Cox: Well, whether Marx believed in such a ghostie is at least debatable; my feeling is that he did not. It's been debuned fromvarious perspectives; my favorite is HannahArendt's in The Human Condition. (I think it was reading that work that prepared me, once I found myself involved in political activity, to move rapidly towards Marx.) Certainly Marx never monkeyed around with the silly phrase "species beign" after his early (non-published) writings.
Ian:The claim that burgeois/capitalist ideology is not human nature is as silly as saying Buddhism is not human nature or the political/theological formations of the so-called middle ages aren't human nature.
Cox: I've argued off and on with Charles for years that 'converting' people to "Marxism" was not of much political significance, and certainly ought not to be a major concern of Marxists (however defined). In the first place, it's _anti-Marxist_ to go around trying to prove Marxism, since it violates the principle of the priority of practice to thoiught. Marxism, held merely as a belief, is empty.
Darwin was an anti and post-essentialist; does that make him post-modern? When will the fantasy of *the* concept of nature go the way of the limbic system and phlogiston?
Carrol: Only when capitalism is a bad dram from the past. There are of course many "capitalist" thinkers who reject the concept, but for capitalist ideology in general the concept of human nature seems nearly essential. For example, there seems to be a fairly tight linkage between the Mythology of Progress and some concept of human nature.
Carrol
P.S. On"Progress": The concept asusmes that a 'ratchet" effect inheres in social gains, as it does, to some extent, in technology. But that is silly.