[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Mon Aug 3 11:08:00 PDT 2009


Marv Gandall quoted Engels:


> "It is very easy to inveigh against slavery and similar things in
> general terms, and to give vent to high moral indignation at such
> infamies. Unfortunately all that this conveys is only what everyone
> knows, namely, that these institutions of antiquity are no longer in
> accord with our present conditions and our sentiments, which these
> conditions determine. But it does not tell us one word as to how
> these institutions arose, why they existed, and what role they
> played in history. AND WHEN WE EXAMINE THESE QUESTIONS, WE ARE
> COMPELLED TO SAY—HOWEVER CONTRADICTORY AND HERETICAL IT MAY SOUND—
> THAT THE INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY UNDER THE CONDITIONS PREVAILING AT
> THAT TIME WAS A GREAT STEP FORWARD."

Engels’s explanation of why “the introduction of slavery under the conditions prevailing at that time was a great step forward” sublates, as does Marx’s, Hegel’s “higher dialectic of the conception”, a “dialectic” that incorporates Hegel’s idea of “freedom” as “necessity” also endorsed by Engels in Anti-Duhring.

The latter idea presupposes the existence of “universal” intellectual, aesthetic and ethical principles, e.g. “laws of beauty”. The essence of “human being” is the potential to develop the “powers” required to know and actualize these principles in an ideal society, “communism”. Individuals possessed of these “powers”, “universally developed individuals”, are “enlightened”.

Human being does not begin as “enlightened” in this sense.

“As men originally made their exit from the animal world—in the narrower sense of the term—so they made their entry into history: still half animal, brutal, still helpless in face of the forces of nature, still ignorant of their own strength; and consequently as poor as the animals and hardly more productive than they.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm

The realization of “enlightenment” (the substitution of “rational” self-determination in accordance with “universal” intellectual, aesthetic and ethical principles—the “unity of the universal and individual”, of “freedom and necessity”—for “instinctive” "animal" determination of feeling, thinking, willing and acting) requires an “educational” process.

This constitutes human history as a set of “different stages in the development of the human mind” ultimately ending ethically in “a critical, scientific, and human relation” between “enlightened” individuals. For such individuals: “Science … constitutes their unity.”

“As soon as Jew and Christian recognize that their respective religions are no more than different stages in the development of the human mind, different snake skins cast off by history, and that man is the snake who sloughed them, the relation of Jew and Christian is no longer religious but is only a critical, scientific, and human relation. Science, then, constitutes their unity.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/

Since, at the beginning of human history, human being was still largely “instinctively” determined, the “means” through which “enlightenment” — “reason”—developed were “barbaric and almost bestial”. Such “means” were, however, “means”, i.e. they worked to facilitate the development of “enlightenment”. It’s this understanding of them that sublates Hegel’s “higher dialectic of the conception”.

“man sprang from the beasts, and had consequently to use barbaric and almost bestial means to extricate himself from barbarism” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm

The social form of this “still half animal, brutal” being that was human being at the “entry into history” was the primitive commune.

As “men originally made their exit from the animal world … there prevailed a certain equality in the conditions of existence, and for the heads of families also a kind of equality of social position—at least an absence of social classes—which continued among the primitive agricultural communities of the civilised peoples of a later period.”

For this reason:

“We find in the early history of all civilised peoples … tribal and village communities with common ownership of the land. From India to Ireland the cultivation of landed property in tracts of considerable size was originally carried on by such tribal and village communities; sometimes the arable land was tilled jointly for account of the community, and sometimes in separate parcels of land temporarily allotted to families by the community, while woodland and pastureland continued to be used in common.”

Engels repeats Marx’s claim that the “unenlightened”—the “superstitious” and “prejudiced”—individuality these “conditions determine” is responsible for “despotism”.

“Where the ancient communities have continued to exist, they have for thousands of years formed the basis of the cruelest form of state, Oriental despotism, from India to Russia.”

Marx ties despotism to “superstition” and “prejudice” as early as his letters to Ruge in 1843 and as late as his 1881 draft letter to Vera Zasulich. The “condition” he emphasizes as “determining” this ‘superstition” and “prejudice”—this lack of “enlightenment”—is “isolation”. This follows from his claim in the German Ideology that “the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections”.

All of this—the idea of “enlightenment” involved, its relation to “enlarged” thinking (achieved by taking account of the perspectives of others) and the connection of “superstition” and “prejudice” to “despotism”—sublates Kant on “enlightenment” in The Critique of Judgment.

Marx explains the despotism of Prussia in 1843 (in the letters to Ruge), the despotism of the Bonaparte dynasty in mid-nineteenth century France (in the Eighteenth Brumaire), “Oriental despotism” in India (in the 1853 articles on India) in these terms, and points (in the 1881 draft letter to Vera Zasulich) to the isolation of the Russian peasant commune as an obstacle to the development of individuals within it of the degree of “enlightenment” —“the real intellectual wealth” —required to enable them to “appropriate” the forces of production developed within capitalism outside Russia and use them to create a “socialist” society without themselves passing through capitalism.

Thus, in the 1853 articles on India, he claimed that “conditions” in Indian peasant “village-communities” “restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies” and, in this way, “making them the solid foundation of Oriental despotism”.

"Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization, and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village- communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than on natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice it at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm

So progress in “enlightenment” required movement beyond “these tribal and village communities”. In the ancient world, this progress “consisted in the increase and development of production by means of slave labour.”

