Happiness is the unobsessive life of the hobbyist who doesn’t have to work for a living.
Lawler claims that this is Marx’s ultimate vision, and not surprisingly Lawler says that it has some merit, although he thinks that in the end it fails as a philosophy. The post is mostly about a claim by Lawler that not having children undermines serenity. But Lawler should do more to flesh out his ideas.
I’ve always thought that Marxism works as a moral principle in small groups (most families run on communist principles) but fails as an organizational principle in large ones.
People frequently try and use it for the latter, which is why the idea seems nice (I think we’re all born Marxists to some degree) but it never quite works out in practice.
The link isn’t quite right. It should probably point here.
The sentiment isn’t quite right either. Being able to do what you love secure in the knowledge that others are providing or have provided for you is nice. Being able to do what you love secure in the knowledge that *you* are thereby providing for yourself and others is better. Maybe this is leftover puritan culture, but IIRC recent psychological research also distinguishes between the feeling that your life is “happy” and the feeling that it is “meaningful”.
Marx should have been a laissez faire capitalist. Only that system has a chance of being wealthy enough that people can spend their time on unmarketable hobbies while consuming food and shelter.
Also, as economies get wealthier and more service oriented, more people can find a way to be paid for their hobbies. No one’s hobby is smelting iron into I-beams, which can hopefully be automated. But no one’s hobby is cleaning toilets, which probably can’t.
But a free economy will find no shortage of people whose hobby it is to make the economy more productive for more of the population.
Little of this would have been evident 150 years ago. If Marx had this sentiment and was alive today, I’d presume he’d be a laissez faire capitalist proposing the grand bargain of completely unfettered markets in all ways with a grad-school-level stipend for any who choose not to work.
Karl Marx on Social Identity
( marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/index.htm )
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In a communist society, where no one has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
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Dilletantism seems pretty alienating. Stretching your ability through specializing has some virtues.
People (even Megan Mcardle recently) have this conception that manufacturing (and I don’t mean strictly factory work) is monotonous But there is also the engineering (and I don’t mean just degreed engineering) where one can do very different things all day every day.
This is too invidualistic. Any formula to sum up Marxism must describe society
Marxists claimed that modern economies were large organisations, and they would be run rationally only when everyone joins the (now dominant) proletariat. So “society regulates general production” Andrew_M_Garland’s quote is more important than the rest.
“Being able to do what you love secure in the knowledge that *you* are thereby providing for yourself and others is better. Maybe this is leftover puritan culture,…”
Probably not just leftover puritanism. It makes perfect adaptive sense for people to feel better when they knew they are doing useful things for other members of their group and are therefore valuable. People innately care about status. One of the main sources of status is doing high-value work.
Of course, Marx was quite wrong about his ‘happy dabbler’. First, the idea that a communist society would produce enough wealth to enable such a carefree, ‘unobsessive’ life was pure fantasy. And wealth in capitalist societies is necessarily produced by a high degree of specialization. But this has meant far fewer hours in a week and years in a life need be devoted to a specialized occupation in order to generate enough surplus to allow for plenty of ‘hunting, fishing, and criticizing’ on the side.