> Ted's
> worthwhile comment misses the context of the discussion: it was WS's
> assertion that (in essence, using my words) that socialist ideas were
> merely utopian, with no basis in empirical reality except perhaps in
> the past. But one can see real, empirical, phenomena -- such as the
> merger of work and play for some privileged individuals -- that
> indicate that some aspects of socialism are already being realized.
>
> Obviously, the fact that it's only for people such as Warren Beatty
> indicates that capitalism and, more generally, class society still
> dominates, exploits, and alienates humanity. Under these conditions,
> it does not make sense for the workers' movement and their supporters
> to strive to merge work and play. Rather, we must push to lower the
> amount of alienated, dominated, and exploitated work-time.
I'm not sure any contemporary "merger of work and play" matches what Marx had in mind as the ideal activity characteristic of either of the realms of an ideal community.
As the passages I quoted suggest, activity in the "realm of natural necessity", though by definition "instrumental", is radically transformed by the fact that it's the activity of the "rich individuality" whose development the ideal community makes possible. Though it isn't "play", i.e activity that's an end in itself, it still has many positive characteristics, particularly when contrasted with the "alienated" labour of capitalism.
Marx doesn't regard all feelings of "enjoyment" as equivalent. Consequently, attainment of the best feeling available from activity in this realm requires that it be the activity of such "universally developed individuals" in relations of "mutual recognition". Warren Beatty's work activity isn't an instance of this idea realized. The "subjective and objective conditions" required for such realization have yet to be created.
Such individual development is also required for the fully "free activity" that defines the "true realm of freedom". Marx points to "composing" in illustration of "fully free working" as "the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion." This is another basis on which he distinguishes his view from Fourier's.
These aspects of ideal activity in both realms are elaborated in the following passage from the Grundrisse:
"It seems quite far from Smith's mind that the individual, 'in his normal state of health, strength, activity, skill, facility', also needs a normal portion of work, and of the suspension of tranquillity. Certainly, labour obtains its measure from the outside, through the aim to be attained and the obstacles to be overcome in attaining it. But Smith has no inkling whatever that this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity - and that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits - hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour. He is right, of course, that, in its historic forms as slave-labour, serf-labour, and wage-labour, labour always appears as repulsive, always as external forced labour; and not- labour, by contrast, as 'freedom, and happiness'. This holds doubly: for this contradictory labour; and, relatedly, for labour which has not yet created the subjective and objective conditions for itself (or also, in contrast to the pastoral etc. state, which it has lost), in which labour becomes attractive work, the individual's self- realization, which in no way means that it becomes mere fun, mere amusement, as Fourier, with "It seems quite far from Smith's mind that the individual, 'in his normal state of health, strength, activity, skill, facility', also needs a normal portion of work, and of the suspension of tranquillity. Certainly, labour obtains its measure from the outside, through the aim to be attained and the obstacles to be overcome in attaining it. But Smith has no inkling whatever that this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity - and that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits - hence as self- realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour. He is right, of course, that, in its historic forms as slave-labour, serf-labour, and wage-labour, labour always appears as repulsive, always as external forced labour; and not-labour, by contrast, as 'freedom, and happiness'. This holds doubly: for this contradictory labour; and, relatedly, for labour which has not yet created the subjective and objective conditions for itself (or also, in contrast to the pastoral etc. state, which it has lost), in which labour becomes attractive work, the individual's self- realization, which in no way means that it becomes mere fun, mere amusement, as Fourier, with grisette-like naiveté, conceives it. Really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion. The work of material production can achieve this character only (1) when its social character is posited, (2) when it is of a scientific and at the same time general character, not merely human exertion as a specifically harnessed natural force, but exertion as subject, which appears in the production process not in a merely natural, spontaneous form, but as an activity regulating all the forces of nature." <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch12.htm>
Ted