… spontaneity-creativity [is the] propelling force in human progress, beyond and independent from … socio-economic motives…
(Moreno, 1978; xiv, xv)
This is from the same paragraph in Who Shall Survive? I used as the basis for my last post. The passage asks question: What is the propelling force in human progress?
Marx and Moreno differ. Moreno is adamant it is spontaneity-creativity. He implies that for Marx it is socio-economic motives.
💬 Comment
Moreno is determined to distinguish himself from Marx. Though, as we shall see at times he aligns with Marx. The trouble is that Moreno in his summary of Marx attributes an economism to Marx that reflects a stereotypical anti-marxism.
Marx and Moreno are both against economism, i.e. the theory that economics drives everything. Take this one line from Marx (1852): In The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, he writes that “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please,”
This one line alone shows humans propel history, though social conditions matter. And its not economics alone that drives humans, as Wendy Brown puts it in the intro to the 2024 translation of Capital:
… what Marx’s work forever challenged was not only capitalism’s exploitative nature and commodifying effects, for which he is readily known, but the reduction of economics to markets and thus to a domain of knowledge and practice imagined to be independent of social relations, histories, laws, family forms, politics, policing, religion, language, representation, and psyche.
While Marx and Moreno used different language, It’s fair to sum up that they both valued human creative and productive capacities. The question about the propelling force leads to reflection about human agency and determinism. So in this instance they are on the same page, though Moreno resists that. What unites them is, Homo Faber, humans are creators.
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This post is part of a series.
See Intro and References in this post Marx and Moreno Monograph