This quote is from Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property. It's extracted from a longer section which reads as follows (I've highlighted where it appears):

<How the multiplication of needs and of the means (of their satisfaction) breeds the absence of needs and of means is demonstrated by the political economist (and by the capitalist: in general it is always empirical businessmen we are talking about when we refer to political economists, (who represent) their scientific creed and form of existence) as follows:

(1) By reducing the worker's need to the barest and most miserable level of physical subsistence, and by reducing his activity to the most abstract mechanical movement; thus he says: Man has no other need either of activity or of enjoyment. For he declares that this life, too, is human life and existence.

(2) By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the standard, indeed, as the general standard -- general because it is applicable to the mass of men. He turns the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need -- be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity -- seems to him a luxury. Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy -- despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance -- is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save -- the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour -- your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything ||XVI| which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power -- all this it can appropriate for you -- it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.>

I love Marx Quoters because half the time you have to fucking quote mother fucking Marx to show them why they are fucking wrong. Because the next fucking line is:

Everything ||XVI| which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power -- all this it can appropriate for you -- it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.

All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.

So no, Mr. "I've been teaching Marx for 20 fucking years" Marx isn't saying "Hey be 'normal' and stop being 'weird' and just go dance and shit you loon" he's saying, "You want to dance, you want to sing, you want to be jolly, have joy, be free, be human, and in order to even have any of those things you need to want fucking money first, and in the end your pursuit for humanity will only leave you with an insatiable want for money, because that's the only thing that makes you human".

This was helpful. I don't know who any of these people are and was missing the context of why the hat guy used the quote to respond to the hat and glasses guy. (They all have these funny little caps they wear because of baseball you see, and they wear them everywhere, even in their online picture.)

Genuine question: are these people notable? Am I out of touch for not knowing either party?

Finally! Someone in this comments section got it!

1: Here's a quote, no context

2: I understand it, you don't.

1: I don't understand it? How do I understand it?

2: Basically repeats the quote

1: Uh yeah I understand it.

2: I understand it and you don't.

Here is the argument starter.

This gets called privileged and therefore this argument. It is intensely nothing.

That's why the source is added for the context.

Check the link.

Marx failed to consider that you can use multiple slurp juices!

Even then, capitalist accumulate ascetism-points stolen from others who endure the ascetism

Yeah, I have to say, spending time reading and writing (or drawing or making music) is as cheap or expensive as you're willing to make it. My spouse and I heavily pulled back from the internet over a year ago now and have spent a lot more time at the bookstore, reading books to each other, doing puzzles and playing card games. It costs almost nothing, is significantly more fulfilling, and I've found myself much more motivated to write creatively again, something I hadn't done regularly since I was a teen.

Some online leftists are just bitter philistines trying to defend spending hours and hours of their free time getting into arguments online instead of doing anything else with their time.

Decades of academic, disconnected from praxis leftism and Protestant brainworms really show when it comes to that.

• Spending time with friends costs me petrol or bus fare, both are extortionate.
• Reading books I want to read costs money to.. buy said books. Libraries are an option but see travel costs above.
• Watching films costs money unless you have the education, money, and ability to not worry about cops enough to pirate.
• Listening to music, see above.
• Cooking can be cheap, but requires knowhow and energy that most over-worked people don't have. And experimenting to learn can be costly if you ruin tonight's dinner. It also benefits significantly from a bit of money for tools/quality ingredients.

I do sort of agree with your take here. But as someone who really did live penny-to-penny for the first 20 years of my life, there many times I wanted to do all these things you suggest are "free or cheap", and could not afford it. I literally couldn't afford to spend time with friends (nor go out and make friends) most weeks, because they.. weren't in walkable distance.

So I kind of object to the idea that these things AREN'T a privilege, given that I have literally previously been too poor to do them. They all can cost substantial money.