> If Marx did ever believe this (either the existence of
> stages _or_ of an entiy called _mind_ which could be the subject of
> development), Marxc was flatly wrong. More, I would be sceptical that
> _any_ thinker ever maintained scuh continuity and or consistency
> over a
> lifetime.
As I've pointed out many times, Marx explicitly describes human history as "different stages in the development of the human mind" in On The Jewish Question, connecting it there, as he does throughout his writing, to the development of religion.
"The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the Christian is the religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making it impossible. How is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion. As soon as Jew and Christian recognize that their respective religions are no more than different stages in the development of the human mind, different snake skins cast off by history, and that man is the snake who sloughed them, the relation of Jew and Christian is no longer religious but is only a critical,scientific, and human relation. Science, then, constitutes their unity. But, contradictions in science are resolved by science itself." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/index.htm
The only "minds" that develop are those of "individuals," this being represented by Marx as a development of "individuality" ending in the actualization of self-conscious reason in what he calls "true individuality," fully "free individuality."
"True individuality" is the realization of "wealth" as "the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm
This "wealth" can also be represented as the full development of "powers" including the development of "real intellectual wealth" as "the ability to think."
"what is wealth other than the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity's own nature? The absolute working-out of his creative potentialities, with no presupposition other than the previous historic development, which makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined yardstick?" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch09.htm
"the vocation, designation, task of every person is to achieve all- round development of all his abilities, including, for example, the ability to think" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03g.htm
It's for this reason that "the true realm of freedom" is identified (in Capital, vol. 3) with "the development of human powers as an end in itself" and (in the Grundrisse) with "the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm
The lack of development of "true individuality" in the above sense is connected by Marx to particular conditions which therefore require to be transcended.
Thus, as I just pointed out, in Capital he claims "the primitive tribal community" is "founded ... on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen."
Such a community "can arise and exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man, and between man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions." http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
Here again religion is pointed to as expressing a "stage in the development of the human mind."
The same ideas underpin his claims about conditions in the Indian peasant commune, particular religious beliefs once again being pointed to as expressing a lack of development.
In this case, the conditions
"restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than on natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice it at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm
The ideas are reaffirmed, not contradicted, by what's claimed in the late writings on Russia.
Thus the 1877 letter to the editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky looks forward to a "form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm
It also makes the move to this form conditional on preceding forms having given "the greatest impulse at once to productive forces of social labour and to the integral development of every individual producer" while denying that capitalism is the only form able to bring about the requisite "integral development of every individual producer."
The latter development is a prerequisite for the creation of "socialism" in Marx's sense because, among other reasons, "private property can be abolished only on condition of an all-around development of individuals, precisely because the existing form of intercourse and the existing productive forces are all embracing and only individuals that are developing in an all-around fashion can appropriate them, i.e., can turn them into free manifestations of their lives." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03o.htm
In the 1881 draft letter to Vera Zasulich, conditions in the Russian peasant commune are examined with a view to determining whether they are consistent with the requisite "integral development of every individual producer."
As I just pointed out, he explicitly contrasts them with conditions "in more primitive communities" which, he reiterates, do not "permit a development of individuality." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm
The main commune condition inconsistent with the requisite "integral development" of individuals is "isolation," a condition in the way of the development of the individual "mind," of "the ability to think," because, as is also claimed in the German Ideology, "the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of this real connections." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
He again connects "isolation," as he had in the cases of the Indian peasant commune and masses of mid-19th century French peasants, with "despotism" and in this reaffirms the connection of despotism to the absence of "true human being" pointed to in the 1843 letters to Ruge.
The interpretive point is of some importance. It means "socialism" in Marx's sense can only emerge from conditions that have already brought about the requisite degree of individual "integral development."
It doesn't mean, Marx claims in these late writings, that only capitalism can bring this about. It may, for example, be brought about within other social forms, say those of China, Venezuela or the "Polynesian mode of production."
As the above passages show, relevant evidence would, according to Marx, be the religious beliefs characteristic of individuals developing within these forms, specifically the degree to which these are characterized by "superstition" and "prejudice," since these express the degree of "development of the human mind."
Ted