ABSTRACT
Let us look first at the horizontal aspect. There is in this connection a famous quotation from Marx: a person ‘will hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening and be a literary critic after dinner,
without ever becoming a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman or critic’.77 This is singularly ill-chosen. All these tasks are solitary, some could be hobbies. Most labour is social labour in the sense that each contributes to joint endeavours which would be disrupted if someone freely chose to go fishing instead. But let us rewrite Marx’s sentence as follows: ‘Men will freely decide to repair aero-engines in the morning, fill teeth in the early afternoon, drive a heavy lorry in the early evening and then go to cook dinners in a restaurant, without being an aero-engine maintenance artificer, dentist, lorry-driver, or cook.’ Then it does look a trifle nonsensical, does it not? Bahro advocates universal higher education to the age of 22, with everyone taking courses in mathematics, cybernetics, philosophy and art, but surely he must recognise that this will not and cannot create omniscience. We could be taught to understand the problems facing an architect, language-teacher, brick-layer, or airline pilot, but we would not then be qualified to do their jobs. An operatic tenor is usually unable to play the oboe, paint scenery, conduct the orchestra, and it is inherently improbable that he would have any desire, or aptitude, for tailoring, medicine, allocating ball-bearings, sports journalism, or working in a slaughterhouse.
