The Will to Create

The will-to-create as I see it is a counter concept to the idea of the will to power. I can see the appeal of the will-to-power as an explanation of social phenomena yet ultimately it appears to me as an appeal to and legitimisation of bourgeois logic. It is a concept seeking to explain societal development as the result of the striving of individuals to accumulate and attract greater power for themselves. Altruism is debased to a means of self advancement.

I much prefer the idea of the will-to-create. A concept that explains the human condition and society’s forward momentum as a result of an inate preoccupation of humans to create, be it concrete physical objects or more abstract creations.

The concept is intimately related to the idea of the future or rather the ability to think the catagory of future. To create requires work plus an idea or plan for that work ie a vision of the future state of or outcome of that work. As Marx says when comparing the labour of humans to the activity of animals:

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

The will-to-create could be stated as labour-power plus Ernst Bloch’s concept of hope. It is our most human of traits, that is our ability to expend labour power and our ability to forsee the future that makes up our creative will.

However what is the motivation to exercise this will-to-create? I’d say it could be formulated as either the knowledge of our future destruction and the desire to embody ourselves in the objects of our labour or more interestingly, we seek to create the unobtainable object cause of our desire, Lacan’s object petit a.

The will-to-power to me does not lead to growth but to ultimate stagnation, it appears to be predicated on a finite source of power that is fought over and necessarily results in a loss for the competitor, it is a zero-sum-game.

The will-to-create however is constructive and progressive, power and growth comes not through hording but through collaboration and sharing. This can be seen in the progression of humanity through its economic stages where each stage has seen a progressive increase in collaboration and interdependence.

Our will-to-create has historically been subordinate to our utopian visions of the future we aim our labour towards the realisation of these utopias. However these utopias have historically been constituted as returns to some previously existing perfect state that has in reality never existed.

The radical notion of Bloch is that it is only Marxism that allows us a consistent and accurate method for understanding and formulating the future. Only when Marxism guides our creative will can the full potential of that will be realised.