[lbo-talk] Notes Towards a Critiq8ue of Progress (1)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Feb 14 08:48:04 PST 2009


Stephen Jay Gould in several places in his works uses the metaphor of the "tape of life." If, he suggests, we were to play that tape over again, and again, and again, it is reasonably certain that when the sun goes nova in a vew billion years all that will exist on earth to view the spectacle os a layer of gray-green algae. "Higher" life forms, far from being the logical or necessary emergence from life as it existed in the first billion years or so, were in fact highly unlikely. That we find ourselves here is the result of innumerable contingencies, none of which had a high probability.

Provisional extension of this metaphor.

If we were to play the tape of human hisstory over again (starting, say, at 100,000BP) it is unlikely that the tape would produce capitalism. There is no linear history any more than there is a linearr movement in evolution. Contingency rules. Looking backeards, we can see that a potential of the anatomy of the ape was the anatomy of man: but that was only _ONE_ among innumerable potentials, all of which remained unrealiz3ed. Homo sapiens was necessary emergence from ramepithecus; in fact homo sapiens remained an unlikely culmination until very near the time of its actual emergence. Looking back on the great commercial civilizations that preceded capitalism we can see that in various ways they contained 'seeds' that might at some point be part of the generation of capitalism -- but capitalism was by no means a necessary consquence of earlier commercial civilizations; perhaps it was even unlikely. The "[rpductivity" that characterizes capitalism is a hothouse development, in fact contraray to human welfare and the development of human productive capacity. It resultes only in the phenomenon of self-reproducing valuye, not in increased wealth.

Those whose intelligence is blunted by the Myth of Progress can see an insistence on contingency only as a perverse pessimism.

To be continued.

Carrol



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