A. a. Leontiev - A Gênese Da Atividade (Em Inglês)

58 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 43, no. 4,July–August 2005, pp. 58–71.© 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 1061–0405/2005 $9.50 + 0.00.

58

A.N. LEONTIEV

The Genesis of Activity

English translation © 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2003 A.A.Leontiev, D.A. Leontiev, and “Smysl.” “Genezis deiatel’nosti,” in Stanovlenie psikhologiideiatel’nosti: rannie raboty, ed. A.A. Leontiev, D.A. Leontiev, and E.E. Sokolova (Mos-cow: Smysl, 2003), pp. 373–85.

Stenographic transcript of an untitled lecture dated March 11, 1940. First pub-lished as “Analiz deiatel’nosti,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, Seriia 14, Psy-chology, 1983, no. 2, pp. 5–17; as “Genezis deiatel’nosti,” in Leont’ev A.N. Filosofiiapsikhologii (Moscow: Moscow University Press, 1994), pp. 51–66.

Translated by Nora Favorov.

The reasons for the qualitative change in and the appearance of a new, higherform of psyche—human consciousness—are, as I have previously stated, theemergence of labor and the formation of human society. The transition fromanimal to human is also the transition from the immediately biological, char-acteristics of animals, from a relationship with nature, to a new social relation-ship to nature that finds expression in the emergence and development of theprocess of labor.

Labor is not only that which appears together with man; it is not only thatnew relationship to nature that we observe as the result of the humanizing ofanimals. Labor is also, and primarily, what transforms the animal-like fore-runner of man into man. Again we see that the transition to a higher stage ofdevelopment both in the sense of more complex and developed organizationof the very subject of activity, in this case, man, and from the perspective ofthe emergence of a new, higher form of the reflection of reality, is realizedprimarily in the form of a change in life itself, the appearance of a new form oflife, a new relationship to reality, and a new form of connection with nature.

“First labor,” as Engels expresses it, “and then, together with it, articulate

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speech, are the two primary stimuli under the influence of which the brain ofthe ape gradually changed into that of man, which, despite all its similarity tothe monkey brain, is far superior to it in size and efficiency.”1

Of course, the emergence of labor was prepared by the course of develop-ment that came before it: walking upright and the development of the hands asa very efficient organ, which were integral to the lifestyle led by man’s hu-manoid ancestor—all this created the physical possibility of the appearance ofthe complex process of labor. The process of labor was also prepared in an-other way. It arises not, of course, in an animal living alone, but in animals inthe humanoid ancestors of man who lived in groups, in whom it is possible tosee the beginning stages of a certain life together, although these beginningswere still, of course, not at all like the beginnings of true social life in theirinternal characteristics. Later we see that the development of the psychereaches quite a high relative level in the most advanced members of theanimal world. In this way, the prerequisites were created that could lead, andindeed did lead, to the possibility of the emergence of labor and humansociety, founded on labor.

What is it that makes labor a specifically human activity? Labor, as youknow, is what we call the process of influencing nature. Labor is also a pro-cess of activity that connects man with nature. This is a process that Marxactually calls a process between man and nature. But at the same time, notevery process of influencing nature, of course, can and should be called aprocess of labor. There are two essential features that characterize labor, spe-cifically the form of impact on nature. One of these features is the use of tools.The process of influencing nature that we call labor is a process of influencingnature using tools. Second, the process of labor is always carried out in thecombined, in the literal sense of the word, activity of people in such a way thatman enters into a defined relationship not only with nature but also with otherpeople, with members of a given society. It is specifically through these rela-tionships toward other people that man relates to nature. Therefore, laboremerges from the start as a social process. I have already stated that labor is aspecifically human activity. And truly, no matter how many externally similarprocesses we may have studied in the animal world, in none of them can wediscover features that by nature are those of the specifically human socialactivity that we call labor.

In my opinion, there is one more feature that is quite essential, and I wouldlike to especially point out and emphasize it before moving on to examine thesignificance of the appearance and development of labor from the perspectiveof the development and change of specifically human activity and psyche.This last feature is as follows: the very development of man is determined nowby the development of labor, and, acting with labor with the help of labor


relationships on the external side of nature and changing it, man, at the sametime, changes his own nature. He develops, according to Marx, abilities latentin his nature and subjects the interplay of these forces to his own power.2

So, what kind of change in the specific processes of human activity andwhat kind of change in the form of reflection of human reality does this fea-ture bring—emerging labor, creating man himself?

