>
>However, Marx was not such a simpleton as to think that there is no
>material limit to natural resources & that we may get to live
>practically forever (as Condorcet apparently did). His belief that
>we may overcome scarcity was thus rooted in neither of the above.
>What then made Marx think that we can?
>
>Yoshie
There is probably a deep answer to this that I do not understand. Here's my take on what I do understand of it. Marx thought that capitalism had developed productive forces to the point that under communism they could be unfettered to produce enough so that material and (for lack of a better word) temporal scarcity would not matter--not that there would be no limits, but that they could be pushed back far enough so that we would not reach them. Marx actually did not think that scarcity in the sense that I have mentioned it would be defeated, just that it would be defeated enough so that we would be beyond the circumstances of justice (moderate scarcity and moderate egoism).
I don't think he gave much thought to material scarcity. It just didn't occur to him that humanity would, within a short time from when he wrote, actually put the exhaustion of nonrenewable resources within the foreseeable future. If he had considered it, he might have given a Heartfieldian answer, that communist technology would be so good as to work a way around it. (But Jim H thinks that capitalist technology is that good.) Marx also thought that the socialization of production would also socialize consumption, so that people would do a lot more sharing, and he seems to have supposed that would help--which it would, of course.
As to "temporal" scarcity, I think Marx really believed that a planned economy would be so transparent and rational that the choices about how to allocate our efforts would be easy and obvious, and that human effort would not wasted under communism, no big deal. See his remarks on Robinson Crusoe in the chapter of CI on the fetishim of commodities, where he analogizes the organization of necessary production according to a rational plan by the associated produces with Robinson's choices, and contrasts these to the way that markets make these choices mystified, operating behind the backs of the producers. He understood correctly how markets do mystify, without grasping that plans do too, and he did not appreciate the inherent technical difficulty in choice of alternative production techniques and the problems of large scale economic coordination.
I think a lot of leftists do not even have this deep an answer to the question of scarcity. Many orthodox Marxists deny that scarcity is permanent because they think Marx said so, and that ends the matter. Others suppose that socialized humanity will just want a lot less--this is the leveling down solution of crude communsim that Marx attacked in the Paris Manuscripts.
--jks
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