MARX ON NEED AND TECHNOLOGY
Joseph Bien
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| University of Missouri-Columbia, U. S. A.
University of Lille 3, Francea |
Technology, both as a concept and as a phenomenon,
has received growing attention for more than
a century. The notion of need has most often
been treated as a topic of ethics but both
are fundamental to social theory and each
is fraught with implications for the other.
In what follows I shall develop what Marx
had to say on these topics and I shall consider
in particular two twentieth century Marxian
thinkers, Agnes Heller and Cost's Axelos.
It will be my argument that the two notions
are central to Marx' s ideas of human nature
and of history but that his myopic fixation
on humanity, and his refusal to see nature
as anything more than an object for humanity,
constitutes the critical failing of his view.
Man is being of history, and history, in
its turn, is being of man. The two are locked
in an embrace; they circumnavigate the dance
floor of the world - each wondering if the
other is leading or following. It is the
fundamental tension in Marx: man makes history
while history makes Man. They only appear
to have eyes for each other.
Beyond them, as far as Marxian thought is
concerned, there seems to be nothing. What
created this human, historical world? What
separates it as distinctively human and historical'
Enter need and technology. 'As everything
natural has to have its beginning, says Marx,
man too has his act of origin--history...
a conscious, self transcending act of origin.
(MSS-1182)
Nowhere does Marx develop a more sustained
account of the materialist view of history
than in The German Ideology. There he gives
us a first premise, two first historical
acts, a second fundamental point and a third
circumstance which collectively explicate
this origin. He starts with "the first
premise of all human existence, and therefore
of all history, the premise namely that men
must be in a position to live in order to
be able to 'make history'.... The first historical
act is thus the production of the means to
satisfy these needs, the production of material
life itself... .The second fundamental point,
he continues, is that as soon as a need is
satisfied (which implies the action of satisfying,
and the acquisition of an instrument), new
needs are made; and this production of new
needs is the first historical act. (GIG-16-17)
So we have a peculiar first act. It is the
production that satisfies those needs which
Marx elsewhere terms natural or necessary.
The second first act is another act of production,
not of goods, but of new needs. As Heller
points out, 'In so far as we create tools
to satisfy our needs, the need for tools
is already a new need, different from animal
need.' (H-41)
But the significance goes beyond even the
drastic introduction of technos into, and
against, nature-for the ability to produce
these new needs is itself radically new.
Other animals produce a cycle of needs; each
fulfilment is itself depleted and requires
fulfilling again.
Only humans produce a progression of needs
seemingly without limits. The object of man'
s needs - writ large - is not merely in nature
but is nature; and for Marx the effort to
fulfill needs falls entirely to the lot of
economic man. 'The entire so-called history
of the world is nothing but the creation
of man through human labour. (Mss-145)
Agnes Heller, in her The Theory of Need in
Marx, analyses need as a fundamental concept
for the Marxian enterprise - as indeed, it
would have to be for any humanistic social
philosophy. She points out that, according
to Marx, among the accomplishments of capitalism
is '... the discovery, creation and satisfaction
of new needs... (from Grundrisse in H-47)
Heller notes the oft remarked ambiguity in
Marx as to whether the process of history
follows from a virtual law or whether it
depends upon an element of human will, of
conscious action.
In one of those seeming paradoxes that are
none to rare in the universe of dialectic,
she insists nonetheless that the revolution
would be necessary because capitalism necessarily
creates such needs; she does not mention
the suppressed premise: that humans will
necessarily react to them in such a way as
to perpetuate the revolution. She quotes
the Marx of the Manuscripts to testify for
her analysis: Theory is actualized in a people
only insofar as it actualizes their needs...
.A deep-going revolution can only be a revolution
in basic needs. (H-88)
One need, of course, is revolutionary per
se - the need to over-come capitalist alienation;
and this Heller describes, in a phrase from
the Grundrisse, as creating a consciousness
that 'exceeds its bounds. (H-
95) It is generally accepted in Marxist scholarship
that Marx maintained that nowhere and at
no time has unalienated humanity yet existed.
Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State, did theorize a primitive,
unalienated man; civilization was the negation
of this condition, and the revolutionary
negation of this negation will bring humankind
back to freedom from alienation on a higher
more developed plane. But, (m)en are as they
are manifested, says Kostas Axelos, such
is Marx's idea, but their manifestation is
alienation. Where then is their being' (A-134)
Indeed, in at least one place, Marx seems
to directly confirm this notion: ... all
human activity hitherto has been labour-that
is, industry-activity estranged from itself.
(Mss,-142) This idea of the unalienated man
whom no one has ever seen or experienced
is, Axelos claims, one of Marx' s metaphysical
notions-an unkinder description, in the Marxist
lexicon, but essentially no different, than
Heller' s characterization of the closely
related idea of the man 'rich in need as
'philosophical. We started this inquiry with
a two-pronged origin of humankind: human
need and human production. If Heller zeroes
in on the first, Axelos finds in the second
the secret to Marxian thought. 'The use and
the making of tools and the correlative development
of productive forces ad instruments of production
form the real guiding clue to the historical
becoming of mankind...
(A-77) Thus, history '... becomes the history
of the development of technique... it is...
the world of human activity. (A-27) Axelos
even asserts that Marx accepts the Benjamin
Franklin definition of man as a tool- using
animal.
Heller, not responding to Axelos, denies
this and cites a footnote in Capital in which
Marx does seem to discuss Franklin's characterization
as just typical of a Yankee. (C-358)
However, in an earlier passage in the same
work, he refers to this characterization
in a way that indicates his support for Franklin-and
Axelos. 'The use and fabrication of instruments
of labour, although existing in the germ
among certain species of animals, is specifically
characteristic of the human labour-process,
and Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making
animal. (C-200; my emphasis) In any case,
Axelos is correct that tool use and technology
generally must be, at least, a, if not the,
defining trait of human.
Marx himself, as we have seen, traces the
origin of humans and history to the first
act of production-and human production means
the use of tools. Indeed, Axelos tells us
that, in Marx' s thought, even more than
the development of productive forces it is,
let us call it, technological development
that counts first. He then, in substantiation,
goes on to quote the well known passage in
The Poverty of Philosophy: The hand mill
gives you society with the feudal lord: the
steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
(A-293)
Marx makes the fundamental cleavage in the
division of labour between material and mental,
but the distinction cannot be drawn with
precision or cogency. What is basically at
issue is the position of thought or 'mental
conceptions' in relation to a primary technos
which governs the distinctively human interchange
with nature. If anything, thought 'production'
must be more primary - not less - than the
material output that proceeds from and is
guided in accordance with the thought. This
is a clear import of Marx' s own well known
comment about architects and bees: what distinguishes
the worst architect from the best of bees
is this, that the architect raises his structure
In imagination before he erects it in reality.
At the end of every labour process, we get
a result that already existed in the imagination
of the labourer at its commencement. (C-198)
In his discussion of labour in Capital, Marx
asserts that a wider sense we may include
among the instruments of labour, in addition
to those things that are used for directly
transferring labour to its subject... all
such objects as are necessary for carrying
on the labour process. These do not enter
directly into the process, but without them
it is either impossible for it to take place
at all, or possible only to a partial extent.
(C-200-201) Though Axelos starts off on the
second of our two legs of humankind, he arrives
eventually at a place similar to Heller'
s-as would be expected if these two factors
are locked in a dialectical dance. What they
produce and the way they produce it determine
men. The satisfaction of needs, which is
the aim of work, never comes to an end. 'Primary'
needs, once satisfied, engender (produce)
new needs that in turn demand satisfaction
and so on. Natural needs and human, social
labour develop dialectically and progressively,
and their ultimate limit is beyond seeing.
(A-54) One smells the aroma of Heller' s
consciousness that exceeds its bounds; and
indeed, a consciousness that continually
did so would lead exactly to a historical
limit beyond seeing. It is a mist shrouded
vortex, and, as one squints into it, one
begins to wonder whether there is anything
here which satisfies a perennial human need-the
sense that there is some point to it all.
