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Self-Realization in Work and Politics: The Marxist Conception of the Good Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Jon Elster
Jon Elster
Affiliation:
Political Science, University of Chicago and Institute for Social Research, Oslo
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Extract

In arguments in support of capitalism, the following propositions are sometimes advanced or presupposed: (i) the best life for the individual is one of consumption, understood in a broad sense that includes aesthetic pleasures and entertainment as well as consumption of goods in the ordinary sense; (ii) consumption is to be valued because it promotes happiness or welfare, which is the ultimate good; (iii) since there are not enough opportunities for consumption to provide satiation for everybody, some principles of distributive justice must be chosen to decide who gets what; (iv) the total to be distributed has first to be produced. What is produced depends, among other things, on the motivation and information of the producers. The theory of justice must take account of the fact that different principles of distribution have different effects on motivation and information; (v) economic theory tells us that the motivational and informational consequences of private ownership of the means of production are superior to those of the various forms of collective ownerships.

In the traditional controversy over the relative merits of capitalism and economic systems, the focus has been on proposition (v). In this paper, I consider instead propositions (i) and (ii). Before one can even begin to discuss how values are to be allocated, one must consider what they are – what it is that ought to be valued. I shall argue that at the center of Marxism is a specific conception of the good life as one of active self-realization, rather than passive consumption.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Spring 1986 , pp. 97 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1986

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References

* I am grateful to my colleagues in the project “Work and social justice” at the Institution for Social Research for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Special thanks are due to Fredrik Engelstad for his guidance in the literature on work satisfaction.

1 The broader interpretation of Marx that sustains this assertion is set forward in my Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

2 For the notion of welfarism, see Sen, Amartya, “Welfarism and Utilitarianism,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 76 (1979), pp. 463–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 90ff.Google Scholar I ought to add that there is much in Rawl's book that goes beyond the simple consideration of primary goods. In particular, his discussion of what he calls the Aristotelian Principle (p. 424ff.) has many affinities with the present analysis of self-realization. Yet his argument for the design of basic social institutions does not go beyond primary goods.

4 See my Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Ch. III, for the importance of endogenous preference formation to political philosophy.

5 For an extreme example of how one can “Improve oneself to death,” see von Weizsacker, Carl Christian, “Notes on Endogenous Change of Tastes,” Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 3 (1971), p. 356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 On the notion of individual and collective self-paternalism, see my Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, rev. ed., 1984) Ch. II.

7 The Watts Towers in Los Angeles were constructed single-handedly by an Italian immigrant, Sam Rodia, over a period of 33 years, out of debris and bric-a-brac that he collected from the streets of the city. (For information see the Los Angeles Times for August 12, 1984.) They are beautiful in conception and execution, unlike, say, conceputal art, which has mainly the freakish value of stunning novelty, soon fading into boredom. For a discussion of the conditions for self-realization in art, see Sour Grapes, Ch. II. 7.

8 This example and the preceding one were observed at Venice Beach in Los Angeles. They are included to remind us that self-realization is not always channeled into activities that in some substantive sense are socially useful, beyond the value of stunning the spectators.

9 For a general discussion of this notion, see Sour Grapes Ch. II.

10 Well-known passages in which Marx insists on the fullness of self-realization are found in The German Ideology, in , Marx and , Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), pp. 47, 394.Google Scholar

11 For this approach to production see Johansen, Leif, “Substitution versus Fixed Production Coefficients in the Theory of Production,” Econometrica, vol. 27 (1959), pp. 157–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For a conceptual analysis of abilities and their actualization, see Kenney, Anthony, Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), Ch. VIII.Google Scholar Kenny's is an Aristotelian concept of self-actualization, to be distinguished both from the Freudian notion of liberating one's repressed thoughts and desires and the Nietzschean one of identifying with one's deeds. For a useful discussion, see Nehamas, Alexander, “How One Becomes What One Is,” The Philosophical Review, vol. XCII (1983), pp. 385–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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16 It might be objected that this is a model of addictive consumption, not of consumption generally. With nonaddictive consumption, one cannot assume an increasingly strong opponent process, although the idea of decreasing strength of the main process remains plausible. Since the latter is all I need for my argument, it is not affected by the objection. In any case, there may be an element of addition (in the sense of an increasingly strong opponent process) in all forms of consumption, although it is usually less dramatic than in the use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. The objection might then be rephrased as a question about whether the net effect of a given episode always becomes negative as the number of episodes increases.

17 There are two exceptions to this statement. First, some abilities might not be susceptible to indefinite development; second, some persons might not be able to develop their abilities indefinitely. Tic-tac-toe, unlike chess, soon becomes boring; a person with poor motor reflexes might find out the hard way that he was not made for chain saw juggling. Economies of scale obtain only if abilities and tasks are suitably matched so as to avoid either of the extremes of boredom and frustration.

18 See Hegel, G.W.F., Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 118, 193, 395ff.Google Scholar

19 For a more detailed exposition of a similar argument, see Sour Grapes, pp. 124, 133ff.

20 Dworkin, Ronald, “What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10 (1981), p. 222.Google Scholar

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22 For a survey of ways in which free-riding can be overcome, see the article cited in the previous note and also my “Rationality, Morality and Collective Action,” Ethics, vol. 96 (1985), pp. 136–155.

