Bill Bartlett wrote:
> What's irrational about it? Monetary wealth equals security and
> freedom from drudgery. There's nothing pathological about a desire to
> achieve economic security and freedom.
It's irrational to treat it as an end rather than, as you do here, as a means. Marx associates the distinction with Aristotle.
"Aristotle opposes Oeconomic to Chrematistic. He starts from the former. So far as it is the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited to procuring those articles that are necessary to existence, and useful either to a household or the state. “True wealth (o aleqinos ploutos) consists of such values in use; for the quantity of possessions of this kind, capable of making life pleasant, is not unlimited. There is, however, a second mode of acquiring things, to which we may by preference and with correctness give the name of Chrematistic, and in this case there appear to be no limits to riches and possessions. Trade (e kapelike is literally retail trade, and Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) does not in its nature belong to Chrematistic, for here the exchange has reference only to what is necessary to themselves (the buyer or seller).” Therefore, as he goes on to show, the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there arose the necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity developed into kapelike , into trading in commodities, and this again, in opposition to its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money. Now Chrematistic is distinguishable from Oeconomic in this way, that "in the case of Chrematistic circulation is the source of riches poietike crematon ... dia chrematon diaboles . And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the beginning and end of this kind of exchange ( to nomisma stoiceion tes allages estin ). Therefore also riches, such as Chrematistic strives for, are unlimited. Just as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end in itself, has no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly to approach nearer and nearer to that end, while those arts that pursue means to an end, are not boundless, since the goal itself imposes a limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. Oeconomic not Chrematistic has a limit ... the object of the former is something different from money, of the latter the augmentation of money.... By confounding these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of Oeconomic.” (Aristoteles, De Rep. edit. Bekker, lib. l. c. 8, 9. passim.) (<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm>)
This mistaken treatment of "the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of Oeconomic" constitutes the self-estrangement of the capitalist.
"The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm>
"What we are confronted by here is the alienation [Entfremdung] of man from his own labour. To that extent the worker stands on a higher plane than the capitalist from the outset, since the latter has his roots in the process of alienation and finds absolute satisfaction in it whereas right from the start the worker is a victim who confronts it as a rebel and experiences it as a process of enslavement. At the same time the process of production is a real labour process and to the extent to which that is the case and the capitalist has a definite function to perform within it as supervisor and director, his activity acquires a specific, many-sided content. But the labour process itself is no more than the instrument of the valorization process, just as the use-value of the product is nothing but a repository of exchange-value.
The self-valorization of capital - the creation of surplus-value - is therefore the determining, dominating and overriding purpose of the capitalist; it is the absolute motive and content of his activity. And in fact it is no more than the rationalized motive and aim of the hoarder - a highly impoverished and abstract content which makes it plain that the capitalist is just as enslaved by the relationships of capitalism as is his opposite pole, the worker, albeit in a quite different manner." ("Results of the Immediate Process of Production" 1863-1866 in Marx, Capital, vol. 1 [Penguin ed.], pp. 989-90)
Ted