Creativity versus Productivity: The Use-Value of Leisure

The opening paragraphs of this paper serve to understand more about the surrounding concepts of the prompt to ensure their discovery within Marx is accurate. I’ve used the word discovery intentionally because it reflects the way I write; it is not natural for me to begin a paper with a rigid thesis in mind. That being said, I understand how that can be challenging to grade, so here is my retrospectively clarified thesis: the commoditization of leisure is the necessary vehicle to restoring meaning and value to a laborer as, in its consumption, it creates surplus value in the form of objects with latent human essence.

What is “the grace of imagination”? When Ricoeur writes about it, he is making reference to the hermeneutics of faith, a method of interpretation that embraces a faith-based viewpoint to restore meaning to the symbols of the world. He argues that in attempting to “question the absolute validity of his object…is not the expectation of being spoken to what motivates the concern for the object” (Ricoeur 29). For Ricoeur, the root of attraction to the hermeneutics of faith is a reassuring belief that “men are born into language, into the light of the logos, which enlightens every man who comes into the world” (Ricoeur 30). What Ricoeur is saying here is that he believes that language is the necessary vehicle to meaning, and that language is less of a concept or skill wielded by man, and more of a constant of the world which man must strive to attain in order to, in turn, achieve understanding of the world. He will continue on to concede that, while the hermeneutics of suspicion attempts to strip away these layers of what he believes is intrinsic meaning, they, ultimately, do serve the purpose of eliminating false idols and symbols, proposing that individuals adopt a “second naivete,” by, first, bracketing their preconceived interpretations and perspectives, and, second, taking on the elevated meaning of symbols which are prescribed by faith.

Is Ricoeur false in his specific claim that “the discipline of the real” lacks the “grace of imagination”, or are there elements of the latter within the former? As I attempt to answer this question, I think it’s prudent to apply the school’s logic on the question itself.

Before attempting to argue one against another, the principal question should be whether they both stand on the same ground or plane. In other words, do the “discipline of the real” and the “grace of imagination” really stand at two-dimensional ends? Semantically the answer seems to be yes. Real material is what Marx argues for, which itself would seemingly oppose any fantastical, non-real, imaginated whimsy. Pushing past semantics, I believe they do possess an angle, a theta, which separates their directions. Marx is interested in the demystification of fetishism which shrouds the foundational derivation of value, and Ricoeur is interested in an elevation beyond the physical material whose ascending comprehension merits more meaning than can be found in the earth. However, it is important to note that this theta is not equal to 180 degrees. Both Marx and Ricoeur possess a common goal: the acquisition of greater value/meaning than is currently possible. What then is the projection of Ricoeur along Marx; in other words, what is the “grace of imagination” within the "discipline of the real?”

Within Marx’s framework of dissolving the "fetishism of commodity,” we encounter the true meaning of value: invested labor. Once we’ve uncovered this, by hermeneutics of suspicion, we must then ask: how does Marx propose this deeper truth frees us and enables us to find greater meaning; how does, as Spinoza would ask, our understanding of the terms of our bondage, facilitate our liberation? The first piece to this restoration is the working-class revolution.

According to Marx, under the bourgeois, the proletariat is alienated from the surplus value created by his labor (Marx 72), so the capitalist may profit. In this society, labor is the root of value. And, in this society, if we view labor as something similar to Ricoeur's meaning, then the proliferation of the product of labor—surplus value—is similar to an augmentation of meaning. And if said produce is retained exclusively by the capitalist, then its return to the laborer is the first step in this projected process of “imagination”---a restoration of meaning.

For Marx, the principal issue with wage labour isn’t the wage, but rather that “its very nature dehumanizes man…defeats his natural human urge toward spontaneous productive activity, and converts his free creativity into forced labour and drudgery” (Marx XXXI). Humans naturally try to exert free will, both in thought and action, and the artificial restriction of their free will towards one choice, selling their labor power as a “hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic,” clashes with this internal drive and strips life, and, thus, the process of labor itself, of potential meaning—meaning here is not a reference to Ricoeur, it is used literally (Marx 160). Therefore, we must introduce leisure time, so that man may choose his sphere of activity, and change it when he wishes, as an economic product purchased and consumed exclusively by the laborer.

Certainly, leisure is only possible through revolution. Marx himself acknowledges this. Through the creation of leisure time, and an attribution of value stemming from its purchase as an anti-good to sold labour, meaning that to acquire leisure, wage-labour must be exchanged for it, effectively lending leisure an exchange-value equivalent to the price that raw labour power would’ve fetched had it been sold, the laborer is understood as an amalgamation. No longer is he just the result of his means of subsistence, which cultivate his labor-power, he is a complex individual who is unique in his inherent allocation of labor versus leisure in a given day—which itself now comprises working and leisure time. Now leisure is understood as labor-power is: a commodity.

We now have the direction of the “grace of imagination” along the “discipline of the real.” What, then, is its magnitude? This is a question of leisure’s use-value. The existence of leisure is part of a process of restoring value, surplus value, to the individual, but the penultimate portion is the transformation of this abstract good into a specific outcome, a “sacred” which is imbibed with more. The question isn’t what the sacred is, but how it appears, how it is defined and how it contains leisure within itself.

All objects of man, as Feuerbach and Marx would agree, are reflections of man, of the way man thinks and acts. It is what differentiates man from animal. “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” (Marx 344). But for the architect to “raise his structure in imagination,” he must first possess his thought, this assumes he is not under contract or employment. He must be free to think and to think uniquely. This condition is fulfilled by the creation of leisure. Now that the architect may “imagine” outside the rigid framework of top-down labor, he does “imagine” through self-definition. In other words, the architect understands that, while he may take inspiration from external sources, the final object will be a product of his own mind, and that he need not, must not, do anything but apply himself towards thinking internally on his task uniquely. The individual will, thus, “be steadily in consonance with his purpose” (Marx 345). But whereas the “workman” benefits from not enjoying it—production—as “something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers,” the individual is actually supposed to give play to his bodily and mental powers, and thereby enjoy this pseudo-production. In fact, if he didn’t enjoy it, it would not be leisure. This is the difference between productivity and creativity. The use-value of leisure is creativity.

Leisure is not so much an act of doing things that one is not paid to do, but it is the belief that such an action, in itself, creates something external to the capitalist’s system of production. Creation, free of labour, of wage, is the object of leisure. Embodied in it is leisure itself, and, while it contains exchange value from such—the exchange-value of leisure is labor—its surplus value comes from its embodiment, as a product, of human nature, of Nature, not Capital. Leisure holds within its magical lamp of wish-granting, not the promise of producing, but of creating. It possesses not the end-goal of capitalism, machine automation, but the end-goal of humanity, the perpetuation of the human essence.