Labor is a process, as we have seen, that is realized not by a lone being, inways peculiar to himself alone, but under conditions of people’s joint activity,under conditions of a human collective, and, as I will try to especially empha-size, in a social, that is, collectively expressed way. Through this process,people enter into communication with one another. It is not so much a matterof communication that is primarily verbal, of course, but of communication inthe sense of participation in a joint action, in the sense of participation in theprocess of labor, first and foremost.

Let us look at how, in practical terms, human activity—the activity of amember of a human society at a certain stage of development of labor, al-though a relatively low one—might take shape. Let us look at the activity ofan individual human under conditions of joint labor, under conditions of thejoint and productive activity of people.

It is known that even very early in history what is called the technical divi-sion of labor began to be seen rather clearly. The technical division of labor isexpressed in the fact that overall, the complex process is divided betweenseparate agents. One takes upon himself a part or an aspect, one link in theentire, complex, unified process. Other participants take on other links. Inparticular, it is suggested, that at a certain stage in the development of humansociety one can observe such a division of functions: the maintenance of fire,the work of preserving the hearth fire is given to women. Men hunt animals.What is the fire needed for? Maintaining a fire in a warm climate is essentialfor cooking food. Providing food unites both of these processes—the actualfinding of the animal and the maintenance of the fire.

Let us now analyze just what the activity of a person maintaining a fire is.What is the focus of this person’s activity? Is the object of this activity some-thing that can in and of itself or in association with some other properties, ob-jects, and so on, satisfy human need? If we assume a situation under the conditionsof a warm climate, then in and of itself fire is not an object of activity that canstimulate this activity. How, then, can we explain the fact that this activity none-theless takes place? It is not hard to find the answer to this question. Evidently,the point is that maintaining the fire is associated with the capability to cookfood. So it leads to satisfying an essential and important need—the need fornourishment. But how is the first tied to the second—maintaining the fire, on


the one hand, and satisfying the need for food, on the other? Perhaps the con-nection here is the connection of constant, simultaneous effect, and as soon asthe effect of the fire takes place, then the possibility of satisfying the need forfood is satisfied? Perhaps fire, the object stimulating the activity toward whichthe activity maintaining this fire is directed, is connected to food in the sameway that the sound produced by an insect is connected to its landing in thegrass, allowing the animal-hunter, moving in the direction of the sound, in theend to almost inevitably attain the possibility of satisfying its need for food bycatching the rustling insect? No—evidently the connection here is of an en-tirely different sort.

What do we see that is special in this connection? What is special is thatthis connection is not a connection based on similarity, not a connection basedon coexistence. This connection has a special nature. The activity of otherpeople—that is what unites the first and the second. For the maintenance ofthe fire to lead to the satisfaction of a vital need, it is essential that another partof the activity is carried out by other people—the catching of the animal, whosemeat can be prepared on this fire. If this second process did not exist, then thefirst would not be able to lead to the satisfaction of any sort of need and losesits purpose.

We do not and cannot find the sort of activity that I just described anywherein the animal world. It can arise, as you yourself understand, under only oneset of conditions—where there is joint activity. Only where there is social life,under conditions of the life of a person in the society of other people.

How should one now denote this new process, which is characterized bythese special features? We have seen—and the last time I especially empha-sized this, that any time we observe some process in an animal, the thing atwhich the process is directed—the object at which it is directed—is simulta-neously what stimulates the activity, that is, what we have agreed to call by theterm motive. The animal follows a line of sound waves. Toward what is theanimal’s activity directed? Toward the source of the sound. And what brings,activates, stimulates this process? It is the sound-emitting body itself, it is thesource of sound. They coincide. What are the features of the structure of thisnew process that appears on the basis of the emergence of labor activity? Whatis special in this process is that now the object toward which the process isdirected is not what in and of itself stimulates the action. It is not fire that isneeded, it is not actual heat that is needed. Fire is maintained because it isessential for something else, because it is in relation to something else, in thiscase, to nutritional matter, or it would be more precise and correct to say: thefire generates activity in relation to itself, the activity of maintaining it in thiscase, because another person is ensuring the possibility of using it as a way to


cook food. Thus, what is new here is that what stimulates—the motive—andthe object toward which the activity is directed, are now not the same thing.What is it in our example that could be viewed as the motive behind the entireprocess, what motivates it? It is food. It is something that answers an essentialneed. But are food and fire the same thing? No, they are connected through acertain relationship, but they are not the same. What is this relationship? Howis it specifically expressed? We have already stated: they are particularly ex-pressed in the activity of another person, in the relationship of the subject ofthis activity to the subject of some other activity, to the activity, in this ex-ample, of the hunter. What is this relationship? A natural connection or is thisa social connection? This is a social connection. What form does it take? Theform of the activity of other people.

