Mommy, what's an intellectual?

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Jul 10 12:29:25 PDT 2001



>>> jkschw at hotmail.com 07/10/01 02:41PM >>>


>
>In communism , won't everybody be both an intellectual and a physically
>active comrade in a manner that is socially productive ? Writing music in
>the morning and whistling it while they collectively build geodesic domes
>in the afternoon, nude swimming and fishing in the afternoon, and making
>astronomic observation at night.
>

I read the "hunt in the morning" passage as a claim that under communism, people will do, as Marx says, "just as [they] please"; that is to say, apart from whatever necessary labor has to be assigned and enforced, people who care to do diverse physical and mental activities will do so, and them as don't, won't. If someone wants to spend her days toiling away in the library redacting Manilius, the associated producers will not haul her out for nude swimming and geodwesic dome building that she'd rather not do. In technical terms, Marx is claiming that communism will involve maximal negative freedom from coercion or compulsion.

((((((((((

CB: My take would be that since she would not be alienated, and would feel with good reason that production had people, including her, as its aim, she would be inclined to agree with the organization of social production, the specific schedules and coordinations of which she would have participated in setting. Rather than coerced , she would be persuaded , not in small part by the fact that her life in the queendom of freedom depended upon social (communal) production abolishing the realm of necessity. People will do just as they please, and what pleases each will please all.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list