Ted, I don't think I'm arguing against what Marx sees as the capability of human labor to appropriate, mediate the human interaction with nature, but this "general description" of the function of labor does not give us the specifics as to how that labor is organized, how the forms of property are created, and destroyed. No class of human beings conceives of industrial capitalism in its head prior to the coming to being of the social relation of production that defines modern capitalism.
And I don't think I'm arguing against the "idealism" of the potential inherent in the emancipation of human social labor, but.... Marx accomplishes much more than just a "simple" corresponding transliteration of Hegel-- tool for mind, instrument of labor for cunning of reason. Marx finds in fact that the difference between human weaving and spider weaving is that the former goes on under specific historical circumstances, specific relations of property and labor. The latter does not. There is no property in the world of spiders and bees, there is no labor to alienate, to exchange, to circulate as a universal form of value. Doesn't Marx say (is it in the German Ideology?) something along the lines that you can distinguish man from animal by belief in god, by any number of things, but mankind distinguishes itself from animals when it creates the means of its own subsistence? The original question in the "Brenner debate" was, how was the transition from feudalism to capitalism accomplished-- and that transition was created by an economic necessity, a change in the relation of the conditions of labor to the laborer. I think that the passions had impact on these transitions to the degree, and only to the degree, that they were reflections of, extensions to that change. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <PEN-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU> Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 10:30 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Passions, Hegel, Marx, Smith etc. was ...po-tah-to