“It was only where these communities dissolved that the peoples made progress of themselves, and their next economic advance consisted in the increase and development of production by means of slave labour.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm

“It is clear that so long as human labour was still so little productive that it provided but a small surplus over and above the necessary means of subsistence, any increase of the productive forces, extension of trade, development of the state and of law, or foundation of art and science, was possible only by means of a greater division of labour. And the necessary basis for this was the great division of labour between the masses discharging simple manual labour and the few privileged persons directing labour, conducting trade and public affairs, and, at a later stage, occupying themselves with art and science. The simplest and most natural form of this division of labour was in fact slavery. In the historical conditions of the ancient world, and particularly of Greece, the advance to a society based on class antagonisms could be accomplished only in the form of slavery. This was an advance even for the slaves; the prisoners of war, from whom the mass of the slaves was recruited, now at least saved their lives, instead of being killed as they had been before, or even roasted, as at a still earlier period.”

One “rose” within “the cross” of ancient slavery was “Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world”, without which “no modern socialism”.

“It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and thereby also Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science, without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised. In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism.”

“But alongside this process of formation of classes another was also taking place. The spontaneously evolved division of labour within the family cultivating the soil made possible, at a certain level of well- being, the incorporation of one or more strangers as additional labour forces. This was especially the case in countries where the old common ownership of the land had already disintegrated or at least the former joint cultivation had given place to the separate cultivation of parcels of land by the respective families. Production had developed so far that the labour-power of a man could now produce more than was necessary for its mere maintenance; the means of maintaining additional labour forces existed; likewise the means of employing them; labour-power acquired a value. But the community itself and the association to which it belonged yielded no available, superfluous labour forces. On the other hand, such forces were provided by war, and war was as old as the simultaneous existence alongside each other of several groups of communities. Up to that time one had not known what to do with prisoners of war, and had therefore simply killed them; at an even earlier period, eaten them. But at the stage of "economic situation" which had now been attained, the prisoners acquired value; one therefore let them live and made use of their labour. Thus force, instead of controlling the economic situation, was on the contrary pressed into the service of the economic situation. Slavery had been invented. It soon became the dominant form of production among all peoples who were developing beyond the old community, but in the end was also one of the chief causes of their decay. It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and thereby also Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science, without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised. In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism.

“It is very easy to inveigh against slavery and similar things in general terms, and to give vent to high moral indignation at such infamies. Unfortunately all that this conveys is only what everyone knows, namely, that these institutions of antiquity are no longer in accord with our present conditions and our sentiments, which these conditions determine. But it does not tell us one word as to how these institutions arose, why they existed, and what role they played in history. And when we examine these questions, we are compelled to say— however contradictory and heretical it may sound—that the introduction of slavery under the conditions prevailing at that time was a great step forward. For it is a fact that man sprang from the beasts, and had consequently to use barbaric and almost bestial means to extricate himself from barbarism. Where the ancient communities have continued to exist, they have for thousands of years formed the basis of the cruellest form of state, Oriental despotism, from India to Russia. It was only where these communities dissolved that the peoples made progress of themselves, and their next economic advance consisted in the increase and development of production by means of slave labour. It is clear that so long as human labour was still so little productive that it provided but a small surplus over and above the necessary means of subsistence, any increase of the productive forces, extension of trade, development of the state and of law, or foundation of art and science, was possible only by means of a greater division of labour. And the necessary basis for this was the great division of labour between the masses discharging simple manual labour and the few privileged persons directing labour, conducting trade and public affairs, and, at a later stage, occupying themselves with art and science. The simplest and most natural form of this division of labour was in fact slavery. In the historical conditions of the ancient world, and particularly of Greece, the advance to a society based on class antagonisms could be accomplished only in the form of slavery. This was an advance even for the slaves; the prisoners of war, from whom the mass of the slaves was recruited, now at least saved their lives, instead of being killed as they had been before, or even roasted, as at a still earlier period.

“We may add at this point that all historical antagonisms between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes to this very day find their explanation in this same relatively undeveloped human labour. So long as the really working population were so much occupied with their necessary labour that they had no time left for looking after the common affairs of society—the direction of labour, affairs of state, legal matters, art, science, etc.—so long was it necessary that there should constantly exist a special class, freed from actual labour, to manage these affairs; and this class never failed, for its own advantage, to impose a greater and greater burden of labour on the working masses. Only the immense increase of the productive forces attained by modern industry has made it possible to distribute labour among all members of society without exception, and thereby to limit the labour-time of each individual member to such an extent that all have enough free time left to take part in the general—both theoretical and practical—affairs of society. It is only now, therefore, that every ruling and exploiting class has become superfluous and indeed a hindrance to social development, and it is only now, too, that it will be inexorably abolished, however much it may be in possession of "direct force".

“When, therefore, Herr Dühring turns up his nose at Hellenism because it was founded on slavery, he might with equal justice reproach the Greeks with having had no steam-engines or electric telegraphs.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm

As Marx points out in Capital, vol. I, Engels’s claim that:

“the immense increase of the productive forces attained by modern industry has made it possible to distribute labour among all members of society without exception, and thereby to limit the labour-time of each individual member to such an extent that all have enough free time left to take part in the general—both theoretical and practical— affairs of society. It is only now, therefore, that every ruling and exploiting class has become superfluous and indeed a hindrance to social development, and it is only now, too, that it will be inexorably abolished”

sublates the “heathen” Aristotle, “the greatest thinker of antiquity”.

"‘If,’ dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, ‘if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers’ shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.’ [73] And Antipatros, a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age. [74] Oh! those heathens! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing of Political Economy and Christianity. They did not, for example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of lengthening the working-day. They perhaps excused the slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full development of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become ‘eminent spinners,’ ‘extensive sausage-makers,’ and ‘influential shoe-black dealers,’ to do this, they lacked the bump of Christianity.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm

Ted



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