> roger wrote:
>
> > 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?
Unanswerable questions, as you say below. But at a minimum, the beginning of an answer depends on some posit about both the social organization of labor, including who controls that organization for what purpose, and the extent to which human nature exists, is malleable, and shapes action. What I discussed was a change in the form of labor, or in more detail, a change in the *purpose* of production (which I argue is the essence of the replacement of capitalism with socialism), and thus the form and purpose of labor, and thus human nature, as labor affects or molds that nature. You ask if that change in nature takes the form of merely a transformation from one thing to another, or a realization of the specific innate self that capitalism has submerged, or actualization of something new.
I used the term, as did Giminez, labor as self-realization, indicating a preference on my part for the view that people have a natural need to work. In this regard, I (stubbornly) repeat a few earlier assertions. It is work, not the avoidance or abhorrence of it, that is the natural expression of humanity. It is non-social man, that phony creation of capitalism, that hates work. And the concept of alienation under capitalism (not merely dissatisfaction about, e.g., complexity) presupposes the need to work.
(I use work as a shorthand term for all activity, including we think of as leisure. If you conceptually combine work and leisure, you are left with the simple need to be non-inert--the need to create and produce in some combination, while providing for the means of social subsistence.)
But I can't know if what I have asserted is true in the sense of being part of human nature. I do see how capitalism has changed work from a utility to a disutility (under its own terms), and I recognize the need to change it back, regardless of any position on what is "natural".
And I can further agree with you that what is important is not the answer to the unanswerable questions about the nature of human nature (which can be understood, if at all, only through change), but rather, the "struggle over new needs, aspirations, and powers"--the class struggle. So let's imagine a contingent human nature, "work as essence", differences in malleability, e.g., (yours can be different than mine), then set out to create the possibilities, the social setting in which human beings, freed from the control of capital, can create their own nature.
> 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.
But here you talk only about work in capitalism. No, working for capital doesn't make us free. Labor as self-realization can't be accomplished in capitalism. It does, however, make sense to render "us" as "labor" in destinal or originary terms. As counterposed to capital, and something to which "we" can aspire. Labor as labor in the labor process controlled by labor. (Btw, when I say labor, I don't mean people as workers, since the labor process must be a result of decisions affected by many aspects of the social being.)
> 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.
>
> (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.)
Does seem like a compromise to me, since I have learned enough to shift some of my thoughts.
RO