Scarcity

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Mon Apr 9 09:39:33 PDT 2001



>>> jkschw at hotmail.com 04/08/01 09:55PM >>>

However, it is true that
>>capitalism has made possible a great increase in standards of living
>>for many millions. No one who has been bitten by the "Manifesto"
>>Marx will deny that. That still does not mean we have overcome
>>scarcity. Or ever will. --jks
>
>What do you think of Marshall Sahlins' argument?
>
>***** The Original Affluent Society
>

Sahlins argues athat hunter-gatherers worked a few hours a day and spent the rest of the time telling stories and hanging out, not a bad life (as long as there wasn't a famine or drought). The Sahlins argument is a favorite among the Live Simply crowd, who think that we can eliminate scarcity by reducing our wants. Theoretically, this is true. It is of course _profoundly_ anti-Marxist, for those of you who care about such things;

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CB: I'm not sure that this argument is profoundly anti-Marxist, for at the time Sahlins still considered himself a Marxist , I believe. His criticism of Marx comes in _Culture and Practical Reason_.

At any rate, the fact that life in preclass society, hunters and gathering, foraging or gardening modes of production is not nasty, brutish and short, and involves much "leisure" time does not contradict Marx's thesis ,which is applicable to agricultural and other class modes, not preclass modes.

If you notice, Engels added a footnote on this issue to the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto main text, confining its content to written history as follows:

"The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class struggles."

"[2] That is, all _written_ history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organization existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organization of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeaval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in _Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthumus und des Staats_, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [! Engels, 1888 English edition] "

Marx also substantially approved of Lewis Henry Morgan' work , which made the same distinction as Sahlins does between kinbased societies ( societas) and terrirtory based societies ( civitas). Also, Marx and Engels are famous for seeing "primitive communism" as future communism with lower technique ( and at a different level of the spiral).

On the direct issue of this tread , it does not seem likely that Marx would anticipate that communism would just constantly "grow" in the exact same way that capitalism does. The decisions of capitalist society in expanding needs and wants cannot be identical to the decisions that will be made by communist society. Continous , mad dash, ever growing GNP (as Sahlins phrases it in _CPR_) are not identical with optimum standard of living. For one thing , much of capitalist growth is driven by cuthroat competition and war competition, and the fact that if companies don't grow they are ruined or gobbled up. The bourgeoisie must constantly revolutionize the instruments of production, upon penalty of ruin for those who don't. But by this mad growth, anti-social commodities, wants and "needs" are created, as well as expansion of human capacities and freedoms.

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Marx praised capitalism for its creation of nrew wants and needs.

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CB: Yes, but this is a onesided or partial version of Marx's attitude on this. It is not accurate to attribute to Marx the idea that every want or need that capitalism develops is praiseworthy. Marx denounced the anarchy of capitalist production, the lack of planning. In this regard , he criticizes the bourgeois selection of new wants and needs.

It is clear that the communist revolution would institute a revolutionary change in generation of needs and wants from what and how these are generated in a capitalist regime.

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He thought that communism would be better than capitalsim at satisfyting these things. Me, I don't know. But I do know that the genie is out of the bottle. Short of a cataclysmic disaster, we will never be hunter-gathereras, and anyone who davocates reducing (as opposed to, say, rearranging) our needs and wants, will find a cold audience from contemprary workers an oppressed people.

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CB: I could see a society in which part of growing up would involve living in areas that preserved the various and successive modes of production in human history ( not just hunting and gathering) learning to live in each, sort of a profound summer camp element in everyone's elementary curriculum. Then the optimum level of energy expenditure for the main form of society could be shaped with people who could live comforably and happily without all the per capita energy expenditure of today. There would be a selective integration of modern high technique with ancient technique, and lifestyle. The exact balance would be decided by people in communist society, and not under the pressure of competiton of capitalism which drives constant "growth". The significance of Sahlins book is that it is feasible to develop a modified version of foraging or gardening or agricultural lifestyle , that is safe and comfortable, carriers the health benefits of an outdoor life; and this could be!

integrated with elements of modern hi tech lifestyle providing flexibility in energy expenditure if there is a problem with depletion of fossil fuels or global warming from capitalism's fierce energy expenditure pace.

There is nothing in Marx that conflicts with a modulated growth regime more rationally tied to actually existing resources and conscious of profound pollutions and depletions uncovered by natural science since Marx's lifetime.



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