> Engels' quotes below are from Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and they refer to the new socialized mode of production, AFTER capitalism has been overthrown by proletarian revolution and we are assured that the realm of necessity will give way to the realm of freedom. They support rather than contradict Miles' assertion that "individual characteristics are a product of social relations, and thus socialism is the precondition for the type of 'enlightened' individuals you (Ted) valorize" (recognizing that the formation of such new consciousness begins within the old order, in confrontation with it).
The quote relevant to the interpretive claim that Marx and Engels understand capitalist social relations as working to develop not full enlightenment but the _degree_ of enlightenment required to accomplish the "act of universal emancipation" is the following:
"To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm
What the mode of production and exchange determines is the developed _degree_ of individual enlightenment, the development of full enlightenment requiring, as the other quotes indicate, the mode of production and exchange ultimately resulting from the proletariat’s “act of universal emancipation.”
So, as I have myself repeatedly pointed out, the degree of enlightenment is an “individual characteristic” produced by "the ensemble of the social relations," an individual characteristic inexplicable by any form of "materialism" that has no logical space for it.
What capitalism has to develop, and is claimed by Marx and Engels to develop, is the degree of enlightenment required to carry out the act of universal emancipation. This is the degree required, for instance, to enable it to appropriate from “scientific socialism” “a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish.”
Other modes of production and exchange, e.g. those of the mid-19th century Indian peasant commune and of many mid-19th century French peasants, fail to develop the required degree.
According to Marx, social relations in the Indian peasant commune
"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
Similarly, the social relations of masses of mid-19th century French peasants are said to have produced “superstition” and “prejudice” as opposed to “enlightenment” and “judgment,” a degree of superstition and prejudice that Marx here, as in the Indian peasant and other modes productive of it, makes “responsible” for despotism, in this case for the despotism of the Bonaparte dynasty.
"The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France’s poor means of communication and the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small holding, permits no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science, and therefore no multifariousness of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient, directly produces most of its consumer needs, and thus acquires its means of life more through an exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. A small holding, the peasant and his family; beside it another small holding, another peasant and another family. A few score of these constitute a village, and a few score villages constitute a department. Thus the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes. Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself. … The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant who strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather one who wants to consolidate his holding; not the countryfolk who in alliance with the towns want to overthrow the old order through their own energies, but on the contrary those who, in solid seclusion within this old order, want to see themselves and their small holdings saved and favored by the ghost of the Empire. It represents not the enlightenment but the superstition of the peasant; not his judgment but his prejudice; not his future but his past; not his modern Cevennes but his modern Vendée.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm
Ted