From: Dogan Goecmen (Dogangoecmen@AOL.COM)
Date: Fri Nov 17 2006 - 06:22:41 EST
In einer eMail vom 17.11.2006 11:42:20 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK: Paul ---------- My objection is not to the idea that there exist material information structures prior to production which themselves shape the process of production. These are necessary to all production, my objection is, in Althusserian terms, to the idealist closure that Marx caries out when he says that the building is 'in the head' and at the same time conflates in the person of the architect, the social division of labour necessary for the construction of large buildings. In doing this he is giving a philosophical rather than a scientific answer to the question - in this area he had still not broken from the speculative method. One says this partly with the benefit of hindsight, however much Marx borrowed from Babbage's 'Economy of Machinery' he does not seem to have paid much attention to Babbage's analysis of the division of mental labour, still less his work on the Analytical Engine. It took the work of Turing for one to see that what passes for creative mental work, is almost always an interactive process in which the means of intellectual production - paper, pencils, paint etc play an indispensable role. Paul No architect ever builds in the head. The profession of architect is as much a form of manual labour as that of the bricklayer, the architect is just using different tools. If one is to understand contemporary economies in which the production and distribution of materialised information structures is an ever growing part of all activity, one has to break with this 'in the head' illusion. Just a short reply: A bricklayer has to be as much as an architect as an achitect has to be a bricklayer. Otherwise they caanot build a house in cooperation. Whatever they may do it remains bodily activity. Marx does not say more than that. He talks about human beings - not about a particular profession.
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