----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx
andthe thinkers he inspired'" <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 19:01
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :BakhurstVictor
Victor
The second comment is based on Marx's discussion of the role of direct
cooperation in the initial development of social labour. See Economic
Manuscripts 1861-63 Section 3 Relative Surplus Value Notebook IV
Cooperation. Marx discussion is interesting because his discussion of
crude
direct cooperation could apply to intra-genus cooperation between
non-toolmaking and using thinking and learning creatures such as wolves,
apes, and lionesses just as well as to men. Could this serve as an
argument
for the primacy of direct social cooperation as a condition for the
development of tool making and using?
Oudeyis
^^^^
CB: Here we see why the transgenerational transmission of how to make and
use tools is the key type of social connection defining humans. There are
studies showing that chimps , on their own , int the wild, make and use
tools, such as sticks to dig in ant hills.
But they don't pass on to the next generation how to do it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
But they do or at least the women do:
NYT Science Desk June 14, 2005, Tuesday
FINDINGS; She's Studying. He's Playing.
By JOHN SCHWARTZ (NYT) 413 words
Late Edition - Final , Section F , Page 1 , Column 1
DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF 413 WORDS - Little girls watch and learn; little boys
goof off and horse ... At least this seems to be the case with chimpanzees,
according to new research. ...
Chimpanzees like to snack on termites, and youngsters learn to fish for them
by poking long leaf spines and other such...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, we've known for a long time that social groups of monkeys and apes
develop special cultural traits that are intergenerational for the group and
distinctive from those of other groups. This was first noticed by Japanese
researchers into the behaviour of different groups of Japanese Macaques.
Some groups wash their food others don't, some bath in the hot spring waters
while others don't enter the water at all and so on. Since then animal
ethologists in Africa and Asia have been mapping the "cultural traditions"
of our anthropoid brothers.
Clearly, monkeys and apes do have "cultural traditions" that are passed
between generations, but it is much less sure that these traditions are
anything more than particular features of an otherwise "non-cultural" array
of practices. What distinguishes human culture from that of other creatures
is its universality, i.e. man's absolute dependence on culture to learn how
to behave at all.
In truth, we should expect that ideality (and tool making) would appear
historically, first, as a particularity, an abstracted individual feature of
the universal life activity that preceeded it, rather than as a full-blown
universal as it is for modern humans. In principle, the development of a
universal such as social labour, tool making and commodity production should
first appear as an individual case, become a particular class of phenomena
as it expands beyond the individual case (as it does for learned termite
fishing among chimpanzees) and only become a universal when it becomes the
way things are done by everyone.
Ideality is necessary for this transgenerational transmission to become as
efficient and extensive as it has among humans.
Thus , "imagination" ( ideality) , planning, focus for days, weeks, years
at
a time on the same goal and purpose, all based on ideality and
imagination,
are the distinguishing characteristics of human labor, not tool use.
On the other hand, the individual hunter or laborer's imagination and
ideality contains so much information because many others are able to
"put"
info into the "system" or ideological system or cultural tradition that
makes that imagination.
Notice for example, that the significance of upright posture for hunting
is
not only , as Engels refers to, the freeing of the hands for tool and
weapon
making and use. Ancient humans defeated their prey by long distance
running.
Upright posture slowed humans down so that in a short sprint, they didn't
catch the faster prey, but they would trek the prey down with long
distance
running. This requires longer focus of attention, planning than quick
instinctive attacks. The legs are as significant as the hands in the
original human labors.
The cooperation among those in the living generation, among the living, is
also potentially enhanced by ideality.
Of course, after the rise of class exploitative society, ideality becomes
the basis for more anti-cooperation among humans than among chimps.
Ideality
turns into its opposite with the rise of class divided society. In
particular, predominantly physical labor is antagonized to predominantly
idealist labor, and the repressive career of the ideal is begun.
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