Finally, let us ask the final question that arises in connection with the pro-cess we are examining. How is activity possible in relation to an object that, inand of itself, is not the thing that can stimulate my activity? It is clear, ofcourse, that such activity is possible only if somehow the relationship, theconnection that exists between the object of my activity and the thing that canstimulate my activity, is somehow reflected, is somehow perceived. So it mustbe presumed that such activity necessarily presumes a reflection of relation-ships that connect the object of activity and its motive. It is necessary that theobject toward which my activity is directed be encompassed, be reflected inits relationships and connections with what is capable of stimulating me toaction, with the motive.

To put it more simply and concisely: it is necessary that there be awarenessof the object of activity, that is, that it be reflected in its particular objectiverelationship—in this case, a social relationship to the object of my need. Itwould be correct to call the object of such activity the goal, emphasizing throughthis word that we are dealing not with an instinctive object, but with a con-sciously realized object, that is, with a goal. One is forced, evidently, to sig-nify in some other way the entire process directed at the conscious goal. Inessence, activity, that is, what leads to the satisfaction of a need, has grown.Now, as is evident from the example we have analyzed, it presumes not justthe action of a single given person, but his action under conditions of theactivity of other people, that is, it presumes a certain joint activity. A namemust be found for the unit that has been separated out in the course of theprocess that satisfies the need, and to signify this separated unit. It is what wecall action. How do we define what action is? Action, which we truly encoun-ter for the first time only in man, is a process that is directed at a consciousgoal. The special feature of this process is that the conscious goal, at which theprocess is directed, may not be the same thing, and is not the same thing that


satisfies the need that has motivated the action overall. Allow me to give anexample, putting our historical material to the side, an example that is fromthe activity of man, in this case contemporary man, in order to illustrate thedifference between activity and action. We observe a person reading a book.We know that it is a textbook, a book that must be read to prepare for an exam.What is this process that we are observing directed toward? His object is thecontents of the book. The result of this process is the mastery of the content ofthe book. The question arises: so, is this process stimulated specifically by thecontent of the book? This is unknown. We have to take a closer look. It may bethat the thing forcing him to read the book is not its content. Let us performthe following experiment: let us say to this person that the examination forwhich he is preparing is canceled and that he will never have to take the examin his whole life. What could happen? There are two different cases. In onecase, the person closes the book and starts doing something else. What wasthe reading of the book in this case? Was it an activity? No, it was not, evi-dently, an activity. Because the sign of an activity is that the object and themotive coincide. Evidently, as soon as we took away the motive, the object ofaction ceased to exist, the action collapsed.

But we can imagine another case: you are telling a person that it is notnecessary to read this book in order to fulfill the intention of passing the exam.Good—it is very nice to hear this, your reader will say, and will continue toread. We ask him why he continues to read. Because the book itself is interest-ing to him. The object of his action coincides with the thing that motivates hisactivity. What is this—action or activity? Activity. I have brought up this ex-ample, which is a bit artificial, because it clearly demonstrates that when wepsychologically analyze a process, it is never possible to judge based on exter-nal appearances and the objective result. It is always necessary to view thisprocess earlier from the perspective of psychology. From the outside, the readingof the book in both cases appears to be the same process, but you see thedifference between them when you pose the question of the motivation behindthe process, about what stimulates the person to act, about the reflection of thecorresponding connections and relations in the consciousness of the person—in other words, how this process is consciously realized.

