Capitalism's Fatal Flaw, and the Way Forward: Part 9.: Karl Seldon on Karl Marx Series. Marx’s ‘Historically-Generic’ ‘‘Economics of TIME’’’ and a Concrete Metric for Human Freedom.

Marx’s

‘Historically-

Generic’

‘‘‘Economics

TIME’’’

and a

Concrete Metric

for

Human Freedom.

Part 9.:

Karl Seldon on Karl Marx Series.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Dear Reader,

It is my pleasure, and my honor, as an elected member of the Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.] General Council, and as a voting member of F.E.D., to share, with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release by the F.E.D. General Council, Karl Seldon’s commentaries on the world-historic breakthrough work of Karl Marx.

This 9th text in this by now long-running series is posted herewith, together with supporting text-images and diagrams [Some E.D. standard edits have been applied, in the version presented below, by the editors of the F.E.D. Special Council for the Encyclopedia, to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s discourse].

Seldon –

“In the notes to himself on his developing immanent critique of ‘scientific ideology’ of capitalist political economy, in the manuscript now known as the Grundrisse, Marx expounded upon many of the “historically-specific” features of the modern socio-economic formation, founded upon “the capital-relation” as the predominant “social relation of [societal self-re]production” in the modern epoch.”

“But therein, beyond capitalism’s epochal, “historical specificity”, Marx also describes something about economics that represents its ‘historical genericity’, a ‘historically generic’ feature which all historical human economic formations must share, as follows:

“… . The less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental. Just as in the case of an individual, the multiplicity of its development, its enjoyment and its activity depends on economization of time. Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself. …”.”*

“Marx further notes, later in the Grundrisse, that –

“*...In relation to the whole of society, the creation of disposable time is then also the creation of time for the production of science, art, etc.”.”**

“Years later, in Marx’s manuscript that Frederick Engels edited to produce the third volume of «Das Kapital», Marx wrote out a significant expansion on the above, much earlier-written, ‘‘‘economics of [human societies’ use and allocation of human life-]time’’’, this time centering on the time-use interconnections between the “realm of freedom” and/versus the “realm of necessity” in the context of their ‘historical genericity’:

“…it depends on the labor productivity how much use-value shall be produced in a definite time, hence also in a definite surplus labor-time.”

“The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labor, but upon its productivity [K.S.: I.e., upon its “productive force” – Marx] and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed.”

“In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.”

“Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.”

“With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants [K.S.: also expanding]; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase.”

“Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity.”

“Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.”.”***

“The passage above suggests, to us, a concrete, ‘historically-generic’ metric for the quantitative measurement of the, too often nebulous, loosely-bandied-about, and often ideological concept of human freedom. This metric is a measure of the social [re]productive force of the human species, but it is also a measure of what, we predict, will become the real “rate of profit”; the real form of profit, for actualized humanity. Social reproductive force and rate of profit will reconverge, we hold, for trans-capitalist humanity.”

“That simple metric, capturing ‘the quantitative shadow of the qualitative’, is the percentage ratio of the size of the realm of freedom to/divided-by the size of the realm of necessity, both measured in time units – in human life-hours: (f/n).”

“This (f/n) ratio can be measured at the level of a single human life. Or, it can be measured for an escalating series of scales of aggregated groups of human lives, up to and including applying it to the whole of society – of a given social formation.”

“As applied to a whole society, it could produce a per capita ((f/N)/(n/N)) ratio, where N is the count of human lives, the population count, for that society, f the aggregate “free time” and n the aggregate “necessary time”.”

“For the whole historical series of class-divided societies, in which the majority of the populations were slaves, or serfs, or, still today, work-time-paid, wagéd or salaried workers, this would produce a bad average.”

“A tiny portion of the population would have (f/n) ratios approaching (f/0); almost nothing but “free time”, perhaps better described as [“freely”-]‘disposable time’, d. That population would be the ruling class population.”

“Most of the rest of the social population would have (f/n) ratios approaching (0/n); almost no “free time”, no ‘disposable time’, d; with almost all of their life-time as ‘necessary time’, perhaps better described as ‘pre-allocated time’.”

“Only in Marx’s [and our] predicted higher successor system to the capitalist system, should we expect the typical social-individual’s ‘freedom metric’ to look like this –

(f/n)

– or –

(d/p).”

“The increasing production and reproduction of daily, freely-disposable human life-time is the true form of profit and of wealth for an actualized humanity.”

*[Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), Translated and edited by Martin Nicolaus, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, UK, 1973, pp. 172 to 173; emphases added by K.S.].

**[Ibid., p.401n, emphasis as in source text.].

***[Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. III, New World, NY, NY, USA, 1967, p. 820; paragraphs-partitioning and emphases added by K.S.; British spellings converted to American spellings.].

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, and to read and/or download, free of charge, PDFs and/or JPGs of Foundation books, other texts, and images, please see:

www.dialectics.info

and

https://independent.academia.edu/KarlSeldon

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –