[OPE-L:2939] Re: "Desire is Production of Reality"

Massimo De Angelis (massimo@uel.ac.uk)
Sun, 1 Sep 1996 07:33:19 -0700 (PDT)

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The sentence comes from French philosopher Gilles Deleux. Of course
as Jerry says, "desires by themselves do not necessarily lead
to the production of a new reality." However, not even
machines, factories, buildings, stones, bricks, copper, rubber,
and whatever you want to add to the list lead, by themselves, to
the production of a new reality. There is a difference though. All
these dead things at most determine the condition we can start
from to create a new reality. Desires (and needs, and aspirations)
are the real creative impulse, the creative substance
which determine the avenues of the future, the "vanishing points"
along which we start the journey of CREATION of a new reality.
And all these dead things, from condition, turn into an object
of our subjectivity. And our subjectivity is free activity, and
free activity is the result of our desires, needs, and aspirations. And
the desires, needs, and aspirations I am talking about do not belong to
atomised labour power, but belong do human beings recognising
each others in their humanity, to "communal beings" in the
sense that "the `other' becomes a need" for them (Manuscript 1844).

In a word, I counterpose "desires is production of reality" to
capital's slogan "abstract labor is production of commodities and
of the domination of dead things over human beings". I hope
this answers Jerry's question.

PS. I am sorry but I missed Mike W. explanation on "books are weapons."

Massimo


On Thu, 29 Aug 1996, Gerald Levy wrote:

> Massimo has been ending his posts with the following:
>
> > #####################################################
> >
> > DESIRE IS PRODUCTION OF REALITY
> >
> > #####################################################
>
> I'm curious: what does this slogan mean and why do you consider it
> important enough to end your posts with? Desires _by themselves_ do not
> necessarily lead to the production of a new reality, do they? Is the
> slogan similar in meaning to Mike W's "Books are Weapons" which he
> explained earlier this month?
>
> In OPE-L Solidarity,
>
> Jerry
>