James Heartfield wrote:
> Ted writes: 'What I fail to understand is how these interpretive claims can be made consistent with what Marx actually writes.' Well, maybe you do fail to understand, but that might be my fault, or it might be yours.
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> Ted goes on to say
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> 'The "true realm of freedom," for instance, is identified by Marx with "the development of human powers as an end in itself," with "the free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour'
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> but I did not argue any such thing - I wrote about 'the diminution of the realm of necessity, by abbreviating the labour process, and the consequent expansion of the (potential) realm of freedom'. You smuggled 'surplus labour' into my sentence to cast me in the role of capitalist oppressor, whereas I was arguing for the expansion of the realm of freedom.
The sentence is Marx's, not yours.
My quoting it has nothing to do with smuggling 'surplus labour' into your sentence to cast you in the role of capitalist oppressor.
I was using it to dispute what I took to be your treatment of "the diminution of the realm of necessity, by abbreviating the labour process, and the consequent expansion of the (potential) realm of freedom" as an issue different from and more important than "the development of mind."
"The development of the mind is an issue, it is just not the most important - except to you. To Marx the most important is the diminution of the realm of necessity, by abbreviating the labour process, and the consequent expansion of the (potential) realm of freedom."
The key bit in Marx's sentence is what you've left out here, the bit elaborating "the free development of individualities" as "the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free and, and with the means created for all of them."
I take this to be what's meant by the identification, in Capital vol. 3, of "the true realm of freedom" with "the development of human powers as an end in itself."
The "artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals" - "the free development of individualities" - is the development of their "minds," e.g. of their "scientific power," an interpretation consistent with the representation of the general development of human labour, in Capital vol. 1, as the substitution of rational self-determination for instinctive determination and with the representation of the conditions of the "archaic type" of "primitive community" that Marx claimed was the Indian peasant commune as "incompatible" with "the development of individuality."
In that case, Marx explicitly describes conditions incompatible with this development as conditions incompatible with the development of the human mind, i.e. as conditions that "restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies."
The particular condition he again emphasizes is "isolation," a sublation rather than a repetition of Kant because, among other reasons, the latter has the "enlarged thinking" characteristic of "enlightenment" (elaborated by Kant as "the ability to use one's understanding without guidance from another") develop by imaginatively "putting ourselves in the place of any other man" rather than, as does Marx, through "real connections" with others.
We're discussing what Marx, as opposed to Heartfield or Winslow, means by "freedom."
Since he explicitly identifies it with "the development of human powers as an end in itself," "the free development of individualities," ""the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals," I still fail to understand how it can be made consistent with the interpretive claim that, for Marx, as opposed to Heartfield, "human freedom ... is whatever it wants to be."
Like "composing," playing football and eating fabulous meals aren't mindless activities, are they? When done well, don't they both require highly developed "skill and knowledge"?
"For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
The development of mind also underpins "the diminution of the realm of necessity" which, as I've myself many times pointed out, cannot, according to Marx, ever "end," i.e. "Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm
The reduction of necessary labour, i.e. of the instrumental labour required to produce the means, including the free time, required for life in the true realm of freedom, expresses the development of "the skill and knowledge (scientific power) of the workers themselves."
It's the consequence of the "accumulation of the productive powers of social labour" which Marx, following Hodgskin, identifies chiefly with "the accumulation of the skill and knowledge (scientific power) of the workers themselves."
"accumulation is nothing but the amassing of the productive powers of social labour, so that the accumulation of the skill and knowledge (scientific power) of the workers themselves is the chief form of accumulation, and infinitely more important than the accumulation - which goes hand in hand with it and merely represents it - of the existing objective conditions of this accumulated activity. These objective conditions are only nominally accumulated and must be constantly produced anew and consumed anew." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch21.htm
Consistent with this, Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, identifies the increase in "productive powers" that the actualization of the "higher phase of communist society" requires and makes possible with "the all-around development of the individual."
Ted