Not only could it be, but it should be. The real issue is how many people can share in those furtive pleasures. As many as possible I hope.

That leaves open the question of how to do it.

I think that behind the productivism of Marx' political economy and the quasi-fundamentalism of the LTV, whereby labor produces all real material wealth,- (which is true only at a level of generalization that belies through abstraction its very claim, ignoring, not only any other form of "wealth", but the role that the mastering intelligibility of material and social processes, of technology and technics, plays in the augmentation of material wealth, as well as, the question of how that process is socially generated and distributed),- there should be recognized, (inspite of the heavy appeal to the Victorian "work ethic"),- in the division and opposition of workers/citizens to capitalists/consumers, an altogether different normative source: viz. a basically Aristotelian conception of the "ends of man". Productive self-activity as the realization of human "essence" is not only a "determinate negation" of "alienated labor", but also, insofar as the LTV amounts to a negative subjective-utility theory of value, emancipation from the "subjective necessity" of value toward the restoration of the openness of anthrolopogical exchange as the "measure" of value.

Similarly, recognition through deliberative participation as a member of a political community, in contrast to the historical exclusion of laboring and technological processes from such consideration, amounts not just to an opening up of such issues, but to an exclusion of domination from the consideration of their distributions. The demands for the security of labor and the satisfaction of basic needs were, though valid in themselves, intended as a staging ground for a larger perspective. Stolid as that may seem from the point of view of the modernist obsession with the finite temporality of human existence, one would be hard put to say that such constant concerns are entirely outmoded.

To be sure, there are fugitive joys proffered by the consumerist "lifestyle" functionalized by the reproductive imperatives of capitalism: there would be no intelligible appeal to its ideologies were it otherwise and we wouldn't be human if we were insensible to such joys. Still more to the point is the potential for "Umfunktionierung" of the emergent technologies which it produces, which can better gather and communicate and exchange such inevitably fugitive joys. But that imaginary facade should not distract from the real pain that the "curse" of labor reproduces together with the inequities and developmental deformations that that reproduction "necessitates".

The main flaw in classical Marxism, its Achilles heel, was not its supposed Puritanical scorn for human pleasures, nor even the amoral moralism of its means. Rather it lies in its failure to appreciate and fully come to terms with the relative "autonomy" of the political, which failure is constitutive for Marx' own thought, since it began with a critique of Hegel's political philosophy.

Lynn,

The consumer pleasures are fleeting. I recently spent $3000 on my wardrobe. Now I do look nice and stylish and cut a bit of a dash, but hell, it was all on a suit and accessories.

That means it was for work. The pleasures of looking attractive becomes fugitive because I am presenting myself as a commodity---laabour power to be bought on the market. Tis all about human capital as the presentation of the self in postmodernity.The pleasures of admiring looks are fleeting.

Maybe it is all different when you buy a top of the range Apple ipod?

John
I agree with you on this:

The main flaw in classical Marxism, its Achilles heel, was not its supposed Puritanical scorn for human pleasures, nor even the amoral moralism of its means. Rather it lies in its failure to appreciate and fully come to terms with the relative "autonomy" of the political, which failure is constitutive for Marx' own thought, since it began with a critique of Hegel's political philosophy.

Marx reduced politics to economics. The neo-liberals do the same today.

I reckon Paul Piccone of Telos has his finger on this pulse.