Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
'Labor is, in the fi rst place, a process in which both man and Nature participate,
and in which man (sic.) of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the mate-
rial re-actions between himself and Nature' (Marx 1967, p. 177; cf. Marx, 1967,
pp. 42-43) Though there is a kind of anthropocentrism here, it is not a simple one:
man 'opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms
and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate
Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants'. When Marx writes of
people initiating their participation with nature of their own accord, this does not
presuppose a binary between people and nature. On the contrary, it speaks to the
idea of a single Nature that includes people, a diversity within a unity. At the same
time, this nature is a not a static, pre-given whole. 'By thus acting on the external
world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops
his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway' (Marx,
1967, p. 177). There are two ideas here. One is that human beings have no unchang-
ing essence - we are not creatures who are doomed to repeat and live out precisely
the same relations and practices from time immemorial. Nature has an
emergent
quality. The other concerns the intentionality and creativity of the human being.
Marx formulates his idea, that man is that part of nature who compels his part
toward an enlarged, creative capacity, because he wants to draw a distinction
between the reactive and the active. Unlike one notion of animal being which
emphasises animals as simply responding to stimuli or acting on unrefl ective instinct,
Marx's notion of the human animal is something else altogether. 'A spider conducts
operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an
architect in the construction of her cells. But 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' (Marx,
1967, p. 178). The bee and spider cannot help what they do; human bodies in their
interactions with their environments realise and give form to an idea.
But it is just at this point where the argument takes an interesting turn, with
enormous political implications:
He (sic.) not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he
also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to
which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act.
Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole
operation, the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means
close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in
which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives
play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be
(Marx, 1967, p. 178).
Here it happens that the realisation of a purpose, while capable of bringing joy, is
not a realm of pure freedom and autonomous activity - as if the idea of what one
wants to produce and how to do it could come to fruition of its own. Instead,
human beings are never outside the relational world. Throughout a labour process,
through which one aspect of nature transforms another, and which means a good
deal more than 'work,' something is demanded of us: vigilance, attention, acquisi-
tion and practice of competencies. That is, our freedom, our capacity to enhance
ourselves, comes about interactively and can be no other way. To be in nature at
