[OPE] FWD: Marx, Technology and Information

> I was wondering if you knew of any texts doing a comparative
> between Nietzsche and Marx, partly as i'm trying to
> understand where 'will' (will-to-power and other
> will-to-whatever) fits into social processes and labor.

I am very interested in this question too. My own
understanding/hunches of this issue are summarized in what I
wrote in my Marx class once:

Marx prides himself of turning Hegel's idealism right-side
up, which is so-to-say standing on its head. Marx wants it
to stand on its feet. Here in chapter Two, Marx is also
turning the metaphysical voluntarism of Hegel's colleage and
rival Schopenhauer right-side up.

Since people can do what they want but cannot want what they
want, Schopenhauer concludes that people are driven by their
wills. Schopenhauer generalizes this to say that the will
is the universal driving force, animals and things have
wills too and are driven by these wills. Marx applies this
to the self-activity of commodities, which seem indeed
things driven by a will. This will is not Schopenhauer's
univeral blind will, but the will of the commodity owners
"residing" in the commodity. By investing their wills in
their commodities, the commodity owners lose this will while
the commodities have captured the wills of their owners. In
other words, the owners become slaves of the commodities.
Just as Schopenhauer's will was governed by his poodle.
(Only kidding to make my point clearer, no offense intended
against Schopenhauer's famous love for his poodle.)

For context see

http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/das-kapital/2008fa/555.html
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Received on Sat Mar 12 02:56:47 2011