[lbo-talk] Left wing loathing for the working class

[John Thornton]

James Heartfield wrote:
> John Thornton says I do not understand Marx's argument about wants being 
> generated socially. I beg to differ. What Marx is saying in the Grundrisse 
> about wants is most definitely not, what John says 'objecting to the 
> capitalist imperative to consume'. On the contrary, Marx thinks this is one 
> of the positive sides of Capital, 'the great civilizing influence of 
> capital' its tendency to develop the individual as a cultured being. John 
> writes that under capitalism the 'desires' of the masses are 'manipulated by 
> advertising imploring them to consume'.
>   
I did not write that you don't understand Marx's argument but rather 
that in spite of the fact that you acknowledge it you still write as one 
who believes that the current desires under capitalism will still hold 
true under socialism. That is an assumption you continually make. You 
claim you don't know what those future desires will be but then write 
assuming they will be as today.
> 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.
>   
Yes you again put words into my mouth. I have never claimed the desires 
under capitalism are false and that some authentic desire is waiting to 
be unleashed.
I claim exactly what I wrote, no more, no less.
I know the wants people have are real but I know that reality is also 
manipulated. If you do not believe wants are deliberately constructed by 
producers you haven't been studying the SUV craze in the US very 
carefully. A perfect example of wants being constructed by auto makers 
when they discovered a "loophole" in DOT and EPA regulations that would 
allow more profits to be derived from selling a Ford Explorer than a 
Ford Contour.
This same imperative may or may not exist under socialism but we can 
strive towards a future that acknowledges the destructiveness of 
creating these desires and curtail them.
> 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. 
>   
Marx wasn't god. He didn't know all. He got this one wrong. He had no 
idea just how large and destructive these desires were to become. He 
knew no natural limits but today, with the exception of some high-tech 
utopian's and head-in-the-sand conservatives, we know that such limits 
do exist. There is a limit to the amount of CO2 we can release, how many 
forests we can cut, etc.

John Thornton