> But do we want to _fully_ master instinct ? Humans, domesticate
> thyselves most ? Seems to me freedom is liberating some instincts, our
> gardens of earthly delights.
Ted: You're changing the subject here from the question of what Marx means to the question of whether what Marx means is true.
^^^^^ CB: I'm allowed to change the subject :>). Seriously, no, I'm asking a Charles Brown question. What's Marx's answer to my question ? What's your answer to my question ?
^^^^
Marx's conception of the "ideal" is "eudaimonic" so on his ontological premises the "happiest" life requires the full mastery of instinct by reason. This includes all aspects of life including the sexual.
^^^^ CB: Textual evidence, please. I don't recall Marx saying his conception of the "ideal" is "eudaimonic".
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I think myself that Marx is badly mistaken about the nature of the developmental process that would ultimately actuate a "will proper" and a "universal will".
I don't think it's true that a labour process (the capitalist labour process as conceived by Marx) that necessarily led to the "practically complete" "self-estrangement" of individuals followed by the "revolution" and "revolutionary praxis" its claimed this would necessarily provoke would develop in individuals the capabilities required by the real "subjects" who are to be the architects and builders of the penultimate social form from which all barriers to full human development have been removed.
Psychoanalysis provides an alternative account of what is required for the development of an "ego" able to master "instinct" in the way assumed, an account that seems to me more realistic in many ways than Marx's. It will explain, for instance, why the ideas I've been attributing to Marx are absent from much "Marxism" and why what is often "preserved" is the idea of a violent apocalyptic messianic end brought about automatically (i.e. not requiring a real "subject") by the operation of the "absolute general law of capitalist accumulation".
It also explains the antagonism to the "ego" per se let alone to the "transcendental ego" characteristic of the main alternative to Marx. Interpreted psychoanalytically, this expresses "id" "philosophy" i.e. primary process thinking celebrating the acting out of instinct largely unmediated by ego (celebrating, for instance, violence, destructiveness and sadism as human "authenticity"). This is mirrored in the dogmatic attachment to the way of thinking represented by "scientific materialism" and the misidentification of this way of thinking with "reason", a "reason" experienced as an "iron cage". The way of thinking is irrational in the sense of "obsessional" i.e. expressive of the defences employed by a relatively weak unintegrated "ego" to allay the anxiety provoked by "instincts". Obsessional defences accomplish this by "imprisoning" instincts in obsessional symptoms. Thus we get "game theory" developed as the "rational" way of conducting war and of "thinking the unthinkable".
Interpreted in this way, the obstacles to full human development in Marx's sense are much more difficult to overcome than Marx imagined.
Ted
^^^^^ CB: Lemme mull over this a bit.