From: Dogan Goecmen (Dogangoecmen@AOL.COM)
Date: Wed Dec 06 2006 - 08:05:05 EST
Hi Jurriaan, Yesterday night when I came accross the passage below in "Grundrisse" it reminded me of our discussion about capitalism and utility, which I am still enjoying. Warm regards Dogan "Thus, just as production founded on capital creates universal industriousness on one side -- i.e. surplus labour, value-creating labour -- so does it create on the other side a system of general exploitation of the natural and human qualities, a system of general utility, utilizing science itself just as much as all the physical and mental qualities, while there appears nothing higher in itself, nothing legitimate for itself, outside this circle of social production and exchange. Thus capital creates the bourgeois society, and the universal appropriation of nature as well as of the social bond itself by the members of society. Hence the great civilizing influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of humanity and as nature-idolatry. For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production. In accord with this tendency, capital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyond nature worship, as well as all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life. It is destructive towards all of this, and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the all-sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces." see: _http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch08.htm#iiie_ (http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch08.htm#iiie) or alterbatively K. Marx, Grundrisse, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1957, p. 313. See also following passage from Communist Manifesto: The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. _http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm_ (http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm)
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