| This question <32|29> overall <39|41> Hans: <35|42>. |
| Question 97: At the beginning of section 1.2 Marx uses one of the two following formulations: |
| (a) The coat satisfies a particular need. To produce it, a specific kind of productive activity is necessary. |
| (b) The coat satisfies a specific need. To produce it, a particular kind of productive activity is necessary. |
| Which formulation did he use, (a) or (b)? What is the difference? Could he also have used the other formulation? |
| [40] Hans: Particular versus specific. Marx's prose is very precise. Marx is always conscious about which word to use for which occasion. When he uses the word “particular” he either means that something is different from the others, or that something is just one element of a group of interconnected elements (the philosophical expression for such a group is “totality”). When he uses the word “specific” or “determinate” then he means that this thing is as it is because of some law or necessity. |
| This is why he writes “the coat satisfies a particular need.” Humans are bundles of needs, and the need to be protected from the weather is one of them. You will never hear Marx talk about “specific” needs because he does not analyse why people have which needs. He takes these needs as given. |
| But he uses the word “specific” or, in a more literal translation, “definite” or “determinate,” when he speaks about types of concrete labor. The phrase “determinate useful labor” recurs again and again, because the specifics of the labor process are determined by the tools, the intended useful effect, etc. I found only one exception: at one place Marx writes that “all labor is expenditure of human labor-power in particular purposeful form” -- but this fits with my interpretation too, because here he is referring to the totality of different ways to expend one's labor-power. |
| George is therefore completely right if he says in [29] that you don't want “particular” labors, i.e., labors that are different from others, in a mass-produced general-purpose coat. George shows a lot of wisdom about the production process, the kind which you don't learn in school but in the factory. And Scraps [32] emphasizes the necessity that the labor process is determined by the nature of the object; you cannot begin making a coat by the buttons, and coats require different processes than hats. |
|
|
|||||