- 08 Oct 2024 22:53
#15326721
Well labor has always existed as long as there are humans. Marx presupposes that humans do not exist independent of a natural reality which they shape in meeting their needs, and thus in changing the world change themselves.
Early humans lived in groups marked by material necessity, they survive how they could. But as humans develop tools, technology, and effective practices, we get better at meeting those needs and eventually are able to create a surplus.
With the creation of a surplus of goods, class division can emerge because not everyone is within a division of labor just to survive.
So humans make basis tools for basic needs, but with a more complex society we develop entirely new needs.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm
There is no sensible way in which to argue that money is some natural need because it didn't exist for much of human history and humans simply labored to directly produce for themselves and others. But it is definitely a need once there is generalized mass production of commodities as it presupposes that one's work is dependent on the work of others in order to meet many other needs. And with the mass of commodities we have a great many wants, needs, and desires to survive on the daily.
Everything about my life as a person in a modern industrialized nation is not of bare biological necessity but of more refined and cultural wants and needs. Each item in my possession, and each service I acquire isn't simply excessive because it exceeds the technological and material needs of a person in a primitive tribe. Because then we should argue against against any development of human needs, not jus tin the consumption of commodities, but even the developing of the senses for art, for fine cuisine, to want to drink from a glass, to use utensils. Humans are no different materially/biologically than humans of many generations ago except for how we are adapted to our modern social conditions.
https://www.kafu-academic-journal.info/journal/6/164/
So one could catalogue the many different use-values of commodities that exist today if one wanted, but it is simply the means in which we meet different wants and needs. While one can say that there is an industry in developing fine paints and brushes to make money, they have emerged because many people who are interested in the arts have a great desire to benefit from their specific qualities to achieve their artistic ends.
So you can spend hundreds of dollars on a single paint brush because of the fine materials and design of it that help it perform specific functions better than a basic brush within a specific painting medium such as water color painting.
The reason I emphasize the socially developed quality of human senses, desires, needs, is that a biological reduction would see us too crudely in our actual human nature and is more often a justification for poverty, but often only for some rather than an advocate for the increased development of everyone.
I would also emphasize that some services aren't tangible commodities but do have material effects. When I get a hair cut to look good in some modern style or to what ever tastes I have, it's not a tangible thing except for it's effect.
So the use-values of things arises because humans in what ever practice have developed some want of a specific thing and it's a part of some way of life/practice/activity. I have a nice telecaster precisely because of the long journey other humans have undertaken in playing music, and the incorporation of modern technology to make it accessible. I couldn't just wake up without it's prior history in want of it. And wants often arise from creativity to present day problems which we can't predict the solutions for or how they will spread until it is actuality.
I don't know the needs of humans many generations from now or their way of life. But we can perhaps predict based on current means what sort of things may change like whether 3D printers may become more affordable and change a lot about what things people create readily for their own use.
wat0n wrote:Can you elaborate on this?
Well labor has always existed as long as there are humans. Marx presupposes that humans do not exist independent of a natural reality which they shape in meeting their needs, and thus in changing the world change themselves.
Early humans lived in groups marked by material necessity, they survive how they could. But as humans develop tools, technology, and effective practices, we get better at meeting those needs and eventually are able to create a surplus.
With the creation of a surplus of goods, class division can emerge because not everyone is within a division of labor just to survive.
So humans make basis tools for basic needs, but with a more complex society we develop entirely new needs.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm
In line with this distinction between a general human nature and the specific expression of human nature in each culture, Marx distinguishes, as we have already mentioned above, two types of human drives and appetites: the constant or fixed ones, such as hunger and the sexual urge, which are an integral part of human nature, and which can be changed only in their form and the direction they take in various cultures, and the "relative" appetites, which are not an integral part of human nature but which "owe their origin to certain social structures and certain conditions of production and communication." [24]
Marx gives as an example the needs produced by the capitalistic structure of society. "The need for money," he wrote in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, "is therefore the real need created by the modern economy, and the only need which it creates.... This is shown subjectively, partly in the fact that the expansion of production and of needs becomes an ingenious and always calculating subservience to inhuman, depraved, unnatural, and imaginary appetites." [25]
Man's potential, for Marx, is a given potential; man is, as it were, the human raw material which, as such, cannot be changed, just as the brain structure has remained the same since the dawn of history. Yet, man does change in the course of history; he develops himself; he transforms himself, he is the product of history; since he makes his history, he is his own product. History is the history of man's self-realization; it is nothing but the self-creation of man through the process of his work and his production: "the whole of what is called world history is nothing but the creation of man by human labor, and the emergence of nature for man; he therefore has the evident and irrefutable proof of his self-creation, of his own origins."
