You bring up Marxism, and it's interestingly relevant.
Happiness and liberty, for Marx, are about deliberately creating our material world. That is, every man is equally free to shape the conditions in which he lives (so far, presumably, as he is physically able). Capitalism, for Marx, undermines this by alienating the labourer from his product (the product is owned not by him, but by his employer) and through the continual growth of capital. To gloss over some important details to get to the point, this means: labourers are really and truly enslaved to their labour, which precludes the free use of that labour to shape their world, while the capitalists are enslaved to profit and so can only shape the world (or cause it to be shaped by their labourers) in so far as it grows their capital.
As a complementary result, Marx's ideal of communism has this desirable peculiarity about the relationship of labourer and labour: the product of labour becomes the true, free expression of the labourer's self.
I'd say Mr. Bukiewicz is doing his best, under the capitalist mode of production, to make his work an expression of himself: he even calls his knives art.
Read the about section of Made by Hand (http://thisismadebyhand.com/about/) and you'll see that they aim precisely to expose instances of production where the relationship between producer and product, and consumer and product, is personal and social—just like Marx always wanted.
(Attentive readers may note that the existence of purely creative work as a legitimate means of subsistence today, and the fact that Joel is able to make overpriced knives for a living, may seem to obviate this impetus for communism. I've heard it suggested that this change in society may be the very reason worldwide communism hasn't yet developed. Look elsewhere for that commentary, I haven't researched it yet. Interesting though, right?)
Happiness and liberty, for Marx, are about deliberately creating our material world. That is, every man is equally free to shape the conditions in which he lives (so far, presumably, as he is physically able). Capitalism, for Marx, undermines this by alienating the labourer from his product (the product is owned not by him, but by his employer) and through the continual growth of capital. To gloss over some important details to get to the point, this means: labourers are really and truly enslaved to their labour, which precludes the free use of that labour to shape their world, while the capitalists are enslaved to profit and so can only shape the world (or cause it to be shaped by their labourers) in so far as it grows their capital.
As a complementary result, Marx's ideal of communism has this desirable peculiarity about the relationship of labourer and labour: the product of labour becomes the true, free expression of the labourer's self.
I'd say Mr. Bukiewicz is doing his best, under the capitalist mode of production, to make his work an expression of himself: he even calls his knives art.
Read the about section of Made by Hand (http://thisismadebyhand.com/about/) and you'll see that they aim precisely to expose instances of production where the relationship between producer and product, and consumer and product, is personal and social—just like Marx always wanted.
(Attentive readers may note that the existence of purely creative work as a legitimate means of subsistence today, and the fact that Joel is able to make overpriced knives for a living, may seem to obviate this impetus for communism. I've heard it suggested that this change in society may be the very reason worldwide communism hasn't yet developed. Look elsewhere for that commentary, I haven't researched it yet. Interesting though, right?)