Steve: Charles, your logic below unsuccessfully explains the relationship between human biology and human society. You merely repeat something no one disputes. All animals reproduce, just as they all breathe, and would die without doing so. But only humans produce - and probably would not even survive as animals anymore if they did not do so. ^^^^ CB: I appreciate your taking up to criticize this. I haven't been able to get too many comments on this paper . Here is my response to what you say. At this point in _The German Ideology_, the early pages, note that when I merely repeat something no one disputes, I am just doing that because that is the basic level at which Marx and Engels are talking about "production". They are taking "The Germans" to task for not taking account of the basic material , physiological facts of human existence in doing philosophy. For not taking account of the fact that before one can philosophize or talk, one must first not starve to death, freeze to death, die of thirst, etc. So, when I comment at this basic level on reproduction, I do so because I am tracking Marx and Engels in being very basic, very vulgarly materialisitic, to the level of biology or physiology. Now, do only humans "produce" ? Recall our exchange on means of subsistence, means of production and means of consumption. Yes only humans have agriculture and domestication of animals. But humans also have hunting and gathering for a very long time before agriculture. I am not sure whether you count hunting and gathering as "production". If you do , then I will say that non-human animals have "production" too. And they do have rudimentary "production" comparable to hunting and gathering. Much of the description that Marx gives of abstract labor in _Capital_ I we can substitute some other species in for human and it would work. "Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm But there _are_ primitive forms of labour ( not just instinctive) that are close to a mere animal. That is the point I am making here. Other animals have a complex process of biophysical and biochemical interaction, metabolism as Marx calls it and Waistline likes to say, with the earth, including using rudimentary tools, and certainly having an abstract instrumentalist attitude toward their environment in many ways. Instrumental reason is not unique to humans, contra Heidegger, the Frankfurt school, et al. So anyway, "production" might be used to refer to animal "labor", other species' struggles for existence. So here's a key question: Why do Marx and Engels say that production is fundamental to consciousness , so to speak, prior to it ? The partial answer is that because it gives a set of behaviors that are objectively, _biologically, necessary for humans of any society. It is the basis for a scientific understanding of any and all human societies , from the earliest to the current. But as I say, once you (correctly) make physiology the foundation of your objective science, you have to look at physiological reproduction as as fundamental as physiological "subsistence and survival" , shall we call it. Reproduction, making the next generation of the species, is as important as "existence", sustaining the existing generation, when we consider a species. Physiology looks at organisms. Biology, the category that encompasses physiology) looks at species. ( see Darwin :>). In a way, in the GI , Marx and Engels get stuck at the level of physiology and the sustainence of individuals. I merely bump their correct focus on physiological biology up to full biology, species biology. ^^^^^^ The key question in my opinion is to address just what humans do that is new and different from other species. What makes humans "human"? Clearly, the answer begins with production and related activities. What is it about production and related activities, such as intergenerational transmission of culture, language, etc., that allows human collectives to continually transform both nature and themselves (including their methods of reproduction, family systems etc.)? A dialectical analysis of this continual process requires, in my opinion, a grasp of the fundamental "logic" of how human social labor and production creates an entirely new domain of life-existence unknown in non-human species. To see how little your paragraphs below contribute to this kind of understanding - I am not saying this about you, just the passages you offer below - substitute the term "respiration" for "reproduction" below - or for that matter, substitute any essential biological function. Humans would die from the lack of any of them (digestion, excretion, etc. etc.). You make this point yourself explicitly. But this point that humans absolutely require a successful biological existence to become the historical creatures we have become is certainly true, but unenlightening - even, if you will allow me to put this sharply, trivial, if that is as far as one goes. Who would dispute you? ^^^^^^ CB: I don't know whether I have shown you above the significance of my introducting reproduction. The biological difference between respiration and reproduction is the respiration is necessary for sustenance of the individual members of the species, for sustaining their individual existence. A very , very necessary and important thing I might add. It is even a _necessary premise_ for the next part I mention. Without living individuals, no reproduction. But reproduction is qualitatively different than respiration in that reproduction is the direct process of producing the next generation of the species. Because the individual members of a species die, are