>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 03/18/00 09:35PM >># On "nature": Keep in mind that in Marx's later works, the word "natural"
is best understood to mean "spontaneously grown, not consciously
determined, etc," in contradiction to the usual valorization of nature as
eternal, unchanging "essence" beneath the artificial "appearance."
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 -- the fantastic
origin that can only exist in the Robinsonades.
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CB: I am not sure that the young Engels and Marx did not already have this position on "_unanticipated_ new neeeds and desires". In _The German Ideology_ (1845) , they say that humans satisfying needs create new needs, and they are talking about the full scope of human history.
"The second point is that the satisfaction of the first need (the action of satisfying, and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired) leads to new needs; and this production of new needs is the first historical act. " (_The German Ideology_)
Also, the creation of new needs does not necessarily imply the obliteration of old needs. There can be an accumulation of needs. We still have the original needs to breathe, eat, sleep, light to see et al. , so we very well may still have original sexual needs. What socio-historical events would cause them to go away or become inoperative ? Having sexual needs does not imply any necessary inequality of the sexes, witness the egalitarian relationship between the sexes in pre-class society.
***** Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because of a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one. (Marx, _The Grundrisse_) *****
In Marxism, there is a political project that allows us to reject the mode of production which makes "biological difference" "the 'natural' cause of all inequality." Those of us who stand on the margins of "humanity" (as it has been hitherto defined in ideology and practice) can gain, in communism, the material foundations for enjoyment of concrete differences, developed in the all-around freedom _of_ social relations, emancipated from the cage of the "natural individual" who is the protagonist of all forms of old humanist narratives (including immature Marx's).
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CB: It is not clear to me at all that the young Marx made this error. It is in the _Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_ ( http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/marx.html ) that he says:
"We have seen how, assuming the positive supersession of private property, man produces man, himself and other men; how the object, which is the direct activity of his individuality, is at the same time his existence for other men, their existence and their existence for him. Similarly, however, both the material of labor and man as subject are the starting-point as well as the outcome of the movement (and the historical necessity of private-property lies precisely in the fact that they must be this starting-point). So the social character is the general character of the whole movement; just as society itself produces man as man, so it is produced by him. Activity and consumption, both in their content and in their mode of existence, are social activity and social consumption. The human essence of nature exists only for social man; for only here does nature exist for him as a bond with other men, as his existence for others and their existence for him, as the vital element of!
human reality; only here does it exist as the basis of his own human existence. Only here has his natural existence become his human existence and nature become man for him. Society is therefore the perfected unity in essence of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the realized naturalism of man and the realized humanism of nature. [Marx note at the bottom of the page: Prostitution is only a particular expression of the universal prostitution of the worker, and since prostitution is a relationship which includes not only the prostituted but also the prostitutor -- whose infamy is even greater -- the capitalist is also included in this category.]
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"It is, above all, necessary to avoid once more establishing "society" as an abstraction over against the individual. The individual is the social being. His vital expression -- even when it does not appear in the direct form of a communal expression, conceived in association with other men -- is therefore an expression and confirmation of social life. Man's individual and species-life are not two distinct things, however much -- and this is necessarily so -- the mode of existence of individual life is a more particular or a more general mode of the species-life, or species-life a more particular or more general individual life. "
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The supersession of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes; but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes have become human, subjectively as well as objectively. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object, made by man for man. The senses have therefore become theoreticians in their immediate praxis. They relate to the thing for its own sake, but the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man, and vice versa. [Marx's note: In practice I can only relate myself to a thing in a human way if the thing is related in a human way to man.] Need or employment have therefore lost their egoistic nature, and nature has lost its mere utility in the sense that its use has become human use.
Similarly, senses and enjoyment of other men have become my own appropriation. Apart from these direct organs, social organs are therefore created in the form of society; for example, activity in direct association with others, etc., has become an organ of my life expressions and a mode of appropriation of human life.
Obviously the human eye takes in things in a different way from the crude non-human eye, the hum ear in a different way from the crude ear, etc.
To sum up: it is only when man's object becomes a human object or objective that man does not lose himself in that object. This is only possible when it becomes a social object for him and when he himself becomes a social being for himself, just as society becomes a being for him in this object"
CB: These are not Robinsonades. He says other similar things meaning human individuals are both socio-historical (cultural) and biological beings. To say that humans are entirely unbound by the "cage" of the natural individual would be idealism. But this is a dialectical contradiction ,because in a sense, all of human history has the direction and aim of more and more emancipation from natural limitation - freedom is the mastery of necessity. It is unnatural for humans to fly, but airplanes are considered a great achievement.
On the relationship of the sexes Marx says ( I think quoted here recently).
In the relationship with woman, as the prey and handmaid of communal lust, is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself -- for the secret of this relationship has its unambiguous, decisive, open and revealed expression in the relationship of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct, natural species- relationship is conceived. The immediate, natural, necessary relation of human being to human being is the relationship of man to woman. In this natural species-relationship, the relation of man to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature, his own natural condition. Therefore, this relationship reveals in a sensuous form, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature for man or nature has become the human essence for man. It is possible to judge from this relationship the entire level of development of mankind. It follows from the characte! r of this relationship of this relationship how far man as a species-being, as man, has become himself and grasped himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore demonstrates the extent to which man's natural behavior has become human or the extent to which his human essence has become a natural essence for him, the extent to which his human nature has become nature for him. This relationship also demonstrates the extent to which man's needs have become human needs, hence the extent to which the other, as a human being, has become a need for him, the extent to which in his most individual existence he is at the same time a communal being.
CB: He seems to see this as a special unity of the natural and social.
towards a post-humanist communism,
Yoshie