Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Alienation and Labor

What Marx-Engels, in the German Ideology, call the "abolition" of Labor under communism, to be replaced by "self-activity", is actually the abolition of an involuntary Division of Labor.  For, though in places, what they describe seems to be an anarchist vision, in which each does whatever one wants, whenever one wants, relatively muted is that the leeway is grounded in a collective and voluntary Division of Labor, presented without details as to, for example, how all necessary tasks, e. g. cleaning the latrine, get performed.  Regardless, specifically entailed in the abolition is that of role-playing in terms of involuntary and exclusive societal categories that are determined by the extant Means of Production, e. g. a transformation of 'being an X', to 'doing X' by someone who is more than 'an X'.  Now, such a transformation falls short of an Aristotelian, as has been previously discussed, elevation of Labor to skilled activity, e. g. to Art or Craft.  But, it can still be described as overcoming an 'alienation from one's Labor' that precedes the alienation from the fruits of one's Labor.    

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