>>> Sam Pawlett <rsp at uniserve.com> 01/11/00 03:29PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> Historical materialism didn't apply for most of the time of the existence of humanity. Historical materialism is the theory of the development of exploitative class society. Humans arose at least 100,000 years ago, and exploiting classes arose 7,000 years ago. So, historical materialism doesn't apply to at least 93,000 years of human society. This is important , by the way, because it gives hope that humans can exist without exploiting classes, and even "brutality and conflict."
>
Hi Charles, I disagree here. The initial premise of hm is that everyone must satisfy their biological needs and engage in production to do so, so as long as people must do that, hm applies and will apply in a post-capitalist society. For how else is one living in post-capitalist or socialist society to be able to understand the society she lives in from the particular historical vantage point she stands in?
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CB: You may be correct on the precise usage of hm. And post-cap society will have to fullfill biological needs and engage in production as you say.
However, I am pretty sure that Marxism contemplates a revolutionary release from ultimate determination of society by productive activities in post-cap (post-class) society. Also, Marxism ( Engels in _The Origin_ ) recognizes that in pre-class society, productive activities were not the determining realm. Kinship ( or societas in Morgan's term) was the controlling realm in pre-class. Of course, physiological and bio needs had to be met and were a limit, but this was qualitatively different than the dynamic of class society.
The main difference is in pre- and post class society there is a qualitiatively different relationship between society and productive activities. In class society, productive activities control humans rather than humans controlling their own productive activities.
The first line of _The Manifesto_ is "History is a history of class struggles". Later , with anthropological study, Engels had to put in a footnote saying "written history".
CB