--- On Wed, 4/23/08, farmelantj at juno.com <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> From: farmelantj at juno.com <farmelantj at juno.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] To each according to work
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 2:54 PM
> As I recall Vernon Venable in his book, "Human Nature:
> A Marxian View", which is a really old book, read Marx
>
> as taking roughly the same line as Andie takes here.
>
> Jim F.
>
> -- andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Oh, yes, sorry, OK, I _did_ write about human nature.
>
> As I've explained at tedious length on this list and
> elsewhere (I have a draft paper that I will send to anyone
> who wants to see it) that is not an immutable whatsit that
> is rigidly manifested in the same way in all circumstances.
> It is (in part) "the sum total of human relations"
> (Theses on Feuerbach) as refracted through our biology.
>
> Our biology gives us certain dispositions that can be
> manifested in different ways in different circumstances. We
> can be competitive under capitalism, deferential under
> feudalism, maybe cooperative under communism.
>
> Talk of human nature, which Marx indulged in too, is not
> therefore an ideological justification for existing
> injustices and inequalities, projecting the present forward
> and backward with the suggestion that change is impossible.
>
> True, some people use the term like that, but that is
> incorrect. The nature of nothing else is like that. Neither
> is ours. It's getting really boring to have to explain
> this every time someone says "human nature" and
> we get the :kneejerk reaction,"ideology!"
> Apologist!" "No such thing!" There is no
> such thing as human nature the way the ideologists
> understand it, but there is a human nature as scientists
> understand it.
>
> Now, as to the "unpleasant facts," also human
> nature is mutable to some degree, it's not like a light
> switch. That's why the Israelites had to wander 40 years
> in the desert, till those whose human nature was formed
> under slavery were dead. That's Marx's point about
> how the new society is stamped with the birthmarks of the
> old.
>
> We may get people to be perfectly altruistic and
> unquestioningly cooperative after centuries of socialism
> (though I doubt it, if I weren't busy and didn't
> find this boring right now I'd explain, and it
> doesn't have to to with an immutable human nature
> rigidly manifested the same way no matter what the
> circumstances, biological determinism, the selfish gene,
> etc.), but we surely cannot expect instantaneous
> transformation in the first few generations.
>
> Now that I have annoyed everyone, satisfied no one, and
> wasted 15 minutes I need to work, I depart.
>
>
> --- On Wed, 4/23/08, John Thornton
> <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > From: John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net>
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] To each according to work
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 7:20 AM
> > Charles Brown wrote:
> > > John Thornton
> > >
> > > My reply was to both you and Charles. Charles did
> make
> > a claim
> > > concerning human nature. I though that was clear
> but
> > apparently not.
> > >
> > > ^^^^^
> > > Charles: I didn't say, nor do I think
> ,anything
> > said below about human
> > > nature.
> >
> > You wrote this:
> >
> > This claim embodies some unpleasant but true
> assumptions
> > about human
> > nature than we may transcend someday, but we deal with
> the
> > new society
> > as it emerges from the womb of the old,
> >
> > That was what I was responding to. Not the section you
> > snipped.
> >
> > John Thornton
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>
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