But why can humans do all of this with their labour? Marx’s argument that humans are able to produce universally should be understood in terms of them being able to, first, learn from what they have observed in nature about what animals do, and from what they have succeeded or failed at in the past, and then, second, through their creativity or imagination, apply this new knowledge to a different domain of production, or even invent a new one. In turn, this ability is dependent on the various mental capabilities or phenomena that Marx understands as uniquely human. In the two passages quoted above, Marx explicitly or implicitly grounds human labour in: aesthetic appreciation; learning and understanding (from what other animals produce); a conscious mind; forming ideas; imagining and conceiving plans; and, in general, being creative and adaptive when solving the problem(s) of production. In the aggregate, these mental capabilities can be understood as general intelligence, which makes humans flexible in what they can do and adaptable to new and different environments, objects of labour, and other conditions of production.
HUMANS, ANIMALS AND MACHINES TODAY
There are many problems with Marx’s assumptions and arguments about both humans and animals, as well as the work of architects. At best they were based on nineteenth-century evidence from the nascent science of biology, at worst on his imagination and humanist beliefs. Can the sharp distinctions he draws between humans and animals be sustained in the light of contemporary ethology? Why cannot animals labour? Can Marx’s assertion that labour is inherently human be sustained? The debate about whether animals can labour and/or produce value is decades-old (see e.g. Benton 1988, 1993, 2003; Elster 1985; Wilde 2000; Perlo 2002; Drake 2015; Johnson 2017; Kallis and Swyngedouw 2018; Morton 2017), and Marx’s sharp distinction between the freedom of human labour and the unfree instinctual-algorithmic behaviour of animals has been critiqued using evidence from ethology, i.e. the study of animal behaviour and cognition. Jon Elster (1985) and Ted Benton (1988, 1993), for example, argue that animal production is far from one-sided, being characterized not only by a high degree of variability but also by considerable adaptability, especially when they are confronted with new environmental conditions (such as urban settings). Similarly, Paul Cockshott and Karen Renaud challenge the sharp distinction Marx draws between humans and animals on the basis of planning or having a vision (i.e. imagining) before they do something, noting how wolf packs divide tasks while hunting, how various mammals use episodic memory to plan, and how experiments have shown that spiders form plans while web-weaving (2016: 21–2).
118
inhuman power