Gymnasium in a Box

Several lines of critical reflection follow from “Gymnasium in a Box” that have a direct bearing on Theories of Late Capitalism and the World System.

But, before we pursue those lines, it may be important for us to acknowledge that Aristotle’s fingerprints are all over Marx’s mature social theory. These fingerprints are clearly visible not only in Marx’s rejection of democracy, but also in his conclusion that “freedom begins where labor ends.”

Marx’s rejection of democracy stands in contrast to the dominant mid-18th century left-wing position, which equated “the people” with a kind of simple, innocent, unblemished purity of affect and judgment. Here J-J Rousseau and I Kant were on the same page: freedom entails the absence of constraint. The noble savage is judged “good” because he has not yet been polluted by the constraints of civilization. Similarly, in I Kant’s second critique, his Critique of Practical Reason, ethical conduct based on freedom is only judged good insofar as it is not constrained by—not compelled by—the three dimensional world in time and space. It must be transcendental and must be chosen transcendentally by the fully transcendental subject.

Marx, by contrast, agrees with Aristotle that freedom is not the absence of constraint,  but rather is the conditions that make for freedom: leisure, wealth, health, and knowledge. Marx rejected democracy for the same reason that Aristotle rejected democracy: since they were governed by necessity, were in poor health, were ignorant, and were impoverished, the people, the οἱ πολλοί (“hoi polloi” or many) could not make responsible decisions on their own behalf.

In order to act and think responsibly, the people must first be freed from the realm of necessity, from work.

The history of the world since 1867 has instead moved in the opposite direction, tying human beings ever more tightly to the necessity of work and to a world mediated by abstract labor and value. At the same time, as GFW Hegel imagined, mechanization in the pursuit of ever greater efficiency and productivity has made human labor increasingly obsolete, at least in theory making it possible, as both Hegel and Marx postulated, for “human beings to step aside and install machines in their place.”

This tension—between the increasing obsolescence of human labor, but society’s continuing mediation by abstract labor time expended—might have brought about a complete collapse of the capitalist social formation under the weight of its own efficiencies. One reason it did not collapse is that the cost of mechanization in industrialized countries outstripped the cost of human labor in non-industrialized countries. This often made it more efficient to contract human labor elsewhere to perform work that machines could have performed in industrialized countries, but for the cost. (There are some things that even machines won’t do.)

Another reason, however, centers upon the abstract character of value as such. With each ramping up of efficiency—i.e., the number of hours it takes to produce some item over time—this increase necessarily cheapens the labor entailed in producing any item. Value declines even as volume increases. Under these conditions, the only way to prevent widespread unemployment, poverty, hunger, and social unrest is either to socially mediate the social product—which begins in the 17th century—or to dramatically increase the volume of production. In the end, both of these strategies act in concert to stave off disaster.

Yet, at critical junctures since the emergence of the Global System, this tension between productivity and value has grown so great as to systemically require the destruction of both. Such moments, I would suggest, offer an insight into the growing disconnect between the Global System, which is mediated by labor, and the increasing obsolescence of labor.

What will all of the laborers, who are no longer defined by their labor, do with all of their free time?