On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
Carrol Cox wrote: Chris D cannot make an argument against cannibalism because no ahistorical (moral) argument would bevalid. But from ahistorical perspective the present period almost universally condemns it. As Marx, in contrast to Rousseau, thought capitalism history rather than evil, so was cannibalism history rather than evil (or wrong).
"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."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm Ted
Matthias: Was this ever actually the case? Or is it just Marx being Victorian?
__________
Anciet history is one of the areas in which knoledge has grown enormously since the 19th-c, and Marx's empirical base is doubtful. See F. I. Finley, _Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology_. More importantly, and independently of the empirical basis, Marx's use of "advance" is at best ambiguous and probably false. There was change, but "advance" reflects the Victorian daydream of a metaphysical "force" driving humanity ever upwards. The best discussion of this is to be found in Stephen Jay Gould's discusdsion of Darwin in _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_ (and in numeroujs essays). Darwin, Gould argues, did _not_ incroporate any theory of progress into his theory, but being a Victorian, he could not help but allow language echoing that myth into his books. The same point applies directly to Marx.
So Matthias is essentially correct, it is "just Marx being Victorian."
Carrol