Yeah, I agree. That's why I didn't use the word oppression in this post:
Yes. And I think that in terms of Human self-actualisation Humans don't want to acquire possessions and work and "play a game" only to acquire "better" (more expensive possessions).
Marx:
While Marx is talking about the worker here, I see no reason why it cannot be applied to all Humans living in capitalism. The bourgeoisie ultimately don't do anything more than workers, they also consume, eat, drink, fuck, dress up, live in dwellings. It's just that because they are the bourgeoisie and have more capital they can enjoy more expensive and grandiose versions of those things. But they also have to "play the game", rather than do what Humans can do. We're much more than calculating animals trying to own as many things as possible, drink the best alcohols, eat the best food, make the most money (which is a silly end in itself, a pursuit of something that isn't really there). The bourgeoisie also do not create in and from nature, and fulfill their role of a part of nature. They are also estranged from their "species-being".
There's that quote by Jim Carrey: "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer." Fulfillment of your base desires for drink, food, sex, is not what fulfills you as a conscious, thinking being capable of so much more. Or at least that's how I see it.
This is one of my favourite bits of Marx's writing. Because it shows Marxism for what it is, a truly humanist philosophy:
"Man is a species-being [20], not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species (his own as well as those of other things) as his object, but – and this is only another way of expressing it – also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.
The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on organic nature; and the more universal man (or the animal) is, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives. Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., constitute theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly as objects of natural science, partly as objects of art – his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make palatable and digestible – so also in the realm of practice they constitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.
In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity, estranged labor estranges the species from man. It changes for him the life of the species into a means of individual life. First it estranges the life of the species and individual life, and secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its abstract and estranged form."
(Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Karl Marx)
Attached: km.jpg (950x1438, 553.89K)