not immortal , for the species to be perpetuated , there must be a next generation of individuals produced for the _species_ to suvive. The individuals could survive if respiration, eating , sleeping, breathing are taken care of. But the species needs both production and reproducton to perpetuate itself. Who ever heard of a one generation species ? The challenge is to explain how we grew from being once upon a time *just* mammals to the sociological humans we are today - and the communists we aspire to be in the future. This line of inquiry is what Marx and Engels invented, and which I encourage all to continue developing. ^^^^^ CB: I agree with you. But that's the other issue we discussed last time. The paper you are commenting on now deals with fuller materialism. Since Marx and Engels correctly found their materialism in considering the biological necessaries of humans as animals, we merely point out what I just said to you: reproduction is a qualitatively special area in biology, and a historical materialism founded on biology should take account of that. The unique human characteristic is not that we must meet certain biological physiological minimums to survive and exist. Other species must meet these materialist, biological minimums too. So, when you focus here on what is uniquely human, and that is good, that was the previous posts' thread that you encouraged me to develop, note that it is specifically _not_ our biological tasks that make us unique. It is not eating, sleeping, breathing etc. the things mentioned here in _The German Ideology_ , that separate us from chimps. Chimps must do these things too. Chimps must "labor". What is unique about our labor is not that we have to do it . It is that our labor is quantitatively and qualitatively more social than chimp labor, than chimp production. Human labor involves many more other members of the species, directly and indirectly than the labor of other species,such that we tag it SOCIAL labor. Frankly, Steve, my proposal and answer to your main question here is that we should say that the unique human characteristic is that our labor is SOCIALIST OR COMMUNIST LABOR ! AND I AM SERIOUS. The great leap forward from the missing link species to the human species was the discovery of the power of socialist or communist labor over more individualiized labor. I know animials have packs and herds. But the point is that the original human kinship systems were much more social than any animal social units and socialty Secondly, humans have a qualitatively "greater" social labor and existence because dead members and generations of the species continued to be part of the social group included in the "social" of social labor, through the medium of culture or tradition or custom , ritual, ancestor worship, the whole nine yards of cultural anthropology and archeology. And thirdly, or three and a halfly, human labor was able be so concentratedly social because of culture, consciousness, "imagination". Again Marx gets this by the time of _Capital_. He has grown since _The German Ideology_. In Capital I he says: "We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. " http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm In other words, what makes human labor unique is that it is conscious, is done in imagination first. This is sort of the opposite of what they say in the passage we are discussing in _The German Ideology_. I mentioned this section of _Capital_ I to Lil Joe ^^^^^
Again to put it bluntly, simply placing an equal sign between biology and sociology does not seem to contribute anything of much value that I can see. On the other hand, showing how the biological becomes sociological is very helpful. How did humanoid primates became historical beings? For example, a study into the role cultural transmission plays in production and socio-historical development, the investigation you suggested yesterday - based, I would urge, on the classical Marxist insights into the role of production in history as the motor force of the creation of humanity - could well qualify as such a helpful piece. That is my motivation for encouraging you to pursue your insights and studies on this - I believe this kind of study enhances Marxism and human science. On the rich question of reproduction that you raise below, much study is needed there, too - on how modes of reproduction have originated and developed in history, and how forms of reproduction, family systems, etc. have been major motor forces in the development (forward, backward, sideways and other ways) of human society and human psychology. Perhaps this is another formal piece of writing you could work on. Good luck! - Steve ^^^^^ CB: Let me know if the above comments demonstrate that my paper is an expansion of Marx and Engels insights , more consistent with their own logic than they are themselves at the early stage of _The GI_. It is a little more than merely putting an equal sign between biology and sociology. It is saying that once Marx and Engels put a transformation sign between biology and sociology ( not an identity between them , but a significant relationship between them), and I think there should be such a transformation sign in order to be materialist and not German idealists, once we say there is a connection because biology gives us necessity, we must bring in all of biology. And in biology, understood as study of species since Darwin ( _The GI_ is before Darwin), reproduction is as fundamental as "production-subsistence". Good comments, Steve. _______________________________________________ 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
