>> The hand mill gives you the feudal lord,
>> the steam mill the industrial capitalist, the
>> microchip . . .
>
> This was simply false. Feudalism required the _elimination_ of the hand
> mill, since the whole system resided, to some extent, on the necessity
> for the peasant to bring his grain to the lord's mill to have it
> ground.
> French lords had their thugs, er, retainers, go from peasant home to
> peasant home smashing the hand mills.
>
> And, of course, it would be more correct to say that the "industrial
> capitalist gave us the steam mill." I believe the steam engine was
> invented the first time around 200 c.e., but was only used to open
> temple doors at one particular place.
If the explanatory idea indicated in the aphorism is that the degree of rationality characteristic of the mentality of a stage in human development (as embodied in its forces of production) is internally related to the relations of production that define the stage, it's not shown to be false by what you say here.
According to this social ontology, it's by eliminating the fetters that capitalist relations place on the development of mind that a progressive transformation of such relations would facilitate the growth of insight. This would involve preservation of the insight - the positive truth content - achieved by the mentalities of previous stages.
If conscious "self-interest" is everywhere and always the same and if it is everywhere and always pursued "rationally", those who treat this idea as self-evidently true must, among other things, be implicitly describing themselves, no?
Ted