Consciousness as a Problem for the Psychology of Behavior

Abstract

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of its 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. At the end of every labor process we get a result that already existed in an ideal form, that is, in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the materials which he works but he also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will [K. Marx Das Kapital, Vol. I, Pan 3, p. 193].

First published as Vygotsky L. S. (1925). Soznanie kak problema psikhologija povedenija. In K. N. Kornilov (Ed.), Psikhologija i marksizm (pp. 175–198). Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo.