> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:28:44 -0400
> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> > "A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a
> > bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells.
> > But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is
> > this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he
> > erects it in reality.
>
> Golly! Who knew that Marx was such an idealist? And of course he
> was a very confident guy, bless him, but how could have known so
> much one way or the other about the subjectivity of the spider?
Imagining that you're serious, do you know so little of Marx that you really think that the roots of the architect's imagination lies in ideas rather than the material history of her culture and training? and is your neurobiological knowledge and imagination so limited as to really be asserting that a spider has subjectivity as understood in terms of historically-situated social self-reflexivity?
> > At the end of every labour-process, we get a
> > result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its
> > commencement.
>
> One gets the sense that the Old Man, with all his brilliance,
> didn't have much experience with hand tools.
Either that, or the people he knew were better with their tools than most of us deskilled 21st century folks...