Jim Devine wrote:
>
> It's a fundamental mistake to talk about what "we're" inclined toward
> without a discussion of the context (both natural and social) in which we
> make decisions, especially since that context helps determined exactly what
> kind of items is we want a "fair share" of. This kind of stuff is just the
> standard empty talk about unchanging human nature.
Yes. Another way of putting the same point: there was never a time when "we" were
not caught up in a complex of social relations presumably older than "we" as a
species. The kind of talk Jim rightly condemns has as its implicit premise an
unreal world of abstract individuals living in isolation from each other and by
abstract acts of will forming a "society" where none existed before. This is
Margaret Thatcher's "Society does not exist, only individuals and families." It
is not even quite correct to speak of a dialectical relationship between
"indiividual" and "society," for the former exists prior to any individual:
individuals emerge from social relations. Cooperation is not a policy humans
adopt but the very condition of their existence, from which under certain
aberrant historical conditions (e.g. capitalism and other market societies) they
diverge or attempt to diverge.
Carrol