Allow me to summarize. With the appearance of labor, we see the separat-ing out of special units within activity—action, directed toward realizing agoal. Such a separation is possible specifically because the transition toward aprocess of labor signifies at the same time a man’s move toward joint activity,to collective activity. To this must be added—emphasizing this although itmust be the subject of special examination and we actually will examine itseparately—that over the course of development and growth in complexity of


the process, the thing that stimulates man to act, which is not the same thing asthe object toward which the specific action is directed, is absolutely not thething that meets his natural vital needs, as, for instance, the need for food. Thistype of connection with nature, this social way of living life, the social life ofman, in its development leads to the following noteworthy phenomenon: itturns out that what can emerge initially and initially historically, it seems,emerges as the goal of action, that to which action is directed but is not able tostimulate activity in and of itself is transformed into a new, human type ofmotive. A new kind of need emerges, since now what increasingly stimulatesthe activity of man are factors that do not meet primitive, biological, vitalneeds, but that meet certain new, specifically human needs that are social innature. Itself, the social way of satisfying elementary needs arises over thecourse of development, makes it essential that over the course of developmentnew, higher human needs appear. A process occurs that can be expressed thus:the motive, separate from the goal, comes at a certain stage in the develop-ment of the given process toward the goal itself.

The example that I gave about reading a book, a naive and rather simpleexample, can be used to show this transition, to describe it. You undertakesomething because you are moved by some extraneous motive that lies out-side of the given action, but you realize this action, and it may and does hap-pen that in the course of the action itself you notice that you are beginning toact not because the external motive stimulates you to do so, but because nowthe object itself, toward which the action is directed, turns out to be interestingor attractive to you. You started to read a book because it was necessary. Youcontinue to read because it is interesting. This is the simplest way to describethis change.

Thus, the necessity, to which not only separate actions but also the activityof man are subject, is transformed from a merely biological necessity into anecessity that could be called a social necessity. So it is a social and not abiological necessity that becomes the law to which the activity of man is sub-ject. And if, talking about animals, we say that the top law of animal activity isthat it falls within the realm of instinct, that is, that it meets biological needs,then in relation to man we can say that the top law is that activity is subject tosocial necessity, and not biological necessity, although, of course, under nocircumstances can the life of man continue without the meeting of his biologi-cal needs.

First of all, what we see that is new in the activity of man and that appearsin connection with the transition to labor is the uniquely human unit of activ-ity that we have designated with the word action and that is a process subjectto a goal. In connection with the appearance of action, as I stated briefly, the


nature of activity itself changes as a whole as it further develops. It is nowdirected not only in relation to objects that immediately satisfy instinctivebiological needs, but it takes on a social nature itself. Motives that are social incharacter become predominant. Needs that are human, social in character,emerge. Other processes also change, processes that we find in complex, de-veloped activity. First and foremost, the content of activity changes, that is,the content of the process that relates to the conditions under which the pro-cess takes place change. What does this change of conditions consist of? Itprimarily consists in the fact that tools appear. The manner of human action ischaracterized by the fact that the action is carried out with the help of tools.What is a tool? According to Marx, the means or tools of labor are the objectsor set of objects that the worker places between himself and the object of laborand that are used as a guide to his effect on this object.3

Tools are inexorably tied to labor. Labor is an activity that uses tools, anactivity carried out by means of tools. This is the reason that we see the firstgenuine tools only with man. As far as animals are concerned, we can speakonly of rudimentary tools, but here it is always important to remember thatthese rudimentary tools differ qualitatively from developed forms of tools,that is, from true tools. A stick that a monkey might use and a stick that ahuman might use to perform a labor action are by their nature completelydifferent things. In what way is a true tool different from a stick or some otherobject used by an animal? How, essentially, does an object we call a tool ap-pear? It always appears as a vehicle of a certain manner of actions. A hammeris something with the help of which certain operations can be performed. Withinthe tool itself some manner of action, some manner of usage of this object isalways materially formulated. And that is what makes a tool a tool. The ques-tion arises: does this rule apply equally to a stick, which is used by hominoidapes to reach a banana, and to tools that a person uses in the process of hisproductive labor actions? In the most general sense, if we do not look at thequestion in more detail, in both cases we find a method. What is a stick usedby a monkey? It is primarily a method of getting fruit, a banana. Just as I havealready said that any human tool also comprises a certain method, in its mate-rial form it represents a certain method of action. But in addition to the gener-ality that unites the monkey’s stick and a human tool, there is a qualitativedifference between them, a difference that is quite essential. And here is whatthe difference consists of: it is not a method of usage randomly determined bya given set of circumstances that is carried out by a human tool, but it is asocially developed method, a socially developed approach. When an animalfinds itself in a situation that suggests the use of a stick, the animal is capable,as we have seen, of using a stick as a means of obtaining the fruit. But let us


