> If this is an interpretation of what Marx means
> by these two realms, it isn't quite accurate.
>
> He uses the concepts to differentiate two kinds
> of activity in the ideal community - "communism.
>
> The difference between them is that the activity
> that defines the "realm of necessity" is instrumental
> (i.e. is "determined by a compelling extraneous
> purpose which must be fulfilled") while that
> defining the "true realm of freedom" is an end
> in itself (i.e. "free activity" which is "not
> determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which
> must be fulfilled), e.g. making pianos versus
> using pianos to play "the most beautiful music."
Ted replies to this that I wrote:
> Marx's view is that the
> possibility of placing our collective life under our collective
> control stems from the nature of our specifically *human* labor. In
> other words, communism is simply an expansion of that "realm of
> freedom" that germinates even in the simplest, most primitive labor
> process conceivable, expansion of the "realm of freedom" at the
> expense of the "realm of necessity" -- i.e. the realm where what we do
> escapes our control, turns against us, and oppresses us. Communism is
> expanding the control any immediate producer exercises over its
> immediate product to the whole gamut of our social relations, because
> so far in human history, people has largely produced and reproduced a
> host of those social relations without full consciousness and control
> over them.
I can't fetch the links now. But, mostly, I agree with Ted's description in his third paragraph. However, with regards to the contrast between freedom and necessity applying only to "two kinds of activity" under communism, I disagree. Ted's interpretation of Marx is a bit too literal for me.
First off, the necessity/freedom contrast is Hegelian in origin. Indeed, in the 1844 Manuscripts (section of private ownership and communism) and in Capital 3, Marx alludes to the necessity/freedom contrast in the allusion to communism (equating generalized freedom with communism). But, if you take Marx's overall work, the notion of *necessary* human activity (necessary labor being one of the formulations) is not confined to communism. (Neither is the notion of freedom. Marx often refers, for example, to *personal* freedom under capitalism, as opposed to subjection to relations of personal dependency, legal enslavement, etc.)
Just to draw the point home: In Capital 1, Marx elaborates the concept of *necessary* labor in contrast with that of surplus labor. So, not immediately in contrast with *free* labor or, perhaps better, *free* human activity, but in contrast with a form of surplus labor hostile to the laborers (i.e. surplus *value*). The idea being that surplus labor under capitalism is not yet free human activity. It is only free in potence, in that it makes human emancipation possible for the first time in history. So, in that sense, surplus labor under capitalism is still necessary, not in the sense of necessary for the reproduction of workers as such, but necessary in the sense of tied to alienated social structures that have not yet been abolished.
Mike Lebowitz has noted that Capital is premised on the workers sticking to their roles as obedient, mere subjective productive forces under the control of capital. However, historically, workers resist and carve out smaller or larger spaces of germinal freedom, spaces in which their activity contributes to advance their long-term, broader interest: resistance, thinking, germs of overall, universal human development, advocacy of better living or working conditions, unionization, etc. That's the germ of the realm of freedom. Communism doesn't emerge out of thin air, but out of embryos of freedom that can be ultimately traced out to the character of human labor, as the activity that leads social production.
Also Engels, in Anti-Duhring, refers to this necessity/freedom contrast in very general terms, in reference to consciousness confined under alienated social life vs. consciousness under social life that is transparent, under the control of people. Engels takes Hegel's notion of freedom (as the insight into necessity) and stretches it to include the ability to exercise practical control over our social life. There, Engels refers to the pre-history of the human race, the era in which unbridled necessity prevails, in contrast with a future society in which humans fully control their products, processes, and relations, a society in harmony with nature (including our human nature).