[lbo-talk] Biology and Society

[Ted Winslow]

Charles Brown asked:

> 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.

Since relations of mutual recognition are, by definition, the  
creation solely of reason, they can't come into being in social  
contexts where willing and acting remain to some degree instinctive.   
This point is explicitly made in the passages I quoted.  So too is  
the point that activity within the successive "modes of production"  
is positively developmental of the capability for self-determination,  
of "slumbering human powers".  This development coincides with the  
development of "forces of production" because such forces express  
human powers.  The development brought about by activity within the  
internal "relations of production" that define each stage is required  
for and brings about the transition to the next higher stage.

"By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same  
time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and  
compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing  
with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of  
the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state  
of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale  
as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in  
its first instinctive stage."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm>

"this objective connection ['characteristic of the capitalist "world  
market"'] 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."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ 
ch03.htm#p156>

Ted