MDDM Who ain't a Slave (a theoretical perspective)

[Terrance]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

With the division of labour, in which all these contradictions are
implicit, and which in its turn is based on the natural division of
labour in the family and the separation of society into individual
families opposed to one another, is given simultaneously the
distribution, and indeed the unequal distribution, both quantitative and
qualitative, of labour and its products, hence property: the nucleus,
the first form, of which lies in the family, where wife and children are
the slaves of the husband. 

This latent slavery in the family, though still very crude, is the first
property, but even at this early stage it corresponds perfectly to the
definition of modern economists who call it the power of disposing of
the labour-power of others. Division of labour and private property are,
moreover, identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed
with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to
the product of the activity. 

Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the
interest of the
separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest
of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed,
this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the
"general interest", but first of all in reality, as the mutual
interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. 


And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how,
as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a
cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long,
therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's
own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him
instead of being controlled by him. 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 herdsman, or a critical critic, and must
remain so if he does not want 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, fish in the
afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I
have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or
critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we
ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our
control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our
calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up
till now. 

 The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises
through the
 co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the
division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their
co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their
own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the
origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus cannot
control, which on the contrary passes through a peculiar series of
phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man, nay
even being the prime governor of these.