Are workers naturally productive, or lazy?

[Jacob Cliff]

Marx and Engels, and probably Lenin from my knowledge, believed that working men are naturally productive, and that labor is a natural creative element human nature engenders (capitalism deterring this, and estranging man from creative labor, of course). But Trotsky states in Terrorism and Communism that man is naturally lazy; that he seeks to get the greatest amount of product for the least amount of work. Now, Trotsky's analysis (IMO) seems anthetical to the traditional Marxist view, and pretty much negates the theory of alienation. But, again, it does seem to be more accurate, when looking at the real world..

So here's my question: are people naturally lazy, as Trotsky postulates, and thus in need of social compulsion to labor, or are they naturally productive and creative when in their natural state? Is there actual empirical data or statistics for either claim, or are they just both guesses?
Thanks

[Armchair Partisan]

I know I'm fucking lazy, for one. I'm not sure whether capitalism has made me that way or I was just doomed to be lazy from the start, though...

Seeking to get as much done with as little effort as possible is not laziness, though - it is efficiency. I'm sure someone else can provide a more detailed analysis of "work" under capitalism and socialism, and how they differ in their nature.

[Alet]

There are no such things as "naturally lazy" or "naturally productive". Both, laziness and the will to be productive, has to be understood in a wider social context. What Marx and Engels said was that you will find a mode of production in every society, as production is necessary for the reproduction of humans. You don't have wage systems in hunter-gatherer societies, although labor has to be coerced by such measures according to bourgeois ideologues. "When you do not work, you should not be guaranteed the same living standards as the people, who work" - they justify such sanctions by pointing to the lazy people, saying if there were no sanctions, nobody would work. You're right, "when looking at the real world" there are a lot of people who hate working and would prefer living a relaxed, privileged life. But this is a phenomenon of a capitalist, alienated society and not "natural". In communism, labor will become life's prime want, as Marx states it.

[BIXX]

I'm not naturally productive

[BIXX]

So unless something unnatural happened to me or my parents I'd say that we aren't naturally productive

[Rafiq]

Marx and Engels, and probably Lenin from my knowledge, believed that working men are naturally productive, and that labor is a natural creative element human nature engenders (capitalism deterring this, and estranging man from creative labor, of course). But Trotsky states in Terrorism and Communism that man is naturally lazy; that he seeks to get the greatest amount of product for the least amount of work. Now, Trotsky's analysis (IMO) seems anthetical to the traditional Marxist view, and pretty much negates the theory of alienation. But, again, it does seem to be more accurate, when looking at the real world..

So here's my question: are people naturally lazy, as Trotsky postulates, and thus in need of social compulsion to labor, or are they naturally productive and creative when in their natural state? Is there actual empirical data or statistics for either claim, or are they just both guesses?
Thanks

To be "productive" or "not productive" in the way you are employing it is purely a moral standard, it has nothing to do with how Lenin, Marx and Engels understood the word. Of course there are varying degrees of 'productivity' for a given factory, and therefore business, so this is its moral dimension: I.e. to say "These workers are not productive" is simply a different employment of the word.

Instead, what Marx understood by production is literally the production of human society as a whole, and human life - not simply some mechanical process of "making sure we have the resources to do as we please", but as an actual definite mode of being for human,s i.e. their actual expression of life as beings. This is hard to take in, in our postmodern epoch, where we assume 'this' dimension of humans belong to "nature". Production for Marx and Engels simply refers to those processes which assure man is not a naked being surviving out of pure proximity.

So basically what Trotsky was trying to say is that left to their own devices, as individuals, most people are going to (and he used really obnoxious 'survivalist' terms which I am sure were not as much in bad taste then as now) work as little as possible to get as much as possible, and that through each historic epoch for labor to be organized on a social level means some kind of means of compulsion, i.e. some kind of means of motivating people to do things they would otherwise not do "spontaneously". That's all it means. There is nothing "innate" about this laziness - you don't need biology or anatomy to understand it, it's simple - work takes time that could otherwise be spent doing something, in accordance with your immediate surroundings, that you would prefer. Now generally we Marxists would understand this in terms of alienation - the dissonance between particular and common interests of society as a whole. Whether or not this is the case (I do not want to debate it here), during the early stages of a proletarian dictatorship workers will indeed have duties, they will indeed have to make many sacrifices, and put the cause before leisure and so on.

