> "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."
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm
Marx, sublating Hegel, understands despotic social forms, e.g. slavery, feudalism, capitalism, in terms of what Hegel called "the higher dialectic of the conception", i.e. he understands them as "educational" "stages in the development of the human mind".
This makes it the "business of science" to reveal "reason", the "universal", as immanent in these forms. A "scientific" analysis of them, in this sense, would "tell us ... how these institutions arose, why they existed, and what role they played in history."
"Reason" as immanent, as "the rose in the cross of the present", is the positive contribution each makes to the development of "enlightenment" elaborated as the rational self-determination of feeling, thinking, willing and acting. The end point of this development, “the universally developed individual”, makes possible actualization of relations of mutual recognition as the concrete intellectual, aesthetic and ethical "universal", e.g. artistic activity within such relations actualizes "the laws of beauty".
What "conditions determine" is the degree of "enlightenment" in the above sense.
Since the potential for such enlightenment constitutes for Marx, as for Hegel, the "essence" of "human being", despotic "conditions", as Marx explicitly claims in the 1843 letter to Ruge, reveal less than fully actualized "human being”.
"The monarchical principle in general is the despised, the despicable, the dehumanised man; and Montesquieu was quite wrong to allege that it is honour [Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois]. He gets out of the difficulty by distinguishing between monarchy, despotism and tyranny. But those are names for one and the same concept, and at most they denote differences in customs though the principle remains the same. Where the monarchical principle has a majority behind it, human beings constitute the minority; where the monarchical principle arouses no doubts, there human beings do not exist at all." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05.htm
Analyzed in this way, it is of no use to "lament" the inconsistency of these stages with the "universal" since each has "historical necessity" as a stage in the historical process of "bildung" through which "human being" becomes "for itself" what it is "in itself", "the unity of the universal and individual" in “the universally developed individual”.
This is why it is of no use to "lament" the capitalist's "passions" (in the sense again of Hegel) even though as "the absolute motive and content of his [the capitalist’s] activity" they are "a highly impoverished and abstract content".
"The self-valorization of capital - the creation of surplus-value - is therefore the determining, dominating and overriding purpose of the capitalist; it is the absolute motive and content of his activity. And in fact it is no more than the rationalized motive and aim of the hoarder - a highly impoverished and abstract content which makes it plain that the capitalist is just as enslaved by the relationships of capitalism as is his opposite pole, the worker, albeit in a quite different manner." ("Results of the Immediate Process of Production" 1863-1866 Marx, Appendix to Capital, vol. I, Penguin ed., pp. 989-90)
"Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! ‘Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates.’ [23] Therefore, save, save, i.e, reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus- value, or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. [24] But what avails lamentation in the face of historical necessity? If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital. Political Economy takes the historical function of the capitalist in bitter earnest."
Ted