>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 01/27/00 04:07PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>Marx would probably say you don't really know your desires until
>your needs are first guaranteed. Humans are only truly free in the
>absense of need. Freedom is the mastery of necessity or fulfillment
>of needs. You only know your desires when you are thus free.
Doug comments: How do you know this?
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CB: I admit, on this I am following Marx. But it makes sense to me.
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When people find their basic "needs" fulfilled - and these themselves are very plastic - do they want less or more?
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CB: First on the plasticity of needs: the idea of "need" is to refer to something that is relatively unplastic. It is a necessity, it is a limit within which we must live such as enough food not to starve. "Want" or "desire" is intended to refer to those things which are 'plastic". "Need" is intended to refer to more rigid requirements.
Needs do evolve historically with the mode of production. For example, transportation to work like a car is more of a necessity in our age and country, yet it didn't even exist in most of the past. New needs are created in the history of development of the modes of production. New needs or relatively rigid requirements are created in the history of meeting old needs.
On the wanting less or more, it is not just quantity, but quality with desire. But besides that, as I said, in communism, it must be presumed every individual will develop their desires consciously and deliberately and tuned to the capacity of society and the individual to fulfill the desire, and the individual adjustes more or less according to that. I can eat ice cream all day , as long as there is enough milk ingredients and I do my chores, and I am mature enough to accept that. But as my needs will be guranteed , I should have MORE time to pursue desires, because I don't have to worry about meeting my needs, the average workday is very short because of advanced technology etc.
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Is the Lacanian trinity need/demand/desire - which begins with a child making an unfulfillable demand on a caregiver, leaving a perpetually unsatisfied residue of desire (or, in Freud's famous formulation, there's no satisfaction in satisfaction) - just a historical oddity of capitalism that will disappear on the attainment of the ineffable quasimystical state of Communism (which sounds like a formulation full of desire to me)?
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CB: The idea is that you are guaranteed those things needed for physical survival; and it is in that state that humans most optimally know and can fulfill their desires. It is not that every conceivable desire or every single desire or fantasy that might occur to a child or adult will be fulfilled, but that certainly more of them will be.
What will disappear from capitalism and all CLASS SOCIETY ( this is the end not just of capitalism) will be unmet needs and the anxiety and alienation that many have from working and yet not being guaranteed by that work that your basic needs will be met. The feelgood aspect of Communism will not be mystical , but material: All basic , material needs will be guaranteed to the full extent that society is capable. This is not the equivalent of dying and going to heaven. There will be new challenges, but there will be the end of the challenge, unique to class society, of working and yet not being guaranteed life. There will be the right to life, (not the distorted male supremacist U.S. meaning of this, but the international sense, right to a living). Or said better, it will not be the organization of society, as with class society, that denies the guarantee of life. There will be other contradictions that challenge the guarantee to life, but society will do its maximum to guaran! tee life for all, unlike class society.
When I say other contradictions that challenge life, I mean a hurricane or other natural challenges; the sun will eventually burnout, which will create a whole new "challenge". There remains an ever evolving contradiction between nature and human society , that humanity eternally seeks to unravel.
CB