like the silkworm
(found after googling)
from The Fruits of One’s Labor in Miltonic Practice and Marxian Theory – by Marshall Grossman – [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2873419]:
‘1: the silk worm and the merchant
labour w the same content can be either productive or unproductive.
for instance, milton, who wrote paradise lost, was an unproductive worker. on the other hand, a writer who turns out work for his publisher in factory style is a productive worker.. milton produced paradise lost as a silkworm produces silk, as the activation of his own nature.. he later sold his product for l5 and thus became a merchant’
10-day-care-center\ness et al
marx makes this uncharacteristically idealist observation about milton’s nature in the ‘results of the immediate process of production’ once intended to be part seven of the first volume of capital.. using milton as the generic rep of the artist who labors w/o regard to production, marx approaches the categorical question of whether intellectual work is productive labor. in marx’s reading, milton’s poetic labor is crucially distinguished from that of the hack writer not because the content of his labor is diff but because the production of the poem is not ‘the means for extorting unpaid labour’.. at stake in the distinction between productive and unproductive labor is the entire transformation of social relations brought about by capital: ..t
‘productive labour is merely an abbreviation for the entire complex of activities of labour and labour power w/in the capitalist process of production.. thus when we speak of productive labour we mean socially determined labour, labour which implies a quite specific relationship between the buyer and seller of labour.. productive labour is exchanged directly for money as capital, ie for money which is intrinsically capital, which is destined to function as capital and which confronts labour power as capital.. thus productive labour is labour which for the worker only reproduces the value of his labour power as determined beforehand, while as a value creating activity it valorizes capital and confronts the worker w the values so created and transformed into capital
art – being human.. norton productivity law.. et al..
and the need for art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
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intro’d to and adding page via ayça çubukçu tweet [https://twitter.com/ayca_cu/status/1672841269876277248?s=20]:
“[Art] is radical not so much because of what it says as because of what it is. It is an image of non-alienated labour in a world in which men and women fail to recognise themselves in what they create.” Be Like the Silkworm, Terry Eagleton for @LRB [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n13/terry-eagleton/be-like-the-silkworm]
rheingold (mom) art law et al
notes/quotes from jun 2023 essay linked by Terry Eagleton on Marx’s Literary Style by Ludovico Silva:
The aesthetic theories of Goethe’s fellow classicist Friedrich Schiller lie behind his vision of communism, a society in which everyone will be free to express the wealth and diversity of their powers..t
ie: a nother way
Meticulous about the quality of his prose, Marx once told an impatient publisher that his delay in delivering a manuscript was due to poverty, liver disease and ‘preoccupations of style’.
karl marx et al.. stories of david and teeth and mom (utopia of rules backwards et al)
If style expresses the soul of an author, dissecting it may seem impertinent, rather like dissecting someone’s appearance. There is an intimacy and elusiveness about style that seems to forbid such meddling.. t
naming the colour ness.. society of spectacle (book) ness
Ludovico Silva dismisses the idea that style is too idiosyncratic for public argument.. t
need to facil idiosyncratic jargon ness via ai as nonjudgmental expo labeling
Marx himself spoke of each of his works as composing an artistic whole, and Silva finds in this integrity a feature common to art and science. ‘What is scientific,’ he writes, ‘is so because it possesses a systematic, architectonic unity in which all its parts correspond to one another and in which none is true without respect to the whole.’ Science is a more dishevelled, hand-to-mouth affair than this suggests, however, and its parts need to do more than correspond with one another in order to be true.
science scientifically et al
Poetry that merely revels in its own soundscape is a type of formalism, and so for Marx is the commodity. Its value lies not in its material qualities but in its formal exchange with other such products. Despite their seductive ways, commodities are abstract, fleshless things, and it is the task of socialism to restore to them their material bodies. Yet Marx also sees commodities as fetishes that exert material power over human beings. Their interactions in the marketplace can put men and women out of work or consign them to starvation wages. So the commodity is at once too formal and too material, and in this it resembles a botched work of art. Art is made of material stuff, but it is material shaped into meaningful form. It reveals a unity of form and content that is lacking in the capitalist marketplace.
again.. 10-day-care-center\ness
Unlike most realists, Marx does not see art as precious because it reflects reality. On the contrary, it is most relevant to humanity when it is an end in itself. Art is a critique of instrumental reason. John Milton sold Paradise Lost to a publisher for five pounds, but he produced it ‘for the same reason that a silkworm produces silk. It was an activity wholly natural to him.’ In its free, harmonious expression of human powers, art is a prototype of what it is to live well. It is radical not so much because of what it says as because of what it is. It is an image of non-alienated labour in a world in which men and women fail to recognise themselves in what they create.
again.. rheingold (mom) art law et al..
The aesthete, then, possesses more of the truth than the political left generally imagines. *The point is not to substitute art for life, but to convert life into art. Living like a work of art means fully **realising one’s capacities – this is Marx’s ethics. It is also the basis of his politics: socialism is ***whatever set of institutional arrangements would allow this to happen to the greatest extent..t If artistic work is a scandal to the status quo, it is not because it champions the proletariat but because to live abundantly in this way isn’t possible under capitalism. ****Art prefigures a future in which human energies can exist simply for their own delight. Where art was, there shall humanity be..t
*art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
**as long as realize is in regard to fittingness.. rather than in regard to being aware of.. i don’t think the dance is so aware-able.
***imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
****art – being human et al
Self-realisation, however, must be more than individual, which is the reason Marx adds a crucial rider to this humanist case. You must realise your powers *reciprocally, through the equal self-expression of others. Or, as The Communist Manifesto puts it, **the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all..t This is the way he converts an essentially aristocratic ethic into communism. ***Oscar Wilde would do much the same in his essay ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’, in which layabouts like himself who don’t have to work anticipate a socialist order in which this will be true of everybody. In his belief that the political goal is to get rid of labour rather than make it creative,.t Wilde is closer to Marx than William Morris is, though Morris was a Marxist and Wilde was not.
*but if reciprocity ness.. still same song.. and so to me.. not legit art – being human ness..
**‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows
***ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
There are difficulties with the self-realisation thesis, as there are with any form of ethics. It seems to assume that *human powers are positive in themselves, and the only problem is that some of them are being blocked. But the urge to shoot down schoolchildren should be restrained whatever the harm to your creativity. **The idea also implies that our various capabilities are in harmony with one another, which is far from true. ***Like postmodern culture, it errs in seeing diversity as inherently valuable. But why should a life rich in a variety of impulses be more worthwhile than one devoted to a single activity? Emma Raducanu may have led a fuller life if she had played less tennis, but people have good reason to envy her all the same.
*devijver assume good law.. gershenfeld something else law.. et al
**only untrue in sea world.. hari rat park law et al
***oi.. (can’t tell if he’s really saying what it sounds like but).. this counters (cancerous distraction to) discrimination as equity and the it is me
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be you. 