> But we're born into a pre-existing language that shapes the way we
> see the world. It may be "ours" collectively, but not individually.
> We make history but not with the tools of our own choosing, right?
If you mean by "shapes the way we see the world" that out experience is influenced by language in a way that prevents it from being direct experience of reality, then, as with all other conceptions of experience with this implication, you can't, as a logical matter, escape "solipsism of the present moment".
The question is whether ultimately we're capable of self- determination in the sense I've been elaborating. That sense requires that (when, for instance, we're strong enough to avoid delusional means of dealing with anxiety) our experience have the character required for it to be able to provide rational grounds for belief, will and action.
This provides a very different ontological framework for examining the influence of "biology" and "environment". So in Hegel and Marx "biology" as "instinct" appears as an obstacle in the way of actualizing an "ego" capable of full "self-determination" in this sense. Actualizing such an "ego" is the key to moving beyond "fetishism" in the treatment of language or any other human creation.
As i've said, psychoanalysis provides a treatment of the ego/instinct relation consistent in important ways with this approach. For instance, it gives reasons why a very weak unintegrated ego will not experience itself as self-determined. This also provides an explanation for versions of psychoanalysis which, like many versions of Marxism (e.g. Althusser's), have no logical space for a self- determining "ego".
What Marx actually said:
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm
is, I'd argue, consistent with the interpretation I've been elaborating, but not with a "structuralist" interpretation.
Ted