LEISURE-AND THE WEALTH OF MAN
Franck, Sebastian & Rabasseire, Henri
In the Autumn 1957 DISSENT, Henri Rabasseire continued his attack on the Protestant work ethic which he had started with his fine piece "The Right to be Lazy" in Winter 1956. I am in full...
...he believed in leisure as a means to produce higher values...
...He is, however, mistaken in maintaining that Marx was "entirely on the side of Protestants...
...And so not only does he place "enjoyment" in the circuit of production, he explicitly rejects Fourier's (or Schiller's) conception of work as play, and as a good Puritan he has to justify leisure as "time for higher activity...
...Here Marx noted down his most intimate thoughts on work and leisure and on the idea of integrated man...
...Work cannot become play, as Fourier hopes...
...By the way, Sebastian, can't you take a joke which I fondly played with myself...
...Real utopians, like Fourier, on the contrary, saw the independent value of leisure, and subordinated productivity (or creativity, as they now say in this country) to play...
...He is right too in his critical remarks on the role of the Protestant ethic in the history of the socialist movement...
...185...
...If he admits this distinction, Sebastian Franck either agrees with me less than he thinks or he cannot claim Marx for his ideas...
...Man then stands by the side of the productive process, instead of being its main agent...
...He consoled himself with the remark that this passage in Capital may not conform with the whole trend of Marx's thinking...
...As soon as work in its immediate form has ceased to be the main source of wealth, labor time ceases and must cease to be the measure of wealth, and similarly the idleness of the few has ceased to be the condition for the development of the general powers of the human brain...
...And in this whole Oeuvre there is that one passage, quoted by Friedmann 184 as the true reflection of the "real Marx's—and that passage, alas, was saved for us by Engels...
...Not as things to be desired for their own sakes, but as a dialectical part of the economic cycle: the "development of power, of capacity for production and hence of both the abilities and the means for achieving enjoyment...
...Marxism as we know it, however, cannot be defined in terms of biography...
...One reader, at least, has the suspicion that Rabasseire has been carried away by his desire to be a heretic in socialist circles...
...The real question is: How did he look at consumption and leisure...
...He uses Marx as a bate noire, though in an unusual manner...
...Maximilian Rubel, the only professional Marx scholar working in freedom, has discussed this passage at length in his recent book Karl Marx, Essai de Biographie Intellectuelle as most representative of Marx's thought which he summarizes with the phrase: "Le loisir, voila, selon Marx, la vraie richesse humaine...
...This suspicion seems to be justified because Rabasseire himself has coyly confessed in the Winter 1956 issue that after his attention had been drawn to the passage in Capital, vol...
...The free development of individuality...
...I am in full agreement with him that it is more important to increase our ability to enjoy life than to maintain an ethic which has become a mere justification for the drudgery of others...
...Yet the present fashion of Marx-baiting is no less meaningless than the older Marxist habit of replacing arguments with Marx quotations...
...Free time—which is both leisure time and time for higher activity—naturally transforms those who dispose of it into a different type of agent...
...education of the individuals, thanks to the time now made available .. . From the point of view of capitalism, as well as from that of all other former stages of society, this creation of not-labor time [leisure] appears as not-labor time for a few...
...Henri Rabasseire replies: I do not yield to Sebastian Franck in admiration for Marx, and if my sentimental attachment should ever blossom into an academic interest in his private opinions, I certainly will read the volumes of his personal notes as carefully as other Marxologists do...
...He saw the possibilities of making better use of people's lives and time, but I am sorry to say that he still saw this under the aspect of productivity, and his only utopian suggestion—the idea of a labor service and the related idea of "education in the factory"—was derived from a system of work ethics...
...generally the reduction to a minimum of the necessary work of society, will then correspond to the artistic, scientific etc...
...Marx has shown us how we can have more leisure time, but he really did not believe in leisure as a value...
...This, however, he should have tried to prove, since well qualified writers think otherwise...
...Our present-day capitalists' way of accumulating riches by stealing the working hours of others seems trivial when compared to the newly developed basis which big industry has created for itself...
...The man who wrote the pages from which I have quoted can hardly be identified with the "socialist efficiency expert" whom Rabasseire has called Marx...
...It is not at all a question of abstinence from gratifications but of the development of power, of capacity for production and hence of both the abilities and the means for achieving enjoyment...
...In spite of itself, capital is instrumental in creating the means of disposable social time, so as to reduce the labor time for all of society to a declining minimum and so as to give everyone free time for his own development .. . Real economy consists in the economizing of labor time...
...They have been translated in the pell-mell style in which Marx hastily jotted them down...
...Though at the time automation was not even in sight, Marx nevertheless wrote that when it would come, his law of labor value would cease to be valid...
...the public figure of Marx is presented to us in the form of the works which he published or intended for publication...
...he deplored the wasteful use of human forces under capitalism...
...Of course Marx was for shortening the work day and the work week, and he fought for more leisure...
...But Fourier has had the great merit of making his ultimate aim not the revolutionizing of distribution but the revolutionizing and reestablishment in higher form of productive relations...
...I am thankful that Sebastian gives me an opportunity to clarify this distinction...
...When this happens production based on exchange value breaks down, and the immediate productive process is freed of its make-shift and antagonistic character...
...III, where Marx wrote that the realm of freedom lies beyond the realm of material production proper, he seemed to his regret less heretical than he had fondly believed...
...Saving of labor time means more time, i.e., time for the full development of the individual, which in turn, being the greatest productive power, is reflected in increased productivity of labor...
...In the Autumn 1957 DISSENT, Henri Rabasseire continued his attack on the Protestant work ethic which he had started with his fine piece "The Right to be Lazy" in Winter 1956...
...The powerful effectivenes of this process is related not to the direct working time expended but rather depends on the general state of science and the progress of technology .. . To the extent that man becomes the supervisor and regulator of the productive process, labor no longer appears as mainly part of the productive process...
...Ability to enjoy is the condition of enjoyment...
...He is careful to close the circuit: "Ability to enjoy is the condition of enjoyment...
...The fact that Marx predicted automation is beside the point...
...183 To the extent that large-scale industry develops, the creation of real wealth becomes less dependent on the time worked and the quantity of labor applied than on the power of the productive agents within the industrial process...
...Here, then, are a few sentences from the notebook which should give a true picture of Marx's thinking...
...He is equally careful, and indeed hurries on, to assert that free time is "time for the full development of the individual, which in turn, being the greatest productive power, is reflected in increased productivity of labor...
...Far from using Marx as a bete noire, I was saying: None of us is free from the idols of his age...
...Thus, Georges Friedmann has seen in this passage the essence of Marx's thinking and quoted it because it expresses so well his own thought...
...Leisure—that, according to Marx, is the true wealth of man.] If we want really to ascertain the trend of Marx's thinking on this matter, we should turn to his notebooks, dated 1858, which were published for the first time in 1953 as Gundrisse der Kritik der politischen Oekonomie...
Vol. 5 • April 1958 • No. 2
