> My response is the sort thing that can happen when, as part of the
academic bargain, you get to Marx, as I did, by wading through the endless
prattle of neoclassicals. Youseem pretty free of such infections.<
well, i have my own 'infections' and inflections; it's the register that's different. i come at this by way of philosophy and history. as i've said before, much of economics just makes my eyes glaze over. maybe philosophy does the same to others. in a lot of ways, we're arguing similar things but on different pages, as rob has already noted. so, a final (probably way too provocative) ramble which goes more to context and the times than the more abstract (though still interesting) question of what marx had to say.
> Apt question, but containing some inapt predicates. Let's remove the
phrase "why is it necessary" and just consider whether it's useful to (1)
*not reformulate* the contradiction within the form of labor into a
nature/society contradiction, but to consider the effect of it on human
nature as (2) not a utopian projection, but a material condition to be
changed in the process of creating a society organized to satisfy human
needs instead of the self expansion of capital. Labor no longer as
alienating, but as a source of self-realization.<
well, that's an interesting move. but i'm going to be stubborn and suggest that the issue of predication is actually what is at stake here, and not at all to be presumed, as in "the effect of it *on* human nature". for instance, is it about 'self-realisation' or 'self-actualisation' or 'self-transformation'? is this self prior to labour? is this self identified by their labour? to put it more provocatively -- and perhaps more provocatively than it needs to but by no means irrelevant to the question -- does work make us free? at a time when bonded and slave-like forms of labour are on the increase (whether we're talking about having to work 30 years to pay off a mortgage in melbourne or work 10 to pay off family debt in bombay) does it make any sense at all to be ideologically valorising work when all it might mean is the valorisation of capital? at a time when who 'we' are is defined solely in terms of employment or its absence (un-employment), does it make sense to render this 'we' in destinal or originary terms as 'labour'? i don't know the answers to these questions; but they remain question both for us and of 'us' in a way that the formulation 'labour as self-realisation' seems to me to strenuously avoid.
> Echoing Rob, Giminez says, "The substance of his [Sayers'] argument is
that neither those who negate the reality of human nature nor those who
posit the reality of a universal human nature offer an acceptable account.
Human nature is both historical (i.e., relative to the mode of production
within which it emerged and develops) and universal, insofar as every mode
of production shapes the world in its own image. As modes of production
change, human nature changes accordingly because 'the whole of what is
called world history is nothing more than the creation of man through human
labor' [citing Marx]".<
i'm not sure that we're reading the same passage in the same way. certainly rob has never said that human nature changes, he's argued against various analyses or statements with the claim that they're wrongly trying to change human nature, as in young gals bonking old blokes, right? more specifically, the significant conceptual point here would be i think "Human nature is both historical (i.e., relative to the mode of production within which it emerged and develops) and universal, insofar as every mode of production shapes the world in its own image."
and this is why i suggested spinoza in the more recent post (the philosophical lineage here of course being gimenez - althusser - spinoza). i should have explained the reference more fully then perhaps. that is, instead of allowing for the presumption of a bedrock human nature which is bracketted off from the sense of contingency (mode of production, mode of life), as rob did when he asked "So what about positing a largely unknowable essential human ('coz I reckon a couple of things are satisfactorily knowable - but mebbe it doesn't matter) within the context of the contingent historical relations category?", spinoza's way of accounting for (but not resolving -- this is crucial for spinioza, and i'll return to the point) the conceptual difference between contingency and universality is to regard universality as the _image_ of infinitude as grasped by a finite subject. his most famous formulation being along the lines of 'if a triangle could form an image of god, it would be a triangle'.
that is, instead of bracketting off human nature _away_ from contingency and historicity, what is included in the brackets is instead considered as the speculative moment of a contingent mind. this, btw, is also why i object to rorty's antifoundationalism, producing as it does a liberalism sans the speculative -- critical and indeed utopian -- dimension therein: ie., as rebecca comay has called it, liberalism without tears. this is why (contra rorty) it's not possible to fully erase the dimension of speculation from liberalism, or indeed why it's not possible to exhaust the sense of universality by way of asserting its particularity.
the differences between rob and i however run to whether or not it's desirable or possible to render this moment as either speculative or biological. i think there are significant implications that emerge from the latter, not least of which is that of a certain hypostatisation or reification of (to follow through with the spinozian lingo) a certain finitude, to collapse infinitude into finitude, or to render a contingent apprehension of universality as the outer (or base) limit of all we can be and are. not just that, but i -- like carrol (gee) -- have a serious aversion to utopian sentiment, but i would qualify it in present company to acknowledge that we also can't do without it. my question remains then as to whether such utopian figurations, or presentations of universality, are indicated as fixed (hardwired) or acknowledged as necessary but speculative fictions. for me, the struggle is over "the emergence of new needs, aspirations, and powers", not the naturalisation of what already exists.
contextually (and so polemically) i would consider the issue of predication, of new needs, aspirations and powers to be more the most important thing as we look ahead to the vast expanse of the 21st century. this is the sense of what i get from N30 and J18, and why doug's reports regarding the diversity marks a new moment in the configuration of 'we', neither homogeneous nor pluralist. but i'm wandering...
so, after that ramble: i think we're onto a kind of compromise, though without losing the sense each of us might want to bring. i'm more than happy to allow the phrase 'human nature' to be used so long as it's considered to be a kind of speculative and/or critical repository. rob said almost as much, so i'll haggle for a little more.
ps. the thesis that we get more alienated the more complex a society becomes strikes me as a dodgy kind of primitivism. (someone pass me the cold towel, i'm agreeing with yoshie as well.) though, i still have a penchant for the way in which the frankfurters took up the critique of instrumentalist reason and certainly wouldn't rule out the importance of that.
(see, i think everyone's got something to offer, but i'm going to be a pest when it comes to what i see as an inordinate amount of theoretical prefigurement or reification, better known in marx's words as utopianism, and in pomoesque as identity.)
Angela _________