenance for the humanist
> in that section on Alienated Labour in The Grundrisse.<
>
> there's a lot of reference points in marx for lots of divergent claims, as
> you've noted before. i wasn't so much thinking of althusser, but of the
> chapter in _capital v3_ on the trinity formula: "a mere ghost -- 'the'
> Labour, which is no more than an abstraction and taken by itself does not
> exist at all"; and the derision marx heaps on the political economist's
> depiction of "the productive activity of human beings in general, by which
> they promote the interchange with Nature, divested not only of every social
> form and well-defined character, but even in its bare natural existence,
> independant of society, removed from all societies, and as an expression
> and confirmation of life which the still non-social man in general has in
> common with the one who is in any way social." (p.795)
Derision, that is, at the idea of labor as a factor of production, paid its marginal product.
> as i wrote in the previous post, "i disagree with your presumption that the
> contradiction is that between a hidden or denied human nature and social
> reality. as in the above [the dimensions of labour], the contradictions
> are immanent, not transhistorical." that is, as postone (rather than
> althusser) argues: "The difference between an analysis based on the notion
> of 'labour', as in classical political economy, and one based on the
> concept of the double character of concrete and abstract labour in
> capitalism is crucial: it is, in Marx's phrase, 'the whole secret of the
> critical conception'. It delineates the difference between a social
> critique that proceeds from the standpoint of 'labour', a standpoint that
> itself remains unexamined, and one in which _the form of labour itself_ is
> the object of critical investigation." (TLSD, pp. 56-7)
True and (as you suggest) you and I have had this part of the conversation before--the distinction between labor and labor power that must be uncovered to understand capitalist social relations (as I recall, you spoon-fed me some Postone, which turned out to be terrific stuff). But this understanding depends, if it does at all, on what view of the place of work in human activity? I, and perhaps, Rob, am suggesting that in obscuring the form of labor (disguised as an an equal labor market exchange between capital and labor), capitalism also obscures the nature of work, changing it from a natural expression of humanity to a disutility. btw, I assert that the old fat guy agrees with this take--not that that is dispositive, or anything.
What do you think? Is it important to argue that work-as-utility-not-to-mention-creativity is the natural state of humanity that can be returned to only by getting rid of capitalism? Or do you argue there is no such thing as a natural state, only that created by social relations (and perhaps assertions about natural states are diversions)? So replacing capitalism won't take us back to some essence, just on to something better. And what do make Marx's position to be on this question?
> roger wrote:
>
> > If the human being has any essence that separates it from other life
> forms, surely part of that is the
> drive to create and produce its means of life.<
>
> but what does this imply for the form that this creation and production
> take? in many ways, the constant tension between aesthetic (creative) and
> economic (production) conceptions of labour (as well as the desire to meld
> that contradiction, allow labour to become creation, etc) indicates a
> certain historical specificity already, right? it's already a position
> taken with respect to a certain historically-specific form of labour, a
> statement that would be unintelligible in another epoch.
Yes. The tension between creativity and quantitative productivity plays out differently in different social systems, depending on the development of the means of production, as well as the social relations rooted production. Under capitalism, where capital controls work decisions, the equation seems straightforward, and "either/or": the less labor time required for social subsistence, the more is available for creativity, depending, of course, on the wants created by capitalist social relations that comprise that subsistence. But we can see, in a system where labor controls work, there is the opportunity to "meld creativity and productivity" (in your well chosen words). Work becomes one with life.
> that doesn't
> mean we can escape these references (they're necessary to any statement;
> without them, any critique would be unintelligible for us), but it does
> mean we should notice the mechanisms by which historical specificity is
> re-asserted as human nature, naturalised through the figure of the
> "non-social man".
Right. I think that's what I said with reference to capitalism. Non-social man, that phony creation, hates work. He does a job to survive and for the money for "leisure" activities.