The importance of human spontaneity to marxism

[Dean]

I know a lot of you aren't marxist, but I think any realistic communist or anarchist paradigm has to accept the significance of this issue.

I want to talk about the importance of spontaneous human activity and labor in communist theory. I would like to hear some specific theories based around the resolution of this problem, and how you feel it relates to your specific brand of leftism. If you reject the basic premise, then say that and why.

The idea I am talking about here has a lot to do with associative (rather than alienating) social constructs, economic activity and labor. The premise is that communism, being about the resultion of this crisis, speaks in terms of a "bringing together" of man with his labor, his social life and his human activity. Consider the following quote:


A direct consequence of the alienation of man from the product of his labour, from his life activity and from his species-life, is that man is alienated from other men. ... man is alienated from his species-life means that each man is alienated from others, and that each of the others is likewise alienated from human life.
-Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 17

A fuller quote from marxists.org, but less readable:

An immediate consequence of man’s estrangement from the product of his labour, his life activity, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man confront himself, he also confronts other men. What is true of man’s relationship to his labour, to the product of his labour, and to himself, is also true of his relationship to other men, and to the labour and the object of the labour of other men.

In general, the proposition that man is estranged from his species-being means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man’s essence.

Clearly the issue of alienation is, for marx, the seperation of man's activity from his own personally defined decision - making processes. I think two issues arise here which need appraisal:

First off, there is the issue of what the alternative is. Clearly, for something to be specifically rooted in anthropogenic creativity, it needs to be spontaneous human activity. What this means to me is that the human being is involved at every step of the way in understanding, analyzing and dictating the purpose, mode, and conclusion of his actions.

One can understand our economic alienation in the sense that man is today involved only in very small, disinterested roles in the creativity of commodities and services. This is the result of a division of labor in which man is involved primarily, and more or less exclusively in one portion of the procedure. The receptionist is a great example: a reception for Altria might receive people interested in complaining about GM food, addictive cigarettes or the labor practices of Altria's vendors. However, he is usually not related at all to these specific issues, so when he receives and transfers a call or visitor he is simply taking a variable (the concern of the customer) and processing it into a specific category. This is dead, mechanical labor because the worker makes decisions not based on his own criteria, but on the criteria set forth by his job description. He may know very well how to deal personally with the issue of labor relations, but that is irrelevent - he is not authorized to make decisions on that issue, and if he knows that the workers are treated poorly, he is outright banned from speaking candidly on the issue.

The alternative, spontaneity, is basically the return of the human's activity to his own powers. The receptionist (transformed into a specialist) could hold a productive discussion with the customer, and speak to his fellow members of the collective to discover good resolutions to the problem. The receptionist's variable - processing labor is transformed into a fluid, data-gathering process which is more in his hands to control.

Secondly, the issue of free will in general arises. Spontaneity refers to actions purely derived from the spontaneous actor. However, we understand that "no human being is an island," rather, that man is a social being whose actions can be solely dictated by his own human nature. this is where the understanding of all the processes which came to resolve in an action becomes critical.

And this is also why understanding why you as a human being choose to do something in a given fashion is so critical. The only form of analysis that truly delves into this is psychoanalysis. Please forget the Freudian psychobabble, and understand "psychoanalysis" in the sense that it is a mode of psychological analysis which tries to understand subconscious motivation as a temperament of past conditions, cognitions and responses.

In other words, psychoanalyis tries to understand a human's past to understand his or her motivations, and in the context of this thread, to allow a person to fully grasp the power of his actions, to be unalienated from the motivation, analysis and creation of his activity.


I know I just threw a lot of ideas out there (and I am still not done, I just have to leave), but I am interested in what your thoughts are.

[rouchambeau]

Clearly the issue of alienation is, for marx, the seperation of man's activity from his own personally defined decision - making processes.
I don't think that is really the case. When Marx speaks of alienation in this context, he is saying that Man is alienated from herself because the objective residue of her creative efforts is sold away and "takes on a life of its own". Sure, there is something alienating about not having control over the decisions one makes, but that isn't the issue here.

I think you make a good point about free will. It is necessary to understand how our culture, religious attitudes and influences, etc came to be in order to have a better understanding of how we can be more free.

[Dean]

I don't think that is really the case. When Marx speaks of alienation in this context, he is saying that Man is alienated from herself because the objective residue of her creative efforts is sold away and "takes on a life of its own". Sure, there is something alienating about not having control over the decisions one makes, but that isn't the issue here.

I think the point of it "taking on its own life" is that it becomes something external to her creative processes, in other words something that is not in her control. This means that anything not distinctly under ones control can be considered alienated, and therefore the issues of what causes one to do something are also very relevant. It is important to recognize that Marx talks about man as a part of the material world, not as an external force, and therefore we must consider discussion of man in the since that internal forces are also subject to criticism, particularly when it comes to determinations on alienation. If alienation only referred to things unassociated with man in general, rather than man's conscious, associated and active thought processes and will, then I don't think the issue of alienation would be important at all. We must understand not just how man relates to his surroundings, but also how he deals with himself, to really grasp a full understanding of the human being.


