Marx : "Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature." / Charles Brown : The Labour that is Necessary is Homo sapiens’ instinctively struggling to Self -preserve in the Darwinian Struggle for Existence is Marx’s Labour; this Species-Being Labour. These material interactions between the human animal species and Nature are the human ecological niche . Necessary Labour is human Darwinian adaptation. At a certain point in human history, humans solve the problem of necessary Labour so well , that much Labour is expended toward production not directly related to the Darwinian struggle for existence , physical Self-preservation, but superstructural wants

THE LABOUR-PROCESS OR THE PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm

Marx : "Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature."

/ Charles Brown : The Labour that is Necessary is Homo sapiens’ instinctively struggling to Self -preserve in the Darwinian Struggle for Existence is Marx’s Labour; this Species-Being Labour. These material interactions between the human animal species and Nature are the human ecological niche . Necessary Labour is human Darwinian adaptation.

At a certain point in human history, humans solve the problem of necessary Labour so well , that much Labour is expended toward production not directly related to the Darwinian struggle for existence , physical Self-preservation, but superstructural wants

Marx continues ( more CB annotation later)

"He (sic) opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. "


Charles Brown: Why do Humans do this ? Because we are an animal species . As an animal species , we must do this to preserve our living generation and perpetuate our species in future generations less we be selected against by Nature , Naturally Selected against in the Darwinian sense .

Marx : "By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway.

CB: Hmmmm This maybe a LaMarckian/Inheritance of Acquired Charateristics error , as Engels makes in "The Role Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man".Bodily Actions in the external world developed/acquired by a parent generation are not inherited by offspring generations from their parents . Skills laboring with tools are not inherited genetically from parents . They are inherited linguistically/culturally , symbolically inherited.

Marx : "We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal.

CB: These would be eating , sleeping , breathing ; individual instinctive acts of Self-preservation, individual physioligical survival. Marx does not deal with them here , but the specifically human labor he does deal with meets these Self-preservation necessities for humans .

Marx : "An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity,

(CB: Starting about 500 years ago)


from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage.


CB: Human Labour , at it's origin circa 2.5 million years ago at the beginning of the Stone Age was by defintion "stamped as exclusively human " as the stone tools that define human Labour were made by design , precisely "stamped"; because the Makers had symbolic communication and inheritance - language and culture .

Marx: "We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.


CB: Exactly , Comrade Karl ! Imaginative thinking is symbolic/ linguistic thinking/language . Only humans have imaginative thinking. Imaginative thinking is planning ; planning in words and pictures


Marx :" At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.

CB: Planning and following a Rule elaborated in Words in Thought.


Marx: " And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.

The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments. The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin state in which it supplies [1] man with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connexion with their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so to say, been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for washing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour is raw material: it can only become so, after it has undergone some alteration by means of labour. An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims. [2]Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which a man’s own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high development of labour. [3] No sooner does labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone implements and weapons. In the earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells. [4] The use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal. Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. [5] Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production. The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries. In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of labour, in addition to those things that are used for directly transferring labour to its subject, and which therefore, in one way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all such objects as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do not enter directly into the process, but without them it is either impossible for it to take place at all, or possible only to a partial extent. Once more we find the earth to be a universal instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus standi to the labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among instruments that are the result of previous labour and also belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so forth. In the labour-process, therefore, man’s activity, with the help of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in the material worked upon. The process disappears in the product, the latter is a use-value, Nature’s material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject: the former is materialised, the latter transformed. That which in the labourer appeared as movement, now appears in the product as a fixed quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the product is a forging.