Tom Walker wrote: >This kind of hijacking selected words out of context and insinuating that >they mean something else is pointless. I would say juvenile, but would be >insulting to children. The context was the role of advertising in the media >and culture. The point is about advertisers promising people things they >can't deliver.
And my juvenile point was that a lot of this critique is a rather undigested rehash of a lot of Puritan hair-shirt crap. You may think the quote is out of context - I think it's a revealing expression of anxiety over pleasure and sensuality. It is also likely to have little political appeal beyond a rather affluent gang of PC lefties (or the voluntarily poor). I'm with Mandel on this one. Doug ---- Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, pp. 394-396: >6. The genuine extension of the needs (living standards) of the >wage-earner, which represents a raising of his level of culture and >civilization. In the end this can be traced back virtually >completely to the conquest of longer time for recreation, both >quantitatively (a shorter working week, free weekends, paid >holidays, earlier pensionable age, and longer education) and >qualitatively (the actual extension of cultural needs, to the extent >to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content >by capitalist commercialization). This genuine extension of needs is >a corollary of the necessary civilizing function of capital. Any >rejection of the so-called 'consumer society' which moves beyond >justified condemnation of the commercialization and dehumanization >of consumption by capitalism to attack the historical extension of >needs and consumption in general (i.e., moves from social criticism >to a critique of civilization), turns back the clock from scientific >to utopian socialism and from historical materialism to idealism. >Marx fully appreciated and stressed the civilizing function of >capital, which he saw as the necessary preparation of the material >basis for a 'rich individuality'. The following passage from the >Grundrisse makes this view very clear: 'Capital's ceaseless striving >towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits >of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements >for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided >in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also >therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development >of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form >has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the >place of the natural one.' > >For socialists, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can >therefore never imply rejection of the extension and differentiation >of needs as a whole, or any return to the primitive natural state of >these needs; their aim is necessarily the development of a 'rich >individuality' for the whole of mankind. In this rational Marxist >sense, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can only mean: >rejection of all those forms of consumption and of production which >continue to restrict man's development, making it narrow and >one-sided. This rational rejection seeks to reverse the relationship >between the production of goods and human labour, which is >determined by the commodity form under capitalism, so that >henceforth the main goal of economic activity is not the maximum >production of things and the maximum private profit for each >individual unit of production (factory or company), but the optimum >self-activity of the individual person. The production of goods must >be subordinated to this goal, which means the elimination of forms >of production and labour which damage human health and man's natural >environment, even if they are 'profitable' in isolation. At the same >time, it must be remembered that man as a material being with >material needs cannot achieve the full development of a 'rich >individuality' through asceticism, self-castigation and artificial >self-limitation, but only through the rational development of his >consumption, consciously controlled and consciously (i.e., >democratically) subordinated to his collective interests. > >Marx himself deliberately pointed out the need to work out a system >of needs, which has nothing to do with the neo-asceticism peddled in >some circles as Marxist orthodoxy. In the Grundrisse Marx says: 'The >exploration of the earth in all directions, to discover new things >of use as well as new useful qualities of the old; such as new >qualities of them as raw materials; the development, hence, of the >natural sciences to their highest point; likewise the discovery, >creation and satisfaction of new needs arising from society itself; >the cultivation of all the qualities of the social human being, >production of the same in a form as rich as possible in needs, >because rich in qualities and relations - production of this being >as the most total and universal possible social product, for, in >order to take gratification in a many-sided way, he must be capable >of many pleasures, hence cultured to a high degree - is likewise a >condition of production founded on capital....
