The third paragraph really sums up the first two, though there may be claims here worth discussion, so I wanted to include the fourth paragraph today as well. Feel free to comment on any of the questions raised by either one.
Lebowitz writes:
A society that stresses the opportunity to develop our potential
3. The idea of a society that would allow for the full development of human potential has always been the goal of socialists. In his early draft of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels asked, “What is the aim of the Communists?” He answered, “To organize society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.” Marx summed it all up in the final version of the Manifesto by saying that the goal is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Our goal, in short, cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not; we are interdependent, we are all members of a human family. The full development of all human potential is our goal.
Where does human development come from?
4. Human development, though, doesn’t drop from the sky. It doesn’t come as the result of a gift from above. It occurs through the activity of people themselves—through what Marx called revolutionary practice—“the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change.” We change ourselves through our activity—through our struggles and through everything we do. The way we produce (in the workplace, in the community, and in the home), the way we relate to others in our activity, the way we govern ourselves (or are governed by others)—all these make us the people that we are. We are, in short, the product of all our activities.
In the first paragraph (3), does the logic of our interdependence and the need for everyone to win if any of us are to win make sense? Other questions and/or comments about the role of socialism and communism in all of this? Any thoughts about why the general American public almost always refer to socialist ideas as the opposite of individual development?
What about the idea in 4 that we develop based on the sum total of all of our activities? To what extent can we see the truth in this, based upon our own experience? What are the implications of this? What does it mean for us to be engaged in "revolutionary practice"? By the way, if I notified you about this blog, I think of you as engaged in "revolutionary practice." Does that impression make sense to you?
[This idea, the relationship between theory and practice, is core to Marx, and I hope we go into it some here and keep that thread going later in the discussion.]
I may leave this post a little longer before moving forward to encourage discussion. There's a lot of room here to testify to our own versions of "revolutionary practice" and to consider and talk about how we learn what we learn. How much of what we know comes from our activity?
Maybe I can start things off by saying I know I am only as good a teacher as I am (however good that is) because of the writing I have been doing--about music, about social issues, about politics--throughout my experience as a teacher. At the same time, my writing is enormously informed by my conversations with 200 students a year over a 20 year period.
When I write, my sense of voice and audience comes out of those experiences. And though I don't overtly talk politics in the classroom (often), I do find I learn a lot about political issues by encouraging my students to discuss these topics, by reading their papers and by thinking about the questions that need to be asked to get them to look deeper into the questions they tackle. At the same time, they teach me a great deal about the questions I need to be tackling.
One of my great writing teachers is a pop music writer who told me long ago two things that might seem contradictory. First, I should never underestimate my audience's ability to follow any argument I want to make. Second, I should think about casting a very wide net when I write. What I learned is that, most of the time, the contradiction there is only in our minds. A wide audience is capable of grasping sophisticated ideas, if we give that audience a chance.
That's a political sensibility that is far too rare; I certainly don't hear it from our elected officials. However, I've always heard it in the fiction, music and movies I most love. And what this writer did was teach me to think about the contradiction and apply it in the work I do. It's served me well in my "revolutionary practice." There's more to what I do in terms of activism, but I don't know that there's anything more important.
What about you?
On the achievement of our individual potential being interdpenedent with everyone else achieving their potentials...whenever I read Marx's line about the free development of each being the condition for the free development of all, I always think of that line at the end of James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues." Listening to his brother play his blues on the piano, the narrator has an epiphany: "Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did."
ReplyDeleteI think this suggests that in order for Sonny to be free--and I think we can read "free," here, as meaning something very close to "reach his potential"--we have to recognize Sonny as an individual, a unique human being who has his own sad story of struggle and hope and who's worth, therefore, is precisely equivalent to his individuality, is never purely instrumental. A more common word for this is, I think, love.
So, bringing it back to Marx, we might ask...what are the material conditions that will allow humans fully to recognize and value one another as individuals, to really love one another?
I wrote a review of a book by Terry Eagleton acouple of years ago called The Meaning of Life. I want to quote from here it if I may because I think it's relevant:
>>>Eagleton argues...for a meaning grounded in happiness and fulfillment, both individually and collectively. He argues for love.
>>>“Happiness…,” he writes, “is the condition of well-being which springs from the free flourishing of one’s powers and capacities.
>>>“And love, it can be claimed, is the same condition viewed in relational terms—the state in which the flourishing of one individual comes about through the flourishing of all.”
>>>This emphasis upon both loving one another and realizing our unique potentials is nothing new. Indeed, it is close kin to saying, as Christ did, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or, as the Torah puts it “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
>>>Meanwhile, those religious ideals agree with some well-known philosophers. Kant’s categorical imperative, for instance, demands that we treat both ourselves and others “always…as an end and never simply as a means" In turn, Marx imagines a “truly just society, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”<<<
So...that's one way of thinking about the interdependence of human potential.
Here's another, I hope more concrete way. Say I'm a basketball player, and I want to be the best baller I can be. So I train, I practice hard, I have real gifts that I am turning into skills, I play in games with other players and before long, it is plain to see, I am seeing results. Soon, in fact, I will be be a better basketball player than they are. If I want to achieve my basketball potential, however, at some point I will need to find some other players who are not only better than the ones I'm currently practicing with; I'll need find ones who are better than me, who will push me to improve still more. In other words, my ability to achieve my potential on the court is going to be interdependent with having other people around who have come closer to achieving their own potentials, closer even than I have.
I think our potentials for being fully human, for achieving our potentials in any way you care to think of, is similar to maxing out our abilities for particular skill, like playing basketball. How could I possibly achieve my potential as a human being if I live in a world where no one else has? Where everyone's worth is measured instrumentally, is limited in its development primarily to those venues that contribute to profit of one sort or another? How can I be the best David I can be if my father and mother never became the superior parents and individuals that lurked within themselves, and if all of my other friends necessarily labor under the same burdens? I think the answer is I can't do it. I can't do it. Not without you.
Thanks so much for this comment, David. I really appreciate your emphasis on the spiritual dimension of this with the concept of love. At the same time, the basketball analogy helps to get at the practical nature of this. We don't develop meaningful theory and strategy unless we engage in practical work. It's the difference in being an armchair ideologue and being something I'd call a revolutionary.
ReplyDelete