| This question <50|50> overall <57|59> Hans: <53|60>. |
| Question 116: What does Marx mean by the remark in the footnote to C62:4/o; V144:1, that humans are not born with a mirror in their hands? |
| [58] Hans: Peter Linen and Paul Coat Sprockets [50] writes: |
| A human born without a mirror in its hand (commodity A) needs another human (commodity B) to compare with in order to be given its own value. |
| This sounds like humans need other humans to compete with, to find out who is better, so that they know their “value.” Much of this competitive spirit is probably the cultural product of capitalism. It varies from country to country and over time, for instance it seems to be stronger in the USA today than in Germany where I grew up in the 60s. |
| Marx was thinking on a more basic level: we humans need other humans so that we know who we are. We receive our identities in interaction with others, and absorb from others what we think about ourselves. |
| In this respect we are similar to commodities. A commodity also does not know who it is when it is born. It is produced privately, and nobody knows whether it fits into the social division of labor, whether there is demand for it. In the relationship with the coat, the linen finds out about these things, i.e., it finds out about its own identity. |
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