I reckon historical humanity necessarily has a (relatively) timeless bunch of stuff in it. Gotta have. Our drive to be free is as much there in Hittite rebellions against Thutmoses as it is in the Lesbos strike as it is in the Judean revolt against the Romans, the Gnostic dissentors, the serf's revolt of 1525 etc etc. What we want freedom from, what we want to be free to do, and what unfreedoms we make for ourselves in these pursuits are, natch, historical, as James's post best highlights.
If Foucault's allowed to posit Nietzche's will to power within a purportedly anti-humanist post-structuralist context, we may surely reserve the right to posit a will to freedom? Our claim seems much less contradicted by the materialist conception of history than does Foucault's by his particular theoretical universe.
Indeed I'm not sure there's much Marx left if we don't allow ourselves that call.
That said, I'm trying not to give the impression I disagree categorically with Yoshie, James and Ken H. I don't. I just reckon there's a lot of the Rift Valley still in us, albeit ever in play with the historical moment.
Cheers, Rob.
>>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 02/22/00 02:01PM >>
>
> I think that for the mature
>Marx the notion of self-alienation entailed not alienation
>from "human nature" conceived of in ahistorical left Hegelian
>terms but rather the alienation of people (especially workers)
>from their potentialities as those had been unveiled and developed
>by capitalist society. I think the notion referred to the growing
>contradiction between potentiality and actuality as capitalism
>developed the forces of production while impeding their
>deployment in ways that would enhance human existence.
>
>&&&&&&&&&&&&&
>
>CB: Don't you think for the mature Marx, the concept of alienation is
>still rooted in the idea of alienation from the fruits of one's labor,
>i.e. exploitation. This is a fully material concept of alienation in both
>the young and the old fellow.
>
>I still think that Marx did have a notion of alienation as alienation from
>human nature, in that the blues that workers get in private property
>regimes (from slavery to capitalism) is an instinctive response to not
>controlling and using the fruits of one's own nature, as is the urge to
>class struggle which is described as transhistorical (though not universal
>and "ahistorical") in _The Manifesto_. The fact that Engels and Marx use
>the same term "class struggle" to describe what goes on in the different
>historical epochs -slavery, feudalism and capitalism - implies that "class
>struggle" is a transhistorical category. In other words, it is human
>nature to want to control and use the fruits of one's own labor, and to
>struggle and fight if you get ripped off of what is instinctively yours.
>_Capital_ contains transhistorical propositions on labor.
>
>This instinct to fight back when you get ripped off breaks through anew in
>each historical epoch. Yet it is not likely to be taught in each
>historical epoch, because the ruling, exploiting class by and large
>controls what gets taught ( the ruling ideas of each age are the ideas of
>its ruling classes). So, instinct has to be the source of each epoch's
>working/exploited class's motivation to class struggle. It doesn't get
>passed on from the exploited class of one epoch to the next, i.e. it is
>not "historical" or "cultural".
>
>CB