[lbo-talk] Biology and Society

[Charles Brown]

Ted Winslow :

This (quote from Engels) confirms the interpretive claims I make.

Marx and Engels reject the idea, which they attribute to Hegel, that  
"ideas" rather than persons make history as inconsistent with their  
idea of human being as the potentially fully self-determined being.   
Though they reject this idea, they appropriate from Hegel the idea  
that the "essence" of human being is this potential for "freedom" as  
self-determination in the sense contained in the ideas (Hegel's) of a  
"will proper" and a "universal will".  Actualized, this "freedom" is  
"universally developed individuals" - i.e. the fully self-determined  
individuals - creating and living in a "true realm of freedom" where  
relations, including relations of production, are relations of mutual
recognition.

^^^^^^^
CB: Might we say that apes have "will improper" ?  Would you agree that
individual apes have free will or ability to make choices ? 

Doesn't primal humanity , as you term it below, have some level of _mutual
recognition_ greater than apes ?  I know you refer in your post to a
historical process of "education" with internally related stages for
humanity to attain mutual recognition, which implies that primal humanity
did not have it. It would seem that this "education" comes from the whole
enormous experience of class divided society, with the stages as modes of
production, perhaps, but I may misunderstand your implication.


^^^^^^^

Ted: The actualization of such individuals and such a realm requires a  
long historical process of "education" consisting of internally  
related stages.  Given Marx's particular understanding (also taken  
from Hegel) of how the capability for full self-determination  
develops, the essence of each stage is constituted by its internal  
relations of production.  What develops in this process is the  
capability for self-determination in the sense I've indicated.

^^^^^^
CB: Is this self-determination related to the freedom that is based on the
mastery of necessity ?

^^^^^

Since the internal social relations required for the full  
actualization of the human potential for self-determination aren't  
themselves actualized until the end of this process, human thought,  
will and action aren't fully self-determined until then either.

^^^^
CB: This seems a prediction by Marx then. Is it based on an extrapolation
from the "direction" of the process before the end of the process ?

^^^^^


  But,  
as in Hegel's philosophy of history, this "potential" constitutes the
"driving motive" reflected in the "conscious motives" of individuals  whose
less than fully self-determined thought, will and action in  earlier stages
produces "results shared in by the community at  large".  Hegel calls the
"conscious motives" of such "world- historical" individuals "passions" to
distinguish them from the fully  self-determined "conscious motives" they
ultimately make possible.

^^^^^
CB: If this potential constitutes the driving force of history, it seems to
establish a sort of teleology, or bring Hegelian teleology back into a
Marxist framework.

Doesn't this potential begin with the beginning of the human species in
primal humanity ? Or do apes have the potential also ? If the potential
begins with the beginning of the human species, aren't there indications of
it in primal humanity ? If not, when does this potential originate ?

^^^^^^

So the answer to the following question:

> Is there a biological component in the unique human capacity to form
relations of mutual recognition  ?

is "no" where, as in the following, you mean by "biological" not
self-determined in the above sense.

^^^^^
CB: But if the _potential_ for this self-determination is there from the
beginning , doesn't that imply some biological basis ? Do apes have the same
potential ?

I meant , in my question about a biological component, that at the origin of
the human species there arose a biologically based inclination to be more
social than apes had been. That's why I mentioned the discussion of autism,
as perhaps evidence, that people with autism may lack full ability to form
social relations because of an absence or deficiency in said "biological
component". At any rate, I was thinking that this original human inclination
to be more social than apes might be or might be related to your concept of
"mutual recognition".

I can see that full "mutual recognition" may require a "world market" ,
because only with a worldwide or global interconnection is there
consciosness of the whole species. On the other hand, at the origin of the
human species, with the population much smaller and geographically
concentrated somewhere on a savanna in Africa, there may have been a
conscious awareness and interconnectedness of the _entire_ species at that
time, no ? The original "World", or species-wide Commune ?

^^^^^^

> The human species name should be _Homo communis_, not _sapiens_.  
> "Sapiens"softly implies that it is individual brain capacity to reason
that  is the> evolutionary change to humans. No, it is  capacities and
inclinations of individuals to work as a group, to live socially, to live
communisitically
> that is the _revolutionary_ leap to the species human.