take a different situation. The fruit is in the hands of the monkey, or it has beencompletely taken out of the field of action of the animal by man, or there hasbeen some other change in the circumstances of action. Will the stick continueto represent a certain method of action for the animal, will that random methodof using it as a given object be reinforced? Observation shows that this neverhappens. Only at the moment when the animal finds itself in a situation thatdemands the use of a stick does the stick begin to fill the role of the object—ofa method of action. As soon as the situation changes, the stick is again trans-formed into an object that is indifferent. It is not attributed with any method ofaction. The stick does not become a vehicle of that method of action. Forthis reason it does not become a true tool. Therefore, the animal does notmake tools, and because of this the animal does not keep tools. In man, wesee something else. The human tool is something that is made, it is some-thing that is preserved and a method of action is retained by this tool. There-fore, it would make a strange impression on all of us, for instance, to see amonkey walking around with a stick, but no one would be surprised if anartist, envisioning a primitive human, portrayed him walking and holding aprimitive tool in his hands.

In a human tool, that is, a true tool, we can see, first and foremost, that it isthe vehicle of a certain method of action, and, moreover, a social method ofaction, that is, developed in the joint activity of people. Specifically because itwas not developed individually or by chance in one situation or another, thismethod is at the same time a conscious method, that is, reflected in the psycheof man, and therefore associated by man with this object. Only under thiscondition is it possible to see what we indeed see, specifically, the storage oftools, the making of tools, that is, it is possible that in the making of a tool, thevehicle of a method of action is the goal toward which human action is di-rected. There is awareness of the tool in its connection with action, as a methodof action. This is how a tool can become a goal toward which action is di-rected; a tool can be made, produced. But when we talk about awareness of atool, about the reflection of a tool in its connection with an action, at the sametime, we are talking about any method of use of this thing, any method bywhich an action is carried out, which is materially reflected in the tool, andwhich is also an object of reflection, an object of consciousness. In other words,awareness of a method of action emerges, that is, something unknown to ani-mals emerges, something never seen in the animal world.

How is this reflected? It is reflected in the fact we see first in man thepossibility of truly preparing his actions. The division of the preparation phaseand the realization phase that is seen even in monkeys, in higher-order animalsin general, that which gives their behavior the characteristic of intellectual


behavior—this notable division of phases is first realized in man. Man can act,preparing his action. Again, the simplest example of such an action is theaction of making a tool. The actual making of the tool is nothing but the firstpreparatory phase of an action that has taken on the character of an indepen-dent, separate action, representing a certain goal. It is this split, this breakingapart, separation of phases that had been tied to one another—the phases ofpreparation and realization—that comprises the special feature that character-izes human intellectual action and that is the beginning, the initial point of thedevelopment of the human being—in the exact sense of this word—thought.

The use of tools, the making of tools not only leads to an awareness ofone’s own, that is, social, action. At the same time, the use of tools is a prereq-uisite, a precondition for the awareness of the object being impacted with thehelp of this tool. The tool is adapted to the object of action. The hammerrepresents not only a method by which the action of hammering or smashing,and so on, can be realized. Its objective properties must reflect the propertiesof the object toward which the action is directed. Can a tool, adapted for ac-tions toward small objects be big? No, because it must correspond to the ob-jective characteristics of this object; its own properties reflect the objectiveproperties of the object on which this particular tool used. In a tool, in a visual,sensual, I would say palpable form, not only the method of my action appears,but the properties of the object toward which my action is directed. Finally,last of all: a tool impacts not just one single object. We use tools in dealingwith many objects in the world around us. One and the same tool is directed atdifferent objects at different times. It is as if it subjects the property of anobject to a test and unites its objects, generalizes, associates them, and associ-ates them according to purely objective properties—tested by the very actionof the tool—not dependent on our attitude toward a given object. A hammermay be able to smash apart one object, a second, a third time, but turn out to beineffective the fourth time. By virtue of is properties of resilience and sturdi-ness, the fourth try is put into a different category from all those objects thatwere submitted to the action of this tool of mine. This is why Marx calls hu-man tools the first true generalization, the first true abstraction, that is, the firsttrue taking of separate properties and being aware of them in objects.4 As yousee, this again, is the material, the sensually perceived form in which the ob-jective properties of the objective world around man is represented in his psyche.

