needs

[jan carowan]

I find agreeable Mr Henwood's skepticism of critiques of putatively 
artificial needs. It does seem that I misread his earlier rant against the 
high technology economy as a rant against technology as such. Among so 
called leftists however there does seem to be the sense that the technology 
which man has invented in order to subjugate the physical world has turned 
against him. Leftists seem to think that technology has not only led to 
heightened self alienation but ultimately to a kind of self loss of human 
existence. The tool, which appeared to provide the fufillment of human 
needs, has seemingly instead created countless artificial needs. Socialism 
then becomes a critique of capitalist technology in the name of nature. Each 
perfecting of the technological culture is, and remains, in this discourse a 
truly treacherous gift. So there is a yearning for primitive, unbroken, 
immediate existence; and the more numerous the areas of life taken over by 
technology, the louder the call "Back to Nature", which has surfaced of 
course in the reactionary Nader movement.

There is jealousy of the lower animals each of which is completely adapted 
to its environment that it rests in it as quietly and securely as a baby in 
its crib. But this calmness comes to an end--it is secretely bewailed in the 
hearts of leftists--as soon as we enter the human spehere. Each animal 
species is firmly bound as it were to the circuit of its needs and drives; 
it has no other world than that which is prescribed for it by its instincts. 

  Within this world there is no wavering and no transgression; the limits of 
instinct offer at the same time the greatest security. No human knowledge 
and no human action can ever finds its way back to this kind of 
unequestionable existence and unquestionable uncertainty, as much as 
evolutionary psychologists and pseudo radicals like Barbara Ehrenreich may 
try.

Given the radical chic of refusing to countenance a naive belief in 
progress, leftists long for the reality and immediacy of natural existence. 
And so they undermine the active side of humanity in a way which will erode 
the capacities for action and creation in a decaying world. Murray Bookchin 
has been alone in foregrounding the threat here; he should not be ignored.

For instead of being moved immediately by stimulus, a human looks to 
'possible' needs, for which he prepares the means of satisfaction in 
advance. For example, in order to invent a tool, a human must look beyond 
the sphere of immediate need. A human cannot act from impulse and the 
necessity of the moment. We must place something not yet existing before 
ourselves in 'images' in order, then to proceed from this 'possibility' to 
the reality, from potency to act.

It is to the erosion of this quintessential human capacity that 
differentiates even the worst architect from a bee that leftist naturalism 
and deep ecologism presently contribute.

Warm greetings, Jan

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