Saturday Philosophy Corner

Quoting Brad DeLong on Marx the Economist:

Marx the economist was among the very first to get the industrial revolution right: to understand what it meant for human possibilities and the human destiny in a sense that people like Adam Smith did not. In his Politics Aristotle observed that it was not possible to run a household in a way that permitted its head enough leisure and freedom to, say, become a lover of wisdom unless the household owned slaves, and that this would be true unless and until we had instruments like “the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, ‘of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods;’ if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves…” Karl Marx was among the very first to see that the industrial revolution was giving us the statues of Daedalus, the tripods of Hephaestus, looms that weave and lyres that play by themselves–and thus opens the possibility of a society in which we people can be lovers of wisdom without being supported by the labor of a mass of illiterate, brutalized, half-starved, and overworked slaves.

I know, I’m quoting too much there. It’s enough to say that Aristotle was first with the vision of machines as servants, and that it was the first marxist and not the first capitalist that connected moral growth (what Aristotle means by referring to someone as a “lover of wisdom” is that a person would be good and truthful and live a virtuous life if they could only devote themselves to philosophy) with actual means to achieve that growth without enslaving others. I guess enslaving machines is still okay (until Skynet takes over…).

Machines — even from the industrial revolution — gave people a chance to grow as moral beings, but capitalism still requires large numbers of producers (read: manual labor) to provide benefits for a small number of consumers (read: Corporate CEOs and the like). With the advent of technologically advanced machines, our wants and needs need to be magnified in order for capitalism’s growth to continue. The industrial revolution could have provided all people needed until marketing amplified the potential results: “it’s not enough to be clean, you have to be ‘Zest-fully’ clean!”

But our machines are getting smarter, and our recent economic cataclysm is indicative that we can’t keep priming the pump with continually higher and higher wants and goals. If it is a natural state of growth that satisfaction in needs and wants only produces new desires, then economic bubbles (and their eventual planned bursting), will continue unabated. In other words, being perfectly shaped with a perfect smile and a perfect lifestyle full of perfect accessories will only produce new desires beyond that “perfection.”

Such limitless possibility is not — in itself — a bad thing; but should advertising and marketing be the driving force behind that growth? People’s weaknesses and insecurities are the easiest to exploit, and marketing is ever ready with new packaging, new slogans and new angles. An antidote to that exploitation is creativity and play. Computer gaming and creative tools have their own marketing exploits (read upgrade cycles), but also give people a chance to inhabit and explore a world of possibilities.

That’s why my next band will be called “The Tripods of Hephaestus”, and next game proposal will be “The Statues of Daedalus.”