23 Nisbett, Richard E. and Ross, Lee, Humans Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgement (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), p. 271.Google Scholar

24 For this distinction, see Cohen, G.A., “Karl Marx's Dialectic of Labour,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 3 (1974), pp. 235–261.Google Scholar

25 For a full survey, see Pagano, Ugo, Work and Welfare in Economic Theory, (Oxford: Blackwell 1984).Google Scholar

26 Kolm, S.C., La Bonne Economic (Paris: Presses Universitairs de France, 1984), pp. 119–120.Google Scholar

27 For discussion, see the article cited in note 21.

28 In some cases, it would also give a different result if measured very close to completion; cp.Byron's “Nothing so difficult as a beginning/In poesy, unless perhaps the end.”

29 In the literature on job satisfaction the notion of self-realization is usually discussed with reference to the writings of Abraham Maslow, and dismissed as hopelessly confused. See, for instance, Locke, Edwin A., “Nature and Causes of Job Satisfaction,” Dunnette, Marvin D., ed., Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Company, 1976), pp. 1307–1309.Google Scholar Although I agree with the criticism of Maslow, I hope that the present discussion shows that the notion is not inherently unamenable to precise analysis.

30 Locke, ibid., p. 1319.

31 Hackman, J. Richard, “Work Design,” in Hackman, J. Richard and Suttle, J. Lloyd, eds., Improving Life at Work (Santa Monica: Goodyear, 1977), pp. 96–162.Google Scholar

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33 Hackman, “Work design,” pp. 115, 120.

34 O's Brien, “The Centrality of Skill-Utilization,” pp. 180ff.

35 Hackman, “Work design,” p. 117, argues that overqualification also causes loss of productivity via the lack of motivation. This may well be true for some workers and some tasks, but sometimes a higher level of qualification probably leads to superior performance.

36 Boudon, Raymond, Effets Pervers et Ordre Social (Paris: Presses Universitaries de France, 1977), Ch. IVGoogle Scholar, argues that this can turn into a problem of collective action: it may be individually rational for each student to seek higher education, although all would be better off if all flipped a coin to decide. This presupposes, however, that students are motivated by expected income rather than by expected satisfaction, which would also take account of the disappointment and frustration generated by getting a low-education job at the end of higher education. Boudon himself (ibid., Ch. V) has the best treatment of this problem, although, surprisingly, he does not bring his analysis to bear on the problem of educational choice.

37 Locke, “Nature and Causes,” pp. 1320–1321.

38 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 453.Google Scholar

39 Habermas, Jurgen, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt aM: Suhrkamp, 1981).Google Scholar

40 In my “The Market and the Forum,” in Hylland, Aanund and Elster, Jon (eds.), Foundations of Social Choice Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 103–132Google Scholar; see also Sour Grapes, Ch. II. 9.

41 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957).Google Scholar

42 See notably Barry, Brain M., Economis, Sociologists and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, rev. ed., 1979).Google Scholar

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44 For further discussion, see my “Rationality, Morality and Collective Action.” More instrumental attitudes, such as altruist and utilitarian motivations, might also enter into the explanation of voting, but I believe that their importance is smaller than the ones mentioned in the text.

45 Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 37.Google Scholar

46 Holmes, Stephen, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 60.Google Scholar

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48 Finley, Moses I., “The Freedom of the Citizen in the Ancient Greek World,” in his Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981), p. 83.Google Scholar

49 Cp. my “Marx et Leibniz,” Review Philosophique, vol. 108 (1983), pp. 167–177.

50 Theories of Surplus-Value (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1963), vol. 1, p. 401.

51 Economics and Philosophical Manuscripts,, Marx and , Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), vol. 3, p. 299.Google Scholar

52 “Comments on James Mill,” ibid., pp. 227–28.

53 The idea is central in Kolm, La Bonne Economic. Although Kolm is right in arguing that such “general reciprocity” would overcome some of the defects of ordinary reciprocity, it would also lose the main virtue of the latter, viz., the warmth and spontaneity of personal relations.

54 , Marx and , Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), vol. 6, p. 506.Google Scholar

55 Habermas, Theorie des kommunikatwen Handelns; see also Midgaard, Knut, “On the Significance of Language and a Richer Concept of Rationality,” Leif, Lewin and Evert, Vedung, eds., Politics as Rational Action (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), pp. 87–93.Google Scholar

56 For a more detailed exposition of this argument, I again refer to Ch. Ill of my Sour Grapes.

57 Williamson, Oliver E.Markets and Hierarchies (New York: The Free Press, 1975).Google Scholar For a recent survey, see McPherson, M., “Efficiency and Liberty in the Productive Enterprise: Recent Work in the Economics of Work Organization,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 12 (1983), pp. 354–368.Google Scholar

58 For the idea of counteradaptive preferences, see Sour Grapes, p. 111–12. For the idea that capitalism and socialism cyclically generate desires for each other, see Dunn, John, The Politics of Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 See the paper cited in note 21 above.

60 Note added in proof: I was both elated and depressed (as is usual in such cases) to find that a central argument of this article had been anticipated by Landy, Frank J., “An opponent-process theory of job satisfaction,” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 63 (1978), pp. 533–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar