Marx’s free time itself becomes capital through self-development.

Evidence

Yet despite highly vigorous forces of production, we have not witnessed the advent of the ‘realm of freedom’ (Reich der Freiheit) where ‘labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends’. Ultimately, Marx himself adhered to the primacy of labour: the ‘increase of free time’, he contends, ‘reacts back upon the power of labour as itself the greatest productive power’. But with that, the realm of necessity comes to colonize the realm of freedom. ‘Idle time’ as ‘time for higher activity’ transforms its possessor ‘into a different subject’ with greater productive force than one who merely toils. As ‘time for the full development of the individual’, free time contributes to the ‘production of fixed capital’. In fact, this means that knowledge gets capitalized too. In modern parlance, more leisure time means increased human capital: idleness that might otherwise be devoted to activities free of purpose and constraint are integrated into the operations of Capital. … The transcendence of Capital stands in the way of life as immanence. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the Frankfurt-school critique of Marx in book_so_far ch8 — that capitalism exploits the total person including apparent freedom. — connects to: Marx’s organic composition of capital extends to the organic composition of individuals — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2313; The hobby concept shows free time is reified like labour itself — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 274; Marx compared self-recognition through others to the commodity’s need for another commodity. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1254 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that Marx’s own ‘realm of freedom’ (free time for self-development) already smuggles in self-capitalization is a dense, paradigm-level insight that binds leisure, education and productivity into one knot.

Related

• Under knowledge capitalism, idleness gets absorbed into producing the person as Capital. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Marx’s organic composition of capital extends to the organic composition of individuals #expands (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2313
• Marx compared self-recognition through others to the commodity’s need for another commodity. #corroborates (0.72) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1254
• The hobby concept shows free time is reified like labour itself #expands (0.71) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 274