Actually , this essay ( rough copy here) is not on the issue that Steve suggested I develop. But it does deal with the anthropological passages at the beginning of _The German Ideology_ that are close to the one Steve first adduced for discussion.
As I read this essay, I am claiming that M and E are not materialist enough in the GI. I don't have the part here, but in _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ Engels has much more advanced anthro knowledge than in _The G I_ , and in the Preface , he says production AND the family are cofundamental in determining _history_. I sent this to Thaxis several years ago http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1998-April/008694.html Charles For Women's Liberation : Whoever heard of a one genearation species ? Every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. The history of all hitherto existing society, since the breaking up of the ancient communes, is a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels asserted an elementary anthropological or "human nature" rationale for this conception. In a section titled (in one translation) "History: Fundamental Conditions" , they say: ...life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus 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. Production and economic classes are the starting point of Marxist analysis of human society because human life, like all plant and animal life must fulfill biological needs to exist as life at all. It is an appeal to biologic ( anti-vulgar marxists , fancy marxists to the contrary notwithstanding). Whatever humans do that is "higher" than plants and animals, we cannot do if we do not first fulfill our plant/animal like needs. Therefore, the "higher" (cultural, semiotic,ideological etc.) human activities are limited by the productive activities. This means that historical materialism starts with human NATURE, our natural species qualities. Yet, it is fundamental in biology that the basic life sustaining processes of a species are twofold. There is obtaining the material means of life and subsistence or success of survivial of the living generation, for existence ("production"). But just as fundamentally there is reproduction or success in creating a next generation of the species that is fertile, and survives until it too reproduces viable offspring. Whoever heard of a one generation species ? We can imagine a group of living beings with the ultimate success in eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. But if they do not also reproduce, they are either not a species or they are an extinct species (unless the individuals are immortal) Thus, having premised their theory in part on human biology, our "species-being", Marx and Engels are logically obligated to develop historical materialism based, not only on the logic of subsistence production, but also on the logic of next generation reproduction. In The German Ideology, they did recognize reproduction as a "fundamental condition of history" along with production. However, they give reproduction or, at least, "the family" a subordinate "fundamental" status to production when they say: "The third circumstance which, from the very outset, enters into historical development, is that men, who daily remake their own life begin to make other men, to propagate their kind: the relation between man and woman, parents and children, the FAMILY. The family, which to begin with is the only social relationship, becomes later, when increased needs create a new social relations and the increased population new needs, a subordinate one..." My thesis here is that the mode of REPRODUCTION (in the broad sense of all caring labor, including but not limited to social institutions called "the" family) of human beings remains throughout human history equally fundamental with the mode of production in shaping society,even with the "new social relations" that come with "increased population". For there to be history in the sense of many generations of men AND women, all of the way up to Marx and Engels and us today, men had to do more than "begin to make other men". Women and men had to COMPLETE making next generations by sexually uniting and rearing them for thousands of years. Otherwise, history would have ended long ago. We would be an extinct species. An essential characteristic of history is its existence in the "medium" of multiple generations. Thus, with respect to historical materialism, reproduction is as necessary as production. Not only that, In the above quoted passage, Marx and Engels give reproduction a "subordinate", "fundamental" condition of history status by the following sleight of hand: in part population increase or THE SUCCESS OF REPRODUCTION somehow makes reproduction less important in "entering into historical development" as a "fundamental condition". This is quite a misogynist dialectic, given that "men" are in the first premise and the third premise, but women are only mentioned explicitly in the latter. It is also and idealist error, because the theory now tends to abstract from the real social life of individuals in reproduction. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
