Julio Huato wrote:
If my memory serves, Ted's comment (as translated in my head) was that
the proper way to derive cooperation in an economic theory was *not*
as I set out to do it in my model, but by programming people at the
outset to be "friends." Moreover, "friends" in the Aristotelian sense
of incorporating the wellbeing of each other as ends (not means), i.e.
including them in each other's utility functions.
This misses the point.
The ontological idea of internal relations is only one of the
ontological and anthropological ideas that make "historical
materialism" and its idea of a "true realm of freedom" characterized
by relations of "mutual recognition" inconsistent with representation
through "utility functions."
Another key ontological idea embodied in historical materialism is
the idea of the existence of an objective and knowable "good."
Human being is understood to be the being potentially capable of
"reason" and, hence, of knowing and actualizing this "good" in a
"good" life in a "good" society.
"Mutual recognition" constitutes the ethical content of this "good."
It's elaborated by Marx in the passage from "Comments on James Mill"
I quoted.
The "historical" aspect of historical materialism derives from the
idea that this human potential, what Hegel calls the "idea," the "in
itself," of human being, requires a process of historical
development, understood as an "educational" process - "an
incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers,"
to become "actual," "for itself."
The role Marx gives to "forces and relations of production" in this
process is what constitutes his conception of it as "materialist."
Relations of production in their successive forms facilitate the
"development of the human mind." This is expressed by the
development of "forces of production." The successive forms taken by
relations of production are all, in diminishing degree, inconsistent
with ideal relations of mutual recognition. The development each
form facilitates, however, is asymmetrical. As is claimed by Engels
about feudalism in this text, It's greater for the dominated than for
the dominating class, so eventually each form creates its own
"gravediggers."
The process "ends" when "mind" has become fully "educated," and
"universally developed individuals" use their fully developed
"capabilities" to create the "true realm of freedom."
"Universally developed individuals" can't be "programmed." The
latter idea is inconsistent with the idea of fully free "self-
determination" embodied in the former. This point is made by Hegel
himself. It's repeated by Marx in the third thesis on Feuerbach.
To understand the role given to "revolutionary praxis" in that
thesis, however, you have to understand it as developmental of
"capabilities" in Aristotle's sense of "virtues," i.e. you have to
understand it in terms of the "virtues" Hegel identifies as being
developed and actualized in "seafaring." Fully developed "virtues"
in this sense are a necessary prerequisite for relations of "mutual
recognition." This point is elaborated by Aristotle in his account
of "friendship" ("philia") in the Nicomachean Ethics.
By the way, you don't stop treating individuals as "means" when you
put their "consumption" into your "utility function." They remain
"instrumental" to your "utility."
Ted
