Yoshie,
At 14:26 07-12-00, you wrote:
>Charles wrote:
><...>
>
>>They want to indicate that there _was_ some tendency in the long term to
>>modern European capitalism from the class struggles of ancient Greece.
>
>If Marx & Engels do, they are following an irrationally teleological husk
>of Hegelian philosophy of history. In the main, however, the _rational
>kernel_ of Marx & Engels does not locate a tendency to develop into
>"modern European capitalism" in the class struggles of ancient Greece. It
>was not determined during the class struggles of ancient Athens that
>denizens from the area which has come to be called Africa were destined to
>become chattel slaves toiling on the cotton plantations in the American
>South in order to fuel the development of industrial capitalism.
>
>>When they say that history is a history of class struggles, they do not
>>mean that history is series of accidental and unconnected events, but
>>something of the opposite
>
>History is neither a series of accidental & unconnected events nor its
>opposite.
Bit of both, in fact. But I suppose that to say the Greek Athens didn't determine Athens, Georgia doesn't falsify or contradict the statement that the latter probably borrowed some of the strength of its argument from the former. We can find in early European relations a tendency to develop into modern relations without claiming that such a tendency amounts to destiny.
Besides, there's more than one way to skin an acorn, teleologically speaking. If the relation of ancient class struggles to modern ones is one of entelechy, there doesn't have to be a modern capitalist state in order for there to have been a tendency or inclination to develop into one, in ancient Athens. I'm talking about Aristotle's entelechy, from "en teles echein" -- to hold or guard or keep or gestate in (a state of anticipated) completion or fullness or, well, telos. The acorn anticipates the oak tree, the tree represents the ultimate realisation of its potential as acorn, but you don't actually have to have an oak tree for there to have been an acornic entelechy.
But the relationship of modern Western relations of production to those of ancient Greece need not be perceived as one of the oak tree to the acorn in order to be perceived as, at least in part, derivative.
cheers, Joanna
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