[lbo-talk] Kenneally, some notes and background

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Fri Jun 12 10:38:53 PDT 2009


On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:


> On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:13:52 -0400
> Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [Capitalism] has
> > contributed to radical - in evolutionary terms given the meaning of 150
> > years - changes in the bodies of human beings, all of which are tied to
> > capitalist social relations.
>
> Do you seriously mean that capitalism has caused *evolutionary* changes
> in the human body, in the sense that an evolutionary biologist would
> use that term? In 150 years? Or even 250?

Nah... not in those very specific terms, I was simply stressing how very different your average everyday bodies are - obviously most specifically among some classes of people in some places - than they were 150 to 250 years ago... and the ways that those changes - driven by social change, not genetic change - have occurred in an evolutionary blink of an eye (even though they're not related, as you nicely had me clarify, to meaningful evolutionary changes in the species - as far as anyone can tell at the moment, who knows what biotech will develop, eh?).

-A



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