> At the risk of annoying John by putting words in his mouth, it
> seems to me
> that you misread Marx as saying that the desires that people have
> under
> capitalism are in some sense, false (or inauthentic, or not real, or
> artificial), and will fall away in favour of true (or authentic, or
> real, or
> natural) needs. But that is most definitely not what he is saying.
> He does
> not criticise capitalism from an ideal standpoint outside of the
> system,
> from which one might be in a position to say that these desires are
> unreal,
> still less that they are excessive. The wants that people have under
> capitalism, he thinks are real, and more than that, that they arise
> out of
> the progressive side of capitalism.
>
> His criticism falls principally on the *limits* that capital puts upon
> working class consumption, the reduction of the wage to the bare
> minimum
> necessary for the reproduction of the worker as a worker. And as
> Doug has
> argued here, those limitations upon working class consumption are
> still
> firmly in place.
>
> In the elaboration of the argument in the third volume of capital,
> Marx
> criticises Capitalism for the *limits* it imposes upon growth, its
> tendency
> only to develop the productive forces as far as can be reconciled
> with a
> falling rate of profit.
This ignores the fact that Marx has appropriated, partly directly and partly through German idealism, the ancient idea that the "good" is something objective and knowable. On this basis, he distinguishes between rational and irrational "needs," i.e rational needs are those arising from knowledge of the "good." The ultimate "goods" in this sense are intellectual, aesthetic and ethical. The first two provide the communicative content of the third. The developed "individual" with the capabilities required to know and actualize the "good" in this sense is the "universally developed individual" who is a "social human being" both because social relations as relations of mutual recognition constitute the essence of the "good" for such a being and because such social relations are required for her full development.
This meaning of "social" is elaborated in "Private Property and Communism" <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/ manuscripts/comm.htm> which also distinguishes the "needs" characteristic of the form of "estrangement" that defines capitalism from the rational "needs" of "social man." Avarice is the most important of the former "needs."
"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,” reproduced in the Penguin ed. Of Capital, vol. 1, pp. 989-90)
Though the instrumental "needs" of the universally developed individual are very sophisticated and diverse, they are strictly limited in amount and, given the increased "productivity" associated with the full development of "individuality" that ideal human relations make possible, can be met with a minimum amount of time and energy. This leaves a maximum amount of time for the end in themselves activities that define "the true realm of freedom." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm> These activities determine the "needs" met by activity in "the realm of necessity" with the "rigidity of a law."
Ted