In the new type of activity of man that corresponds to the new type of lifeof man, you see his social and work life, all of the prerequisites are createdfor changing the type of reflection of reality. You see that the conditionscreated by these new processes are such that they make possible and neces-sary a reflection of the reality in which man lives, not in the form we see


with animals—inseparable from the actions of animals, from the attitude ofthe animal to these objects, inseparable from the instincts of these animals—but rather a form that offers a reflection of the objective world surroundingman in its objective properties, independent of the needs of man and of hisinstincts. A tool is the object that appears to the consciousness of man in itsenduring property. A tool remains a tool for man even when no immediateneed of the tool is felt by him. Food, which is attained now by man not forhimself, not by a solitary, or isolated person and not by a herd of people,where everyone acts to satisfy his own need, but food that appears as an objectof joint, social action of people, now also appears independent of concern forthe changing needs of each individual person. A social method for gettingfood is established. This method is conscious. Being aware of this method,people are also aware of the object that they obtain with this method. There isawareness of food in its enduring nutritional properties. Man does not waste-fully destroy food that he finds in nature, but is able to gather it, preserve it,relate to food as food whether or not he feels hunger at the moment. His atti-tude toward a given object is separated from the object itself.

Conditions are created that necessitate the sort of reflection of reality thatallows for the identification of the enduring, objective properties and qualitiesof this reality. But there must be something that allows this form of reflectionto truly be born. There must be conditions that not only necessitate such areflection but also allow this reflection to be truly realized. Because a sensual,sensory reflection, a reflection that completely exhausts itself, that fits com-pletely in sensual experience, in feelings, in a sensual image, and so on, isinsufficient here. Corresponding to the change in the activity there must be achange in the form of reflection. What we call human consciousness mustemerge. For the emergence of human consciousness, sensuality, sensory formsof reflection, are insufficient. For the emergence of consciousness, it is essen-tial that a special form of reflection emerge, a form of reflection tied to theappearance of language and speech.

“Language,” says Marx, “is as old as consciousness; language is practical,real consciousness that exists for other people as well, and therefore exists forme; and like consciousness, language arises only out of need, out of the insis-tent necessity of communication with other people.”5

In these words, Marx clearly emphasizes two essential thoughts. First, thatconsciousness emerges together with language, and that consciousness beginsto exist when and where language begins to exist. That language is, to put itanother way, the real form of human consciousness, is the true consciousnessof man. Second, that language, like consciousness itself, emerges because manenters into relations with other people. The emergence of language and human


consciousness is again tied to the transition to labor, with the emergence anddevelopment of labor that, as I already said, is characterized not only by thefact that many enter into a relationship with nature, influencing it with thehelp of tools of labor, but also by the fact that man enters into relations withother people and this becomes a determining factor in his relationship tonature.

Before us there is now a new, special task, a new special subject. The ques-tion is about the emergence and nature of human speech and the meaning ofspeech, about the connection between speech and the consciousness and thoughtof man. Speech, together with labor, is an essential condition for the emer-gence of human consciousness. Labor and speech—such are the main condi-tions that Engels emphasizes, speaking about the process of the transition fromanimal to human. Speech arises out of the need for man’s communication withman, out of the need, as Engels puts it, to say something to someone else.Does this mean, however, that in examining the question of human speech andits emergence, about its essence, it is enough for us to start only from the factthat in the process of labor, people develop a need? Can we reason that laborgives rise to the need for communication, the need for speech? This need callsto life the appearance of speech with the help of language; does language,speech allow human consciousness to take shape? No, evidently, we cannotreason thus. This would surely be a simplification of the essence of the matter.In explaining the origin of speech and language, taken from the process oflabor and together with it, Engels further states that this is the only true expla-nation. Communication is the aspect of labor that makes speech essential, butspeech itself emerges in direct connection with labor itself, and therefore speechitself becomes possible only in the process of labor.6

One must not think that people enter into communication with one anotheronly in the form of speech, in the form of special actions that are directed atconveying something to another person, to indicate something to another per-son, to motivate him to an action, and so forth. Then, the speech that emergeswould have to be viewed as invented speech. That is always a bad way to lookat something, because invention, and the possibility of invention, are always aresult and not a cause. The theory that represents the emergence of speech asthe result of man’s invention of this manner of communication with otherpeople is naive and untrue in its essence. The emergence of speech must beunderstood as the product of the division of a process that has been unified,connecting man with man. And, this is the process of labor; it is the joint laboraction of people. The development of these joint labor actions by people—leading to their specialization, to a division—leads to the emergence of spe-cial actions that are related neither to labor nor to the practical actions of man,


and those unique actions that we call verbal actions. In this way, speech itselfgradually separates from the process of labor.

