the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few origin

THE NEEDS OF THE MANY OUTWEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW ORIGIN HOW TO

Utter, unnatural depravation, putrefied nature, comes to be his life-element. Filth, this stagnation and putrefaction of man – the sewage of civilisation (speaking quite literally) – comes to be the element of life – for him. – the simplest animal cleanliness – ceases to be a need for man. A dwelling in the light, which Prometheus in Aeschylus designated as one of the greatest boons, by means of which he made the savage into a human being, ceases to exist for the worker. Man returns to a cave dwelling, which is now, however, contaminated with the pestilential breath of civilisation, and which he continues to occupy only precariously, it being for him an alien habitation which can be withdrawn from him any day – a place from which, if he does ||XV| not pay, he can be thrown out any day. Even the need for fresh air ceases to be a need for the worker. This estrangement manifests itself in part in that the sophistication of needs and of the means (of their satisfaction) on the one side produces a bestial barbarisation, a complete, crude, abstract simplicity of need, on the other or rather in that it merely reproduces itself in its opposite. General exploitation of communal human nature, just as every imperfection in man, is a bond with heaven – an avenue giving the priest access to his heart every need is an opportunity to approach one’s neighbour under the guise of the utmost amiability and to say to him: Dear friend, I give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non you know the ink in which you have to sign yourself over to me in providing for your pleasure, I fleece you.) (Every product is a bait with which to seduce away the other’s very being, his money every real and possible need is a weakness which will lead the fly to the glue-pot.

He puts himself at the service of the other’s most depraved fancies, plays the pimp between him and his need, excites in him morbid appetites, lies in wait for each of his weaknesses – all so that he can then demand the cash for this service of love. Its idealism is fantasy, caprice and whim and no eunuch flatters his despot more basely or uses more despicable means to stimulate his dulled capacity for pleasure in order to sneak a favour for himself than does the industrial eunuch – the producer – in order to sneak for himself a few pieces of silver, in order to charm the golden birds, out of the pockets of his dearly beloved neighbours in Christ.

THE NEEDS OF THE MANY OUTWEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW ORIGIN HOW TO

Private property does not know how to change crude need into human need. Subjectively, this appears partly in the fact that the extension of products and needs becomes a contriving and ever-calculating subservience to inhuman, sophisticated, unnatural and imaginary appetites. Excess and intemperance come to be its true norm. Just as it reduces everything to its abstract form, so it reduces itself in the course of its own movement to quantitative being. The quantity of money becomes to an ever greater degree its sole effective quality. The need for money is therefore the true need produced by the economic system, and it is the only need which the latter produces. The power of his money declines in inverse proportion to the increase in the volume of production: that is, his neediness grows as the power of money increases. Man becomes ever poorer as man, his need for money becomes ever greater if he wants to master the hostile power. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering. Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. Under private property their significance is reversed: every person speculates on creating a new need in another, so as to drive him to fresh sacrifice, to place him in a new dependence and to seduce him into a new mode of enjoyment and therefore economic ruin. ||XIV| (7) We have seen what significance, given socialism, the wealth of human needs acquires, and what significance, therefore, both a new mode of production and a new object of production obtain: a new manifestation of the forces of human nature and a new enrichment of human nature. Human Requirements and Division of Labour, Marx, 1844Įconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few origin