In the introduction to the Grundrisse Marx discusses the relation between production and consumption in a manner that throws further light on our inquiry. He begins by noting that these two functions reciprocally determine each other. Consumption produces production because “the product first becomes a real product in consumption” and because consumption creates the “necessity for new production by providing the ideal, inward, impelling cause which constitutes the prerequisite of production. ... It is clear that while production furnishes the material object of consumption, consumption provides the ideal object of production, as its image, its want, its impulse and purpose.” 60 On the other hand, production furnishes consumption with its material, and also gives consumption “its definite outline, its character, its finish”:
For the object is not simply an object in general, but a definite object, which is consumed in a certain definite manner prescribed in its turn by production. Hunger is hunger; but the hunger that is gratified by cooked meat eaten with fork and knife is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth [emphasis added]. 61
The manner in which an object is consumed produces a need for that object, for
Production not only supplies the want with material, but supplies the material with a want. When consumption emerges from its first stage of natural crudeness and directness ... it is itself furthered by its object as a moving spring. The want of it which consumption experiences is created by its appreciation of the product [emphasis added]. 62
These reflections are the foundation of any Marxist social psychology. Their significance can best be gauged in comparison with psychoanalytic assumptions. As we have noted, it is sometimes maintained that Marxist critics have misunderstood Freud’s insistence on the malleability of human instinct. The theme of "instincts and their vicissitudes” speaks it is said, to the plasticity of our basic inclinations:
It has been brought to our notice that we have been in the habit of regarding the connection between the sexual instinct and the sexual object as more intimate than it in fact is. Experience of the cases that are considered abnormal has shown us that in them the sexual instinct and the sexual object are merely soldered together—a fact which we have been in danger of overlooking in consequence of the uniformity of the normal picture, where the object
appears to form part and parcel of the instinct. We are tlius warned to loosen the bond that exists in our thoughts between instinct and object. It seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent of its object; nor is its origin likely to be due to its object’s attractions. 63
I his passage reveals a position radically different from Marx’s. For the instinct and object are given no intrinsic connection with each other; they are “merely soldered together." Since the instinct is not formed through the "object’s attraction,” its aim must be constitutionally predetermined or left to chance. Either alternative differs basically from Marx’s dialectic ot object and need. Freud merely succeeds in isolating the individual from the social context of desire and gratification. The object is merely the means for gratification rather than a constitutive aspect of its nature.
Many who have incorporated Freud in a larger “social” perspective believe they have taken account of what is true in Marx. Their common position can be stated as follows: Though we affirm the existence of inborn human needs and drives, we are not insensitive to society’s effects. For we acknowledge that different societies provide different channels for the expression of these given tendencies. In one place anger may be released in sport, in another warfare may serve the same function, and in a third, the fallen chief may become the object of hostility. While a boy in our society is hostile toward his father, the Trobriand boy may direct this feeling toward his uncle. We do not deny that the objects of human drives are various and that the structure of permission produces real differences in social life.
This is not Marx’s position, and it is mistaken at its root. The political economy of Marx’s day also attempted a strict division between production and distribution. The first domain was supposedly marked by immutable laws; the second was open to transformation. Marx rejected the dichotomy for the same general reason that the reigning psychological view needs to be rejected. Human drives cannot be separated from the channels of their release. “Consumption provides the ideal object of production, as its image, its want, its impulse and purpose.” The drive is formed through its object, which is itself shaped through its place in the network of social relations. That is why the hunger that is gratified with cooked meat is different in kind from the hunger that “bolts down raw meat.” It is not the same hunger, with different objects; it is “a different hunger.
Freud holds that instincts aim at abolishing “the condition of stimulaUon in the source of the instinct,” while the source is defined as "that somatic process in an organ or part of the body from which there results a stimulus represented in life by an instinct.” 64 In other words, freud holds the view that physical instincts are gratified by making good a state of privation in the body. This is a fundamental mistake. What is overlooked is the manner in which the bodily impulse is defined through social
88
Marx and Freud: Convergence and Antagonism
processes. In satisfying “a physical need” are we simultaneously satisfying the social conventions that structure the significance of the need.
In capitalist society our view of the body, and its “needs and requirements,” is instrumental. The traditional “industrial” notion of sleeping and eating regards these functions as preparations for the next day’s labor. We treat ourselves somewhat like a machine that must be refueled and made ready. With the recent rise of a cult of “deserved gratification” diese values are themselves in transition. Though there is less drama surrounding eating than sexuality, the same conflict arises between regarding the act as useful for the promotion of other ends, and engaging in it as a highly charged end in itself. It is not a discipline, as it was for the Japanese, nor is it usually a casual, sensuous relaxation. It is suffused with considerable compensatory value as a substitute for love, recognition, sacrifice (in cooking), stimulation, or reward. Since it is mediated by advertising, it also bears the imprint of status, style, and conspicuous display.
The same point obviously holds for needs that do not derive from the body.
Money is therefore not only an object, but is the object of greed. . . . Greed as such, as a particular form of the drive, i.e., as distinct from the craving for a particular kind of wealth, e.g., for clothes, weapons, jewels, women, wine, etc., is possible only when general wealth, wealth as such, has become individualized in a particular thing, i.e., as soon as money is posited in its third quality. Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed. The mania for possessions is possible without money; but greed itself is the product of a definite social development, not natural, as opposed to historical . 65
Money and greed stand in a dialectical relationship. They imply each other, just as money itself derives from a total system of production. Once again, it is not the same drive with a different object, but a different drive. There is no universal drive for possession because there is no universal form of possessiveness, i.e., of property relations, through which such a drive could be articulated.
The difference between a Marxist view of the matter and the orthodox social psychology position is the difference between dialectics and interaction. In a dialectical relationship the terms are reciprocally transformed. Human needs are shaped through the process in which they are simultaneously generated and released. Bourgeois theory speaks of the discharge of drive without specifying the process through which the drive is charged, that is, formed, shaped, and constructed. Hunger is hunger, as sexuality is sexuality. But the sexuality that is satisfied through the relatively uninhibited and public institutions of Trobriand society is different from the sexuality that is constructed through the
monogamous, patriarchal, private, repressive family structure of Freud’s clients.
Marxism denies that the ultimate source of conflict in human life is an inherent antagonism between primary biological drives and repressive social institutions. The pervasive antagonisms of our lives have their origin in the contraditions inherent in our society. When we experience ourselves drawn simultaneously toward immediate gratification on the one hand, and a need for permanent relations on the other, we are reflecting social movements beneath the immediate surface of our own lives. A scrutiny of our biology will not advance our understanding of this dilemma one whit. But a historical explanation of the social roots of isolation, the changing nature of the family, and the pressures of the contemporary market will offer some illumination. 66