Miles Jackson wrote:
> On 12/2/2010 1:02 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>> 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).
>
> Give it up, Marv. As James H. pointed out on the list last spring, Ted fits everything to the Hegelian-procrustean bed of Development of MInd. I think this is a bizarre reading of Marx, but chacun son gout and all that.
In what you quote, Marv is repeating your misinterpretation of my argument, a misinterpretation that had me claiming that Marx attributes full enlightenment to individuals in capitalism and denying that Marx treats "individual characteristics" as "a product of social relations."
Now you identify this with fitting "everything to the Hegelian-procrustean bed of Development of MInd," i.e. with an interpretive framework inconsistent with the one Marv, repeating you, is here mistakenly attributing to me.
And you characterize the texts I use as evidence that Marx treats the "individual characteristic" that is the "development of mind" as "a product of social relations" as fitting "everything into a Hegelian-procrustian bed," one among many such texts being the one I just quoted in which Marx claims social relations in the 19th century 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."
Ted