> The lack of working class
> unity flows from the alienation that occurs through a commodity
> society
> (social relations mediated by things), which creates a competitivism
> between
> workers which manifests many forms of ideological attempts to
> understand the
> social world. This will not be overcome until the source of the
> alienation
> and competition is removed (this is why I posted the Marx quote
> where he
> attacks the enlightenment critique of religion).
Alienation has, however, to be consistent with the development of the degree of enlightenment necessary for the initiation of a "praxis" that will then further develop enlightenment to the degree necessary for the creation of relations from which all barriers to full individual development have been removed.
Though he's badly mistaken, Marx is explicit about how the self- estrangement characteristic of wage labour in the capitalist labour process works to generate the required degree of enlightenment, i.e. contributes to "the integral development of every individual producer" as well as creating the "productive forces" the degree of enlightenment generated by both capitalist self-estrangement and revolutionary praxis must enable individuals to "appropriate" if they are successfully to create such relations.
Thus we have the contrast between wage and slave labour in terms of their consistency with the development of enlightenment in the passage from the 1864 Theories of Surplus Value, wage labour developing capacities that "fit the worker himself to undertake historical actions".
The Grundrisse passage preceding the claim that the form of wealth involved with "direct forced labour" (the form "for which wealth itself has value only as gratification, not as wealth itself"} cannot develop "general industriousness" credits capitalist wealth and the "indirect forced labour" - wage labour - it involves with doing so: "the severe discipline of capital, acting on succeeding generations [Geschlechter], has developed general industriousness as the general property of the new species [Geschlecht]".
"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." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm>
Properly sublated "industriousness" is a necessary characteristic of "true individuality" with the developed capabilities required for the "freedom" that defines "the true realm of freedom".
Its lack of "industriousness" is one of the characteristics of the degree of "free individuality" developed by the conditions of "self- sustaining peasants working for their own consumption" that makes the destruction of these conditions through "primitive accumulation" motivated by "passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious" progressive. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm>
Such "self-sustaining peasants" "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". <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm>
Such an "individuality" lacks the capabilities required for "really free working", i.e. for the activity that defines "the true realm of freedom".
"Really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion."
The "educative" idea of the "revolutionary praxis" for which capitalism "fits" the worker is invoked by Marx as a way out of the self-contradictory idea of "education" he identifies as the "materialist doctrine" in the third thesis on Feuerbach.
"The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
"The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm>
This idea of "revolutionary praxis" as "educative" in the required way is elaborated in the German Ideology.
"Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm
>
"Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence. This appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated, the productive forces, which have been developed to a totality and which only exist within a universal intercourse. From this aspect alone, therefore, this appropriation must have a universal character corresponding to the productive forces and the intercourse.
"The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material instruments of production. The appropriation of a totality of instruments of production is, for this very reason, the development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm
>
"private property can be abolished only on condition of an all-round development of individuals, precisely because the existing form of intercourse and the existing productive forces are all-embracing and only individuals that are developing in an all-round fashion can appropriate them, i.e., can turn them into free manifestations of their lives." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03o.htm
>
Ted