Ted: This is also why your view that relations of mutual recognition are
found in primal humanity contradicts the view of Hegel and Marx.

^^^^
CB: Are you saying the potential for relations of mutual recognition is in
primal humanity, but it is just not realized until the historical process of
"education" is completed ? If not when did this potential originate ?

^^^^^^

"It has been said and may be said that this is precisely the beauty  
and the greatness of it ['the connection of the individual with all,  
but at the same time also the independence of this connection from  
the individual' characteristic of the capitalist 'world market']:  
this spontaneous interconnection, this material and mental metabolism  
which is independent of the knowing and willing of individuals, and  
which presupposes their reciprocal independence and indifference.  
And, certainly, this objective connection is preferable to the lack  
of any connection, or to a merely local connection resting on blood  
ties, or on primeval, natural or master-servant relations. Equally  
certain is it that individuals cannot gain mastery over their own  
social interconnections before they have created them. But it is an  
insipid notion to conceive of this merely objective bond as a  
spontaneous, natural attribute inherent in individuals and  
inseparable from their nature (in antithesis to their conscious  
knowing and willing). This bond is their product. It is a historic  
product. It belongs to a specific phase of their development. The  
alien and independent character in which It presently exists vis-à- 
vis individuals proves only that the latter are still engaged in the  
creation of the conditions of their social life, and that have not  
yet begun, on the basis of these conditions, to live it. It is the  
bond natural to individuals within specific and limited relations of  
production. Universally developed individuals, whose social  
relations, as their own communal [gemeinschaftlich] relations, are  
hence also subordinated to their own communal control, are no product  
of nature, but of history. The degree and the universality of the  
development of wealth where this individuality becomes possible  
supposes production on the basis of exchange values as a prior  
condition, whose universality produces not only the alienation of the  
individual from himself and from others, but also the universality  
and the comprehensiveness of his relations and capacities. In earlier  
stages of development the single individual seems to be developed  
more fully, because he has not yet worked out his relationships in  
their fullness, or erected them as independent social powers and  
relations opposite himself. It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return  
to that original fullness as it is to believe that with this complete  
emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint  
has never advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this  
romantic viewpoint, and therefore the latter will accompany it as  
legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ 
ch03.htm#p156>

One key way in which "universally developed individuals" are created  
by and required for relations of mutual recognition is spelled out in  
the following:

"the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on  
the wealth of his real connections. Only then will the separate  
individuals be liberated from the various national and local  
barriers, be brought into practical connection with the material and  
intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position  
to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the  
whole earth (the creations of man). All-round dependence, this  
natural form of the world-historical co-operation of individuals,  
will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and  
conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men  
on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers  
completely alien to them. Now this view can be expressed again in  
speculative-idealistic, i.e. fantastic, terms as “self-generation of  
the species” ('society as the subject'), and thereby the consecutive  
series of interrelated individuals connected with each other can be  
conceived as a single individual, which accomplishes the mystery of  
generating itself. It is clear here that individuals certainly make  
one another, physically and mentally, but do not make themselves."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ 
ch01a.htm>

This is an appropriation of Kant's idea of the "sensus communis" as  
the capacity "to think from the standpoint of everyone else" that  
Kant makes one of the "maxims" of enlightened thinking, the maxim "of
enlarged thought".
<http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/k/kant/immanuel/k16j/part8a.html>

It's counterpart in Husserl's (as opposed to Heidegger's)  
phenomenology is "transcendental intersubjectivity".

As these passages indicate, the true "wealth of the individual" is  
elaborated by Marx as the capabilities of the fully self-determined  
individual:

"what is wealth other than the universality of individual needs,  
capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through  
universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the  
forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity's  
own nature? The absolute working-out of his creative potentialities,  
with no presupposition other than the previous historic development,  
which makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all  
human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a  
predetermined yardstick? Where he does not reproduce himself in one  
specificity, but produces his totality? Strives not to remain  
something he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming?"
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch09.htm>

Ted

((((((

Cool !

Charles