^^^^ CB:
"My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. " http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm
This seems to imply that Marx in _Capital_ (1867) has some sort of concept of human nature, since human economic formations evolve as a natural historical process. Waddaya think, comrade ?
Wikipedia (horrors !) has a nice discussion of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_human_nature
Marx did not have the post-modernists' position on this issue. My original comments on this thread r valid. Marx had a concept of human nature or human species being , and he opposed it to the bourgeois concept of human nature. Marx's concept of human nature or species being puts sociality at its center, as I mentioned in response to Ian. But Marx clearly considers humans a natural animal species with physiological features that are real. He recognizes the validity of what now is termed biological anthropology. _The German Ideology_ has a couple of famous pronouncement on this.
"The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. "
"Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to “make history.” But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life."
For Marx and Engels, humans are an animal species not supernatural souls or collections of ideas. This is the first premise of their famous materialism.
Carrol has not argued with me about "converting people to Marxism" 'cause I don't try to convert people to Marxism. I do argue, on these lists, against what I consider inaccurate claims about what Marx wrote as on this thread where Somebody seemed to claim that "human nature" is an anti-Marxist concept. I guess Somebody might have been joking.
Ian spoke for himself, not Marx. I beg to differ that we discard the concept of nature or biology in understanding humans. Humans have both unique biological features ( bipedalism, high level of sociality e.g.) and features shared with other species ( instinct of self-preservation).