>>But this does still presume, doesn't it, that were fixed natural
>>necessities (and relations) at some point, into which relations/necessities
>>history has intervened, but which still form an unquestionable foundation
>>for human society and human needs?
>
>What "fixed natural necessities (and relations)" are you thinking about?
>Could you be more specific? Might be interesting to debate....
You wrote:
>>>According to Marx of _The Grundrisse_, etc., human beings have historically
>>>evolved, creating (pace the young-Hegelian Marx) _unanticipated_ new needs
>>>and desires, and there is no room for nostalgic yearning for the Eden of
>>>natural rights & natural relations between the sexes
And as I've been thinking about such things recently, I wondered if this kind of argument doesn't wholly support suggestions that Marx relies on a biologically founded notion of sexual difference on to which society is laid -- and not just capitalist society either. The Eden of natural relations between the sexes seems to me a highly dubious concept, because Eden is origin as much as fantasy, and fantasy of desirable original untainted life at that. Nostalgia, though it's your word, also suggests something fantastic in relation to which the now should be denigrated. What do you think? It does seem to me Marx presumes a past in which some natural, desirable, original relations structed by dualist sexual difference take place; that there is a sense in which capitalism has corrupted not only somewhat naturalised ideals about 'man' and 'work' but fully naturalised ideals about 'woman', 'man' and 'work'.
There's Engels of course, but I'm thinking of that separately.
And what's the relation between natural rights and natural relations between the sexes? I agree those things have been very closely related to one another (Locke, Rousseau and so on), but in Marx...?
Which reminds me -- has anyone ever seen any work on girls in non-capitalist societies around? Excluding stuff on 'genital mutilation' there seems to be very little. I've been trying to find something interesting on gender in Soviet education programs, and had no luck.
Catherine