5 ms·

...the quotation isn't a factual claim about skills necessary and no one who isn't a gibbering lunatic reads it that way. i was responding to someone who is ve

...the quotation isn't a factual claim about skills necessary and no one who isn't a gibbering lunatic reads it that way. i was responding to someone who is very skilled (presumably) wishing they didn't need to be so specialized. edit: lots of people willfully misconstrue things. the same goes for Marx. if you've read any of the volumes of capital you'd understand that marxist positions aren't as asinine as "everyone needs to be a farmer in order for socialism to be viable".

jerf 7y ago
I'm saying that even what he said then was a bit of a stretch; even in his day you couldn't just decide to be a lawyer one day with any effectiveness. Today it's just silly. You can't decide to review medical papers today, write them tomorrow, farm the next day, then be a lawyer, then go commercial crab fishing, then be a surveyer, then design an interstate highway bridge, then perhaps a concert pianist performance, and then perhaps start it all over again in a cycle. Or, to the extent you can, you can't generate any value that way. Of course you can still "recreate" with hunting, fishing, and "criticizing after dinner" (note how, coincidentally, all his cited examples tend to gracefully fail; I can "go hunting" and come back with nothing and I have accomplished "going hunting"). Observing that recreation in the form of unevaluated, low-barrier-of-entry tasks that nobody cares if you produce no value with are available is a pointless statement, so I assume that's not the point of the quote. But there's a whackload of magic in that "society will regulate production" if everybody operates like this. "Society regulating production" is why we end up specialized. You end up specialized because it takes years of training and experience in any field to be worth a darn, which means that's by necessity the cost of switching too. You can certainly get to a hobbyist level in a couple of fields beyond your profession, too, but even then you're unlikely to just switch that to your profession one day in the general case.
- mlevental 7y ago
  >I'm saying that even what he said then was a bit of a stretch; even in his day you couldn't just decide to be a lawyer one day with any effectiveness. you're repeating yourself. here is the quotation in context "Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the "general interest", but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Th...
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > even in his day you couldn't just decide to be a lawyer one day with any effectiveness. In his day (and in the modern world) people pretty freely move between roles within the intelligentsia but for legal constraints (which while notionally justified by consumer/public protection are often in no small part protectionist measures to maximize income of incumbents and restrict competing supply) and often hack around the legal constraints, too, (hanging out shingles in various “wellness” or un-/less-regulated alternative fields to evade regulation of health/medical work, for instance.)

jerf 7y ago

I'm saying that even what he said then was a bit of a stretch; even in his day you couldn't just decide to be a lawyer one day with any effectiveness. Today it's just silly. You can't decide to review medical papers today, write them tomorrow, farm the next day, then be a lawyer, then go commercial crab fishing, then be a surveyer, then design an interstate highway bridge, then perhaps a concert pianist performance, and then perhaps start it all over again in a cycle. Or, to the extent you can, you can't generate any value that way. Of course you can still "recreate" with hunting, fishing, and "criticizing after dinner" (note how, coincidentally, all his cited examples tend to gracefully fail; I can "go hunting" and come back with nothing and I have accomplished "going hunting"). Observing that recreation in the form of unevaluated, low-barrier-of-entry tasks that nobody cares if you produce no value with are available is a pointless statement, so I assume that's not the point of the quote. But there's a whackload of magic in that "society will regulate production" if everybody operates like this. "Society regulating production" is why we end up specialized. You end up specialized because it takes years of training and experience in any field to be worth a darn, which means that's by necessity the cost of switching too. You can certainly get to a hobbyist level in a couple of fields beyond your profession, too, but even then you're unlikely to just switch that to your profession one day in the general case.

mlevental 7y ago
>I'm saying that even what he said then was a bit of a stretch; even in his day you couldn't just decide to be a lawyer one day with any effectiveness. you're repeating yourself. here is the quotation in context "Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the "general interest", but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Th...
dragonwriter 7y ago
> even in his day you couldn't just decide to be a lawyer one day with any effectiveness. In his day (and in the modern world) people pretty freely move between roles within the intelligentsia but for legal constraints (which while notionally justified by consumer/public protection are often in no small part protectionist measures to maximize income of incumbents and restrict competing supply) and often hack around the legal constraints, too, (hanging out shingles in various “wellness” or un-/less-regulated alternative fields to evade regulation of health/medical work, for instance.)