From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Thu Nov 16 2006 - 16:47:21 EST
I think, Dogan, that the possibility of our building a house in our head before we build it in reality is an idealist hangover in Marx. His section on the architect and the bee has for 30 years struck me as one of the least satisfactory in the whole of Das Kapital.
One can have a general intention to build a house, but nobody builds it in their head, least of all an architect. An architect builds it on paper before building labourers build it out of bricks. The whole of marx's analysis there abstracts from class relations, from the division of mental and manual labour, and from the interaction between mental processes and the material tools of mental labour - in the architects case, rulers pencils, paper etc.
For a detailed elaboration of this critique see
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/infoworkmeaning.pdf
By the way I have been reading Dogan's book on Smith, have only got through first third so far, but it opens up an entire new window on Smith for me. I had never paid much attention to his Theory of Moral Sentiments before.
________________________________
From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of Dogan Goecmen
Sent: 16 November 2006 15:05
To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Subject: Re: [OPE-L] marx's conception of labour
It refers to the projected aims of the concret work to be done. To build a house it must have been built in our heads and so on.
Cheers
Dogan
In einer eMail vom 16.11.2006 15:00:36 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM:
> I present first the general aspects of Marx's concept of labour:
> ontological, teleological and sociological.
Dogan:
What is the teleological aspect of Marx's concept of labour?
In solidarity, Jerry
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