I don’t like admitting it, but Karl Marx was on to something. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he argued that modern industrial society had estranged workers from both their own work and from other workers. It is surprising that Marx was able to argue this so well in 1844, for the industrial revolution as we know it had only just begun.
This piece of genius aside, Marx screwed the pooch with everything else. One of his solutions to the problems facing the proletarian worker was this:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
He popularized this slogan in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. We can go all day debating it, but my critique is that practical applications of this principle do not correctly interpret the term needs.
Under the various Socialist systems of the last hundred years, people’s needs have been viewed as the necessities for survival: food, water, shelter, some level of education, and a minimal level of healthcare. People’s wants, like a nice house, a big steak, or a hunting trip, are typically viewed as unnecessary extravagances. The resources needed to attain these wants are better-spent tending to the needs of others.
Unfortunately, these needs are only sufficient to keep one’s blood pumping. They are insufficient if the people in society are to find happiness.
Happiness is a complicated thing. Smarter people than I have tried and failed to define it. Without descending into relativism, let’s just say that a happy life looks different to different people.
I may find happiness in teaching people to squat, while another man finds happiness selling cars or trading stocks. Upon acknowledging this fact, one realizes that different people need different things in their respective pursuits of happiness.
If one’s goal in life is to survive, needs are obviously more important than wants. But if one’s goal in life is to be happy, wants are equally important as one’s needs.
You can survive on bread and water. Some people are surprisingly happy on such a diet. Others crave 24-ounce steaks and good whisky. While it is academically easy to critique the latter for its excess, doing so forces arbitrary standards of happiness that, upon practical application, leave everybody miserable. In the pursuit of happiness, wants are redefined into needs, and that’s not a bad thing!
Do you want to survive, or do you want to be happy? If your answer is the latter, it’s perfectly acceptable to chase your wants, provided that doing so doesn’t compromise the life, liberty, and property of others. So go ahead, eat that steak, buy that new computer, take that vacation! Don’t feel guilty for your pursuit of happiness. Instead, just embrace it.
Thanks for reading. Now get off the toilet.
The Poop Scoop 