As far as humanity's "natural state" goes, that is precisely the problem - there is no such thing as a human natural state, there has always been, between 'nature' and 'culture' a dimension Freudians call death drive, and from it arises what Lacanians call the symbolic order, the means by which your expression of life is defined via language. I do not mean to be provocative - the problem is that I could not provide you with a real example that would show what exactly humanity's "natural state" would look like. The first anatomically modern humans arose 150,000 years ago, and the first upright walking hominids were much, much older. Humans are best understood as those naked and hairless animals who are overcome with the same helplessness as a screaming infant, dealing with the trauma of being cast out of the garden and into the wilderness. Are people 'naturally' inclined to do strenuousness and physically demanding activity? No, because nothing about what it means to be human is natural. People who work out intensely and jog for "dopamine" - this is all self-imposed discipline AGAINST the proximity of passively accepting what is immediately easy. That is what it means to be human.

I think there's a book you should keep an eye on, by Frederic Jameson coming out this summer that might deal with this topic a bit: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/538649/an-american-utopia-by-fredric-jameson-edited-by-slavoj-zizek/9781784784522/

[River]

Human nature does not exist, and Marx, Lenin and Engels agreed with this, so they probably did not believe that workers were productive by nature but work is productive. Work is productive but not necessarily workers.

[willowtooth]

of course workers are naturally productive who do you think produced everything?

[BIXX]

of course workers are naturally productive who do you think produced everything?

That's a dumb answer, just because workers produce doesn't mean they naturally are productive.

[Vee]

I do not think anyone is naturally productive or naturally lazy as individuals. As a class workers are naturally productive but as individuals it can go either way.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Marx and Engels, and probably Lenin from my knowledge, believed that working men are naturally productive, and that labor is a natural creative element human nature engenders (capitalism deterring this, and estranging man from creative labor, of course). But Trotsky states in Terrorism and Communism that man is naturally lazy; that he seeks to get the greatest amount of product for the least amount of work. Now, Trotsky's analysis (IMO) seems anthetical to the traditional Marxist view, and pretty much negates the theory of alienation. But, again, it does seem to be more accurate, when looking at the real world..

So here's my question: are people naturally lazy, as Trotsky postulates, and thus in need of social compulsion to labor, or are they naturally productive and creative when in their natural state? Is there actual empirical data or statistics for either claim, or are they just both guesses?
Thanks

Trotsky's argument is completely confused, to be honest. He conflates two or three things together in order to argue for an extension of the methods that worked on the railways to the entire workers' state - an approach that failed miserably, and which Trotsky dropped by the time the Left Opposition was formed.

Were Russian workers in 1921 inclined to labour? No, most of them were not. This has nothing to do with some sort of innate dislike for labour, and everything to do with the conditions in 1921.

Do humans generally strive to avoid labour? If they do, we have no real way of explaining e.g. much of the primitive classless society. Why would a "naturally lazy" human take the time to carve the Magdalenian Swimming Reindeers statue?

Do humans avoid repetitive, dulling and pointless labour? They do, generally, always subject to social conditions of course, and this is the "progressive laziness" Trotsky mentions. Only it's not really laziness.

[cyu]

When you try to force people to do something, they become "naturally" lazy because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_%28psychology%29

When you don't try to force people to do anything, they become "naturally" bored, and then try to invent things to do.

[Zoop]

of course workers are naturally productive who do you think produced everything?

That isn't evidence of a natural inclination towards productivity, as workers are coerced into working under threat of destitution, so they really have no choice.

I do consider a tendency towards productivity to exist; if they are free to pursuit activities they enjoy, and if the work is under their own control, it will be sought after.

[Comrade #138672]

I think there is no "natural state" for productivity or lack thereof. Human labor is conditioned by society and the production relations. This will not be any different in a socialist society, although socialist society would be radically different from capitalist society.

Also, it is possible for someone to be "lazy" when it comes to doing manual work, while that same person may be very "ambitious" in doing intellectual/creative work, or the other way around. So it depends on the kind of work too. I for one am very lazy when it comes to doing chores, but on the other hand I am sometimes motivated to work day and night on some math problem that interests me.

[Guardia Rossa]

I love to build things, to hear music, to understand how the humanity and it's historical constructions works, to learn history, to learn about socialism, about geography and geopolitics, to learn languages, to learn how the physical/chemical/biological processes works, etc...
I doubt I would like to do this things if I was forced to do them.

[willowtooth]

That's a dumb answer, just because workers produce doesn't mean they naturally are productive.

what does it mean to be "naturally productive" this would mean certain animals are more productive than other species of animals right? Are ants more productive than squirrels?

the term lazy is culturally bias, if you live in the jungle like "natural" humans you don't really need to work past finding food. If you live in the desert or near the arctic you have to produce alot more to survive.

Our current way of life is whats unnatural