>>> cjs10 at cornell.edu 12/07/00 04:12PM >
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.
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CB: Hello Joanna. What is the other form of derivative you are thinking of ?
What do you make of Engels categories the family, private property and the state, and his implication that there is something in common in them from slave society ( especially Greece and Rome) through capitalism ?
I think "tendency" is intended to mean that determination that is in unity and struggle with chance.