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

[Carrol Cox]

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