CB: > On this issue of the naturalness of capitalism, Marx is distinguished from two different bourgeois positions. First he is fighting the bourgeois ideology that capitalist self-interested profit maximizing is the natural form of all human economy, i.e. a biologically determined way, a social darwininism rooted in human darwinist evolution. No, Marx says, capitalism is a human historically, not biologically evolved, social form.<
Marx also rejected ideas of "human nature" of the sort of Hobbes (people "naturally" lust after power) or Locke (people "naturally" believe in private property). Instead, there's a major societal impact on the "nature of human nature" in any specific historical era. >On the other hand, he is anti-bourgeois-idealist (See _The German Ideology_) and anti-religion, so he recognizes that humans are an animal species and thus have a natural system, physiological needs that must be met for basic survival, subsistence. All economies must meet subsistence minimums, must have certain minimum use-values produced. To do this they must meet minimum natural, technological standards, etc. Capitalism must meet these minimum natural standards like any other form of society. It "can't" be but so unnatural without extinguishing the population (though hold on to your hats with nuclear weapons, global warming and oil depletion) But capitalism is not the only way to meet natural minimums or is not the only "natural" way in this sense. In other words, feudalism was "natural" too in this sense, since it didn't extinguish the population. So, were slavery and the modes of production that were not based on private property "natural." But they evolved one into the other (with embedding and mixing as discussed on this thread) based on historical class struggles not natural selection in the sense that species are originated ... < Yes, though much of "human nature" is a product of societal influences, there is also a biological basis. BTW, Marx wasn't "anti-religion" the way the people he was criticizing in the GERMAN IDEOLOGY were: many of the Young Hegelians were hard-core atheists who believed that getting rid of religion would solve society's problems. Marx saw those problems as more important than religion. JD
