Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proof of the Pudding: Reason and Value in Social Evolution* Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Feb 20 07:55:49 MST 2002
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Carling, If I might comment further on your thesis, I think you ignore the first clause of Marx and Engels famous aphorism below in your development of a sort of absolute "unintentionality" in the development of human society. M and E say people "make their own history...". This implies some intention. This is in unity and contradiction with the statement "but they do not make it just as they please." As they are dialecticians, we should not be surprised that their statement contains a contradiction. But my point here is that they are saying that the development of society is both intentional and unintentional. The important issue for your thesis is that you do not have to discard all impact of human intention in the development of social forms. So when you say: "It seemed appropriate to call this mechanism Competitive Primacy (of the forces of production) and to support its claims against alternative conceptions, especially Intentional Primacy (of the forces of production).[30] The latter conception envisages the deliberate creation of relations of production of a type that will enhance the development of the forces of production. It says essentially that relations attached to superior forces prevail because people have taken successful collective action designed to bring about this result, motivated by the economic and social benefits superior productivity brings in its train. But this requires the intentional creation of social structure, which has been ruled out by the arguments of Chapter 4. So the only theoretically defensible version of historical materialism is the one that centres on the concept of Competitive Primacy. " Arguments by intention should not be absolutely ruled out. They can play a role in contradictory unity with arguments by unintentional selection. In other words, there is something of a "LaMarckian" mechanism at this level as well. Charles Brown "According to Marx s celebrated saying, people make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. [1] The purpose of this book is to do justice if possible to both sides of the contrast introduced by Marx: to explore the relationship between the received circumstances of history on the one hand, and its active making on the other. " _______________________________________________ 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