How does this separation take place? Is the specialization of some actions,which are no longer labor actions but special actions carrying out only onefunction, to influence another person, that is, are they speech actions? Themodern history of the development of language, especially represented in theworks of academician N.Ia. Marr and his school, indicates that the most ancientform of speech was so-called complex speech, that is, inarticulate, kinetic speech.This was speech using sounds, but with the help of movements. Furthermore,these movements—at the dawn of the emergence of this speech—representmovements that correspond very closely to the actual movements of a personperforming labor.

Initially, a work movement and a movement serving to influence anotherperson under conditions of a joint activity among people coincided. Here,indeed, was a complex, not only in the sense that this speech could not bedivided into separate parts of speech, separate units of a sentence, but it wascomplex and united also in that such an action directly reveals its connectionwith a productive action, with a labor action. When a person puts effort towardsome action that must be produced in the process of social labor; when, forinstance, a person exerts an effort toward moving some obstacle out of theway or out of the path of his action, then with the joint activity of people, as iseasy to understand, the action directed at the object—the labor action—canserve simultaneously to indicate to another person participating in this pro-cess the necessity of performing this action and can stimulate another personto appropriate participation in the action.

What are the two functions of a labor action by me under the conditions ofjoint human activity? One function is the influencing of an object—this is adirect labor function. The other function is the influencing of other people. Inacting on an object of labor, I indirectly influence other people. But, imaginenow that my action, a separate influence, is impossible, and experience indi-cates that it is unrealizable, but experience also tells me that, in attempting toact, I will attract to this action other participants in the labor process whotogether with me will carry out the given action. What would then happennaturally? The following would naturally happen: I will not make every pos-sible effort in making my movement into a work movement, but will limitmyself only to preserving the part of it, the content of it, that is perceived byother people. I preserve all of my movements, but I do not produce an action.It turns out that my movement is separate from an action. And what is move-ment separate from an action? It is a gesture. How can we define a gesture? Agesture cannot, of course, be defined in any way but as a movement that is


separated from a real action that effects an actual change on an object. A ges-ture is a separate movement, alienated from action. When I perform this actionwith a glass, I am not actually performing an action, but a gesture, that is, I amorganizing my action in such a way that it takes on a certain content of theaction of throwing a glass on the floor; but, in fact, that glass is not thrown, theaction is not produced. I produced only a gesture. When I do not know thelanguage you are speaking but I want to show you that you have to throw theglass, I would act in this way; I am depicting an action, but not producing it. Athreatening gesture, a gesture indicating someone should come to me—in aword, the entire system of such natural, not symbolic, not technically devel-oped gestures, represents movement even now, some actions, separated fromthe action itself. Therefore, the first step in the development of actual humanspeech, first in separation from real productive labor actions, is nothing butkinetic speech, or, as it is still sometimes called, linear speech, that is, it isspeech with the aid of gesture. It is true that, evidently (such a presumptioncan be made from a contemporary scientific perspective), this speech is con-nected with a certain sound accompaniment. But what plays the decisive rolein the first steps of speech development? Gesture, movement. What character-izes consciousness at this stage of complex kinetic speech? What is it thattakes shape in a gesture and appears to our consciousness as objective, not tiedto our own subjective state? What stands out, first and foremost, is nature,where only some primary properties and objects satisfying the needs of manfor food and the like are prevalent. On the one hand, it is nature that stands out,and on the other hand, what actually stands out? The subject here is not man,but human society. We—people who act, the human collective, and it—nature.This is the first division in the consciousness of man that is tied to the origin oflabor and speech.

Notes

1. K. Marx [Marks] and F. Engels [Engel’s], Works [Soch.] vol. 20, p. 490.2. Ibid., vol. 23, pp. 188–89.3. Ibid., p. 190.4. Ibid., pp. 189–97.5. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 29.6. Ibid., vol. 20, pp. 486–99.

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A. a. Leontiev - A Gênese Da Atividade (Em Inglês)