There is no sensible way in which to argue that money is some natural need because it didn't exist for much of human history and humans simply labored to directly produce for themselves and others. But it is definitely a need once there is generalized mass production of commodities as it presupposes that one's work is dependent on the work of others in order to meet many other needs. And with the mass of commodities we have a great many wants, needs, and desires to survive on the daily.
Everything about my life as a person in a modern industrialized nation is not of bare biological necessity but of more refined and cultural wants and needs. Each item in my possession, and each service I acquire isn't simply excessive because it exceeds the technological and material needs of a person in a primitive tribe. Because then we should argue against against any development of human needs, not jus tin the consumption of commodities, but even the developing of the senses for art, for fine cuisine, to want to drink from a glass, to use utensils. Humans are no different materially/biologically than humans of many generations ago except for how we are adapted to our modern social conditions.
https://www.kafu-academic-journal.info/journal/6/164/
The historical materialism of Marx, as Ilyenkov stated, differs from other forms of materialism by the idea that all abilities of an individual, including the five main senses, are understood as a product of history, not as a gift from Mother Nature. Thus human eyesight and hearing differ from the eyesight and hearing of animals, and they do so because they are formed on the basis of communication with things made by a man for a man.
But a man differs from an animal above all by the presence of spiritual senses to which artistic taste and moral sense (conscience), the sense of the sublime, pride and love in its human spiritual meaning pertain. On the other hand, from the point of view of historical materialism, the highest spiritual senses do not presuppose additional physical organs, but rather transform and instill the highest ideal meaning into the activity of the natural senses, all the vital functions of a human organism.
The basis of vexation of mind is nothing but pain. Its essence differs, however, from a sudden heart attack. Thirst for justice differs from mere physical thirst. Someone who listens to symphonic music hears it with his ears, but he does not hear just a collection of sounds. Human senses are physically always the same. This means that the highest spiritual qualities do not presuppose different organs but different abilities of an individual which form a richer content of human life and behaviour.
So one could catalogue the many different use-values of commodities that exist today if one wanted, but it is simply the means in which we meet different wants and needs. While one can say that there is an industry in developing fine paints and brushes to make money, they have emerged because many people who are interested in the arts have a great desire to benefit from their specific qualities to achieve their artistic ends.
So you can spend hundreds of dollars on a single paint brush because of the fine materials and design of it that help it perform specific functions better than a basic brush within a specific painting medium such as water color painting.
The reason I emphasize the socially developed quality of human senses, desires, needs, is that a biological reduction would see us too crudely in our actual human nature and is more often a justification for poverty, but often only for some rather than an advocate for the increased development of everyone.
I would also emphasize that some services aren't tangible commodities but do have material effects. When I get a hair cut to look good in some modern style or to what ever tastes I have, it's not a tangible thing except for it's effect.
So the use-values of things arises because humans in what ever practice have developed some want of a specific thing and it's a part of some way of life/practice/activity. I have a nice telecaster precisely because of the long journey other humans have undertaken in playing music, and the incorporation of modern technology to make it accessible. I couldn't just wake up without it's prior history in want of it. And wants often arise from creativity to present day problems which we can't predict the solutions for or how they will spread until it is actuality.
I don't know the needs of humans many generations from now or their way of life. But we can perhaps predict based on current means what sort of things may change like whether 3D printers may become more affordable and change a lot about what things people create readily for their own use.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
-For Ethical Politics