A note on pronouns: I chose to use the pronoun "he" because "he/she" is too cumbersome. I understand the sexist connotations with using male pronouns dominantly, but it would be cumbersome to specify this problem at every turn. In the absence of a realistic resolution to this linguistic problem, I kept with tradition and used the masculine forms.

[Hit The North]

This means that anything not distinctly under ones control can be considered alienatedIf that was the case, unless you could bring all other people under your control you will remain forever alienated from them as would anyone else who is not capable of exercising such a totalitarian will.

I think fundamentally, alienation is meant by Marx to be alienation from our own human powers. But those powers are social. Hence the emphasis on species being.

So I'm not sure that your, dare I say, more egotistical version of the un-aliented self, as someone who's activity is entirely spontaneous, is close to what Marx meant at least.

Interestingly, in Civilization & its Discontents (I think), Freud argues that social life demands a level of repression (of instinctive drives) in order to work. Further, the more civilized that social life is, the more repression which is required.

[cenv]

The effect of Taylorism, Fordism, and above all, the basic divisions and structure inherent to capitalism, is that the working class produces commodities that ultimately rule them. I think an obvious example is the culture industry. The workers play specialized roles in producing a commodity that is overseen and planned by the bourgeoisie -- in this case, bourgeois culture and ideology. The alternative would be a society where the workers are more involved in the production process as a whole and where they have less specialized roles and more room for creativity. If the workers are in charge of planning and managing the production process, they rule their products, not vice versa.

[gla22]

The effect of Taylorism, Fordism, and above all, the basic divisions and structure inherent to capitalism, is that the working class produces commodities that ultimately rule them. I think an obvious example is the culture industry. The workers play specialized roles in producing a commodity that is overseen and planned by the bourgeoisie -- in this case, bourgeois culture and ideology. The alternative would be a society where the workers are more involved in the production process as a whole and where they have less specialized roles and more room for creativity. If the workers are in charge of planning and managing the production process, they rule their products, not vice versa.

Couldn't have said it better. Here the workers are more involved with their product, it is their product.

[Dean]

If that was the case, unless you could bring all other people under your control you will remain forever alienated from them as would anyone else who is not capable of exercising such a totalitarian will.

I think fundamentally, alienation is meant by Marx to be alienation from our own human powers. But those powers are social. Hence the emphasis on species being.

So I'm not sure that your, dare I say, more egotistical version of the un-aliented self, as someone who's activity is entirely spontaneous, is close to what Marx meant at least.

Interestingly, in Civilization & its Discontents (I think), Freud argues that social life demands a level of repression (of instinctive drives) in order to work. Further, the more civilized that social life is, the more repression which is required.

OK, I see what you're saying. I think it would be more accurate to talk about alienation in the sense that a human being actively involved is associated even if they aren't fully in control. I did point out (by using knowledge, rather than outright control as a point of reference) that alienation requires knowledge firstly and sometimes power. So you misinterpret me, but at the same time you do raise a good point on the duality of spontaneity in my definition. It's also good to recognize that spontaneity is not an absolute: in otehr words, an action is not totally spontaneous or alienated, but rather a collection of traits pointing both ways.

On Freud, I have to disagree. I think the point of communism is to alleviate this repression, and ultimately to destroy it wherever communism interacts with forces which dull the mind. This may sound idealistic, but I don't think it is for the very points I raised about spontaneity and the cocnept of association. Freud can be said to have understood the spontaneous activty of man, or to have discovered forces which help to alienate man's potency, but what he desired is not so important here. I think we all know he was a bourgeous victorian. Orthodox psychoanalysis is fairly useless, especially if we want to bond other concepts to psychoanalysis. this is why so few orthodox freudians got any note, whereas those who branched off flourished.



The effect of Taylorism, Fordism, and above all, the basic divisions and structure inherent to capitalism, is that the working class produces commodities that ultimately rule them. I think an obvious example is the culture industry. The workers play specialized roles in producing a commodity that is overseen and planned by the bourgeoisie -- in this case, bourgeois culture and ideology. The alternative would be a society where the workers are more involved in the production process as a whole and where they have less specialized roles and more room for creativity. If the workers are in charge of planning and managing the production process, they rule their products, not vice versa.

Couldn't have said it better. Here the workers are more involved with their product, it is their product.

Do you think the effects that having a rule over somethign has can be disassociative? This is an aspcet of psychoanalysis, that domination and submission require a different, often blind and dogmatic approach to the subject. For instance, blind nationalism is a form of masochism (in this sense) and it requires certain traits and activities which serve to limit the power of the submitting person. Also, because the person who submits themself to a nation is averse to criticism of the nation (because it would lay bare the very self-destructive nature of nationalism), it stunts the growth of the nation as the nationalists refuse to recognize and fix problems.

This is something which could be expored further, but I think alienation is ultimately about removing the presense of such bonds, including those that deal with labor. After all, interacting with society can be said to be a form of labor (and some labor requires social activity) so the domination of the labor can be said to sometimes invovle a dominance of man over other men.