> "are no product of nature, but of history. The degree and the
> universality of the development of wealth where this individuality
> becomes possible supposes production on the basis of exchange values
> as a prior condition, whose universality produces not only the
> alienation of the individual from himself and from others, but also
> the universality and the comprehensiveness of his relations and
> capacities"?
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Why is it that you think primtive communist societies could not
> meet these conditions ? There is nothing in there about high
> development of technology ? Have you read _Stone Age Economics_ by
> Marshall Sahlins demonstrating that hunting and gathering societies
> and
> by implication ancient hunters and gathers often have more leisure
> time
> than modern industrial societies ? The relations in such societies are
> famously, largely those of mutual recognition and respect
Leisure time is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the development of the capabilities that define the required individuality.
The "universality" of "production on the basis of exchange values" produces "the universality and the comprehensiveness of his [the "invidual's"] relations and capacities." This universality and comprehensiveness is also a necessary condition for the development of the required individuality, i.e. of the individuality required for the activities that constitute the content of relations of mutual recognition, e.g. creating ("composing") and appropriating "the most beautiful music" and "the finest plays."
For instance, such "composing" requires "general industriousness"; it involves "the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion."
"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." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch12.htm
According to Marx, capitalist/wage-labour relations develop such "general industriousness," the non-capitalist relations of domination from which emerge "self-sustaining peasants working for their own consumption" do not. The latter produce an individuality that "regards loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury good."
"The great historic quality of capital is to create this surplus labour, superfluous labour from the standpoint of mere use value, mere subsistence; and its historic destiny [Bestimmung] is fulfilled as soon as, on one side, there has been such a development of needs that surplus labour above and beyond necessity has itself become a general need arising out of individual needs themselves—and, on the other side, when the severe discipline of capital, acting on succeeding generations [Geschlechter], has developed general industriousness as the general property of the new species [Geschlecht]—and, finally, when the development of the productive powers of labour, which capital incessantly whips onward with its unlimited mania for wealth, and of the sole conditions in which this mania can be realized, have flourished to the stage where the possession and preservation of general wealth require a lesser labour time of society as a whole, and where the labouring society relates scientifically to the process of its progressive reproduction, its reproduction in a constantly greater abundance; hence where labour in which a human being does what a thing could do has ceased. Accordingly, capital and labour relate to each other here like money and commodity; the former is the general form of wealth, the other only the substance destined for immediate consumption. Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness [Naturbedürftigkeit], and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one. This is why capital is productive; i.e. an essential relation for the development of the social productive forces. It ceases to exist as such only where the development of these productive forces themselves encounters its barrier in capital itself.
"The Times of November 1857 contains an utterly delightful cry of outrage on the part of a West-Indian plantation owner. This advocate analyses with great moral indignation—as a plea for the re- introduction of Negro slavery—how the Quashees (the free blacks of Jamaica) content themselves with producing only what is strictly necessary for their own consumption, and, alongside this 'use value', regard loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury good; how they do not care a damn for the sugar and the fixed capital invested in the plantations, but rather observe the planters' impending bankruptcy with an ironic grin of malicious pleasure, and even exploit their acquired Christianity as an embellishment for this mood of malicious glee and indolence. They have ceased to be slaves, but not in order to become wage labourers, but, instead, self-sustaining peasants working for their own consumption. As far as they are concerned, capital does not exist as capital, because autonomous wealth as such can exist only either on the basis of direct forced labour, slavery, or indirect forced labour, wage labour. Wealth confronts direct forced labour not as capital, but rather as relation of domination [Herrschaftsverhältnis]; thus, the relation of domination is the only thing which is reproduced on this basis, for which wealth itself has value only as gratification, not as wealth itself, and which can therefore never create general industriousness." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm
Ted