Fishing in the morning and critical criticism in the afternoon sounds more like the second phase of communism. ___________________
Charles and Doug have made reference to that famous passage in *The German Ideology*; it is discussed critically in Carver's *Postmodern Marx*. Carver and most other interpreters leave out the next crucial sentence in the passage:
"...it is possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have mind, without ever becoming a hunger, fisherman, shepherd or critic. The fixation of social identity, this consolidation of what we produce into an objective power above us, growing out of control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations is one of the chief historical factors up till now."
In discussions of whether Marx's vision of communism resonated with an impractical romanticism, there seems to me to have been inadequate analysis of what Marx is getting at in this last sentence. I had been thinking about it without much success. There seems to be a critique here of the division of labor and the fixed social identities on which it has hitherto depended (the caste system seemingly the most extreme version) even as more flexible responses are needed in the face of the very social problems that such a social division of labor throws up.
It seems to me that Isidor Walliman has captured Marx's meaning: " Marx mentions that the alien forces under which the individual is subsumed can be abolished only if individuals directly subsume the division of labor. He adds that this can be done only through collectivity, which in turn will allow the development of one's talents. Only through the collectivity or community of individuals can personal liberty be gained." See Estrangement: Marx's Conception of Human Nature and the Division of Labor. Greenwood, 1981. In commenting on that passage, Walliman leaves out the last sentence as well.
rnb