>
>>
>> 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.
>
As I've suggested, it seems to me the passage should be read as sublating Hegel. As Marx indicates in Capital (vol. 1, p. 485), Hegel held "very heretical views" on the specialization and division of labor. Marx points specifically to the following passage in the Philosophy of Right.
"By educated men we may prima facie understand those who without the obtrusion of personal idiosyncrasy can do what others do. It is precisely this idiosyncrasy, however, which uneducated men display, since their behaviour is not governed by the universal characteristics of the situation. . . . Education rubs the edges off particular characteristics until a man conducts himself in accordance with the nature of the thing." (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, p. 268)
Educated individuals "determine their knowing, willing, and acting in a universal way." (Philosophy of Right, pp. 124-6)
Additional elaboration is found in the Philosophical Propaedeutic.
"Man, as an individual, stands in relation to himself. He has two aspects: his individuality and his universal essence. His Duty to Himself consists partly in his duty to care for his physical preservation, partly in his duty to educate himself, to elevate his being as an individual into conformity with his universal nature.
Explanatory: Man, is on the one hand, a natural being. As such he behaves according to caprice and accident as an inconstant, subjective being. He does not distinguish the essential from the unessential. Secondly, he is a spiritual, rational being and as such he is not by nature what he ought to be. The animal stands in no need of education, for it is by nature what it ought to be. It is only a natural being. But man has the task of bringing into harmony his two sides, of making his individuality conform to his rational side or of making the latter become his guiding principle. For instance, when man gives way to anger and acts blindly from passion he behaves in an uneducated way because, in this, he takes an injury or affront for something of infinite importance and seeks to make things even by injuring the transgressor in undue measure." Philosophical Propaedeutic pp. 41-2
This is sublated in Marx's idea of the "universally developed individual" as
"the rich individuality which is all-sided in its production as in its consumption and whose labor therefore appears no longer as labor, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared, because historically created need has taken the place of the natural one." Grundrisse p. 162
It underpins his conception of "wealth".
"What is wealth other than the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity's own nature? The absolute working out of his creative potentialities, with no presupposition other than the previous historic development, which makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined yardstick? Where he does not reproduce himself in one specificity, but produces his totality? Strives not to remain something he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? In bourgeois economics - and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds - this complete working-out of the human content appears as a complete emptying out, this universal objectification as total alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end. " Grundrisse p. 488
This provides the interpretive framework within which to read the German Ideology passage.
"Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the "general interest", but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now." vol.5, German Ideology, p. 47
"Freedom" in Marx has, therefore, a positive content. For individuals to become and be free in his sense requires social relations of a particular kind. This is "an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
"The transformation, through the division of labour, of personal powers (relationships) into material powers, cannot be dispelled by dismissing the general idea of it from one's mind, but can only be abolished by the individuals again subjecting these material powers to themselves and abolishing the division of labour. This is not possible without the community. Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. In the previous substitutes for the community, in the State, etc. personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class. The illusory community, in which individuals have up till now combined, always took on an independent existence in relation to them, and was at the same time, since it was the combination of one class over against another, not only a completely illusory community, but a new fetter as well. In a real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association." vol. 5, German Ideology, pp. 77-8
Such relations would be free of any and all forms of coercion. They would need to be much more than non-coercive, however, fully to realize "freedom" in Marx's sense. They would have to be relations of "mutual recognition", another idea that sublates Hegel and much else, e.g. Dante.
"when your longings center on things such that sharing them apportions less to each, then envy stirs the bellows of your sighs. But if the love within the Highest Sphere should turn your longings heavenward, the fear inhabiting your breast would disappear; for there, the more there are who would say 'ours,' so much the greater is the good possessed by each - so much more love burns in that cloister." "I am more hungry now for satisfaction" I said, "than if I'd held my tongue before; I host a deeper doubt within my mind. How can a good that's shared by more possessors enable each to be more rich in it than if that good had been possessed by few?" And he to me: "But if you still persist in letting your mind fix on earthly things, then even from the true light you gather darkness. That Good, ineffable and infinite, which is above, directs Itself toward love as light directs itself to polished bodies. Where ardor is, that Good gives of itself; and where more love is, there that Good confers a greater measure of eternal worth. And when there are more souls above who love, there's more to love well there, and they love more, and mirror-like, each soul reflects the other."
Mandelbaum translation, Purgatorio, Canto XV
Ted -- Ted Winslow E-MAIL: WINSLOW at YORKU.CA Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York University FAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3