___Ted W., no doubt discussing internal relations among individuals, _____________________________________ Jim Devine wrote in dialogue with David Shemano::
The passage from the German Ideology concerns the kind of individual and the kind of individual activities that would characterize "communist society." This is the "univeersally developed individual" with fully developed "capabilities" able to do and actually doing what others do (an appropriation, among other things, of Hegel's idea of an "educated person"). So it is about "individuality" and "individuals." As I tried to show earlier, "individuality" is an essential concept in Marx's philosophy of history. He conceives the historical process as a process of "bildung" through which the "true individuality" that defines "human being" develops and is actualized. This "true individuality" is the "educated person," the "universally developed individual." Thus Marx claims the primitive communal form is not the higher form envisaged in his idea of "communism" as "the true realm of freedom" because, as James Heartfield once pointed out on this list, "in this early condition of society, individuality of persons was lost in the gens" (Marx, Ethnological Notebooks, edited by Lawrence Krader, p. 150) ^^^^^^ CB: Perhaps the individuals of individualistic capitalism are the historic product of the contradictions of class divided society. But individuals are also the made in intimacy , not only in that babies are born of intimacy, but essential character of the intimates themselves is developed in intimate relations. The one is the product of the two, the social cell of two people ^^^^^ In contrast, he claimed in 1881 that the private property associated with the Russian agricultural commune had facilitated the development of sufficient "individuality" to make possible the "appropriation" of means of production developed elsewhere and move directly to a higher communal form without passing through capitalism. "It is easy to see that the dualism inherent in the 'agricultural commune' might endow it with a vigorous life, since on the one hand communal property and all the social relations springing from it make for its solid foundation, whereas the private house, the cultivation of arable land in parcels and the private appropriation of its fruits permit a development of individuality which is incompatible with conditions in more primitive communities." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm ^^^^^^ CB: Then there were Geronimo or Sitting Bull, well known individuals from modes more primary than Russian peasant communes. ^^^^^^ A similar role is given to "private property," this time to the "private property of the laborer in his means of production," in the development within the "petty mode of production" of "the free individuality of the labourer himself." "The private property of the laborer in his means of production is the foundation of petty industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or both; petty industry, again, is an essential condition for the development of social production and of the free individuality of the laborer himself. Of course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its adequate classical form, only where the laborer is the private owner of his own means of labor set in action by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm Similar claims are made about the effect of the wage-labourer's private property in her wage and labour-power on the development of her "free individuality." Through this private property, the wage- labourer "learns to master himself" and is made "in principle receptive to, and ready for, any variation in his labour capacity and his working activity." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02a.htm The "end" of such development is "freedom" understood as " the positive power to assert his true individuality" as a "universally developed individual." "man . . . is free . . . through the positive power to assert his true individuality" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_d.htm This "end" is ethical. "Universally developed individuals" know the "good" and how to actualize it. Relations of mutual recognition (an idea that appropriates, among other things, Plato on "love" in the Phaedrus and Aristotle on "friendship" in the Nicomachean Ethics) constitute the ethical aspect of this "good" and of the activities that define "the true realm of freedom" where the "good" is actualized as a good life. I'm sure that there are people who don't like to be engaged in communal decision-making. To my mind, they don't have to be involved with communal life if they don't want to -- unless they make decisions that have an impact on others. I guess there are people like that. But if they don't participate in communal decision-making at all, they must be willing to live with the results of the decisions of others. I think that it's a fact of life that we are forced to live in society with others. The only solution is not isolation or markets but democracy. But "the positive power to assert his true individuality" is the "power" required for the truly "ethical" social relation elaborated in Marx's account of how we would produce if "we had carried out production as human beings," i.e. as "universally developed individuals." By definition, such individuals would desire and actualize such a "communal life." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/index.htm Ted ^^^^^^^ CB: All for one, and one for all !