Alienation as a heretofore constant condition
of historical man and the existence of this
complex techno-culture as a response to need
which inaugurated history are starting to
look suspiciously co-existensive. One wonders
if the notion of an insufficient or imperfect
actualization does not bear some generic
relation to the idea of alienation. Man fully
actualized would constitute the end of alienation
and a real end to 'pre-history. Presumably,
it would amount to the inauguration of a
god like man. Did not the Philosopher claim
that the unmoved mover was, of necessity,
pure act' But I am on the wrong track here
for there surely is no fixed Aristotelian
essence allowed. The human nature that delineated
potential is itself in process changing and,
perhaps, developing. We appear to be verging
upon a specifying trait of humans as the
insatiable animal, The dialectic of needs
and technique does indeed stretch beyond
seeing, as well as beyond the possibility
of calculating the consequences. As with
many scenarios, this one can be tinted as
a rosy hue or one greyer and grimmer.
Axelos argues-plausibly enough - that inherent
in the notion of a technologically driven
history is the complete 'technification of
nature. Contemporary events reveal this as
an implausible destiny, as a one way ticket
to the end of both prehistory and post-history.
As Axelos also points out, Marx is not interested
in ontology beyond the scope of historical
reality. He rivets his eye with tunnel vision
on history; and he sees no physics or cosmos
beyond humanity, not even the possibility
of a reality not already graced with the
imprint of the subject.
Marx adopts a sort of Kantianism with a practical,
rather than theoretical, twist. Any part
of the world not engaged by man is nothing
for him; and any part that is so engaged
is humanized, is no longer nature-in- itself
but nature-for-man. Axelos wonders whether
technique itself might not be alienating.
Humanity has ever been unalienated. It originated
with technique-culture or, at least, technique
in conjunction with need, but this latter
was originally a purely biological, not a
specifically human, factor. Hence the existence
of humanity, alienation and technique are
all coextensive. The tread of all alienated
history is technique, not private property,
not class - not merely in their modern form,
but in any form. Mankind condemned itself
irrevocably when it separated from nature
- when it first interposed a tool between
itself and the bosom of Mother Nature. But
then the point we seek may be incurably blunted.
The existentialists are right; man' s alienation
is permanent, a part of the human condition.
We have seen human history as driven by an
interaction between needs and technique-culture.
Nominally, the goal is the satisfaction of
needs, but this turns out to be an ever-receding
will-of-the-wisp. The needs develop on the
basis, and just ahead, of the techniques
that develop on the basis of them. This need
not alarm; if man is ever insatiate, he is
at least ever challenged. The real quandary
lies in whether man will ever cease to be
i thrall to this externalized and developing
nature of his. If history comprises the unravelling
of human potential, it has been abundantly
confirmed that much of this potential had
much better been left furled. The growing
techno power of humankind make the actualization
of these nasty potentials ever more horrible.
But, aside from these many criminal escapades
- the condemnation of which will gain the
assent of the majority of mankind -there
remains the main tendency of technical civilization
- still almost universally hailed: the pell
mell rationalization and instrumentalization
- on the basis of ever greater powers - of
more and more of human society in the service
of production without limit. Here Marx' s
inability o see nature in non-human terms
- which has bee shared in general by modern
man - proves to be a true Achilles heel.
Nature is a system pre-existing humankind,
and it is one that cannot be subjected to
endless technification and rationalization.
If he fails to gasp nature as a non-unlimited,
extra human reality, man will also fail to
fulfil that first premise: namely that men
must be in a position to live in order to
be able [to continue] to 'make history'.
References
(A) Axelos, Kostas. Alienation and Techne
in the Thought of Karl Marx, University of
Texas Press, 1976.
(H) Heller, Agnes. The Theory of Need in
Marx, St. Martin' s Press, 1974.
(C) Marx, Karl. Capital, Modern Library,
1906. (Mss) The Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844, International Publishers,
1964.
(CI) The German Ideology, International Publishers,
1947. (Pov) ' The Poverty of Philosophy,
International Publishers, 1963.
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