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 shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish 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, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845; 1846), Volume I, Part 1.
One reply on “Marx”
The absurdity here is that absolutely no mechanism is proposed for coördinating work. In a market, a key factor is rising compensation in occupations that have shortages of workers, and falling compensation in occupations that have a surplus. In an administrated system, workers are directed to where the administrators imagine them needed. But in Marx’s fantasized end-state, compensation is according to need and everyone just does what he thinks might be most satisfying, regardless of which endevours are most need by others. How many people are attempting to till fields is not driven by a need for crops; how many people are at the auto factory is not decided by the need for automobiles. We just pray that a sufficient number of people want to collect garbage, or clean toilets, instead of being cowboys.