[Marxism] Religion, the proletariat, Marxism, and revolution

[Charles Brown]

Haines Brown 



Charles, thanks for the correction. I should be relieved, but I'm not,
for I still don't grasp your point.

^^
CB: Comrade , brother Brown, how diplomatic ( smile)  Let me take the
time to say I appreciate your ongoing discussion of fundamentals.
Unfortunately, I haven't kept up over he months, so I just jump in with
one comment, now and then

> CB: "Natural" here would be original human nature, or the features
> of the species in it revolutionary origin, those which differentiate
> it from the species out of which it evolved.

I have trouble picturing this sudden appearance of mankind, for I
think the reality was a process lasting tens of thousands of years if
not millions, in which certain features emerge that distinguish humans
from other animals.

^^^
CB: The suddenness is nothing more than the qualitative change after a
long period of quantitative change, the leap of dialectics. The
suddeness is relative to a prior period of slowness. It is a revolution
in evolution.    The leap may even be thousands of years, but in the
context of a slower development of tens of millions of years. 

Think of Gould's punctuated equilibrium. The punctuation is a
"relatively" sudden change in a relatively slower context. Periods of
sudden mass extinction and respeciation punctuate longer periods of
relative equilibrium or persistence of species.

Notice that Marx and Engels said the Darwin represented their view in
natural history.  Lenin terms Marxism and Hegelianism  "evolutionism".

The origin of the human species is no different from this norm.

Reltively suddenly homo sapiens replaces the prior hominid (missing
link) species.

&&&&&

I've never been comfortable with biological classification based on
taxonomy. It is a very challenging and controversial subject, and
there's doubt that taxonomy based on empirical traits really means
anything.

But that's not my real objection, which is that it seems quite obvious
that the determination of human nature is largely extra-somatic.

^^^
CB: Yes, but it is this extra-somatic , or cultural, determination that
suddenly arises at the origin of the human species.

I agree that human _nature_ is tricky here, in that what is being said
is that human _nature_ is cultural or "non-natura"l or extra-somatic ,
as you phrase it. It is kinship-symbolic-linguistic. It is not
anti-natural, but it is , well, extrasomatic, not in bodily organs. It
is not genetic. So, it is not restricted by the Mendelian principles of
no inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is LaMarckian-like, in
that what one generation's extrasomatic adaptations can be passed on to
the next generation.

^^^^^^^^


 Even
if we were to accept the validity of an empirical taxonomy, what do we
gain by it? It's a clade defined by homo sap. Am I then homo sap?
Well, yes and no. In biological terms, yes, but in terms of my
capacities for action and what really counts, obviously not. For
example, my revolutionary potential cannot be read back into the
distinguishing characteristics of homo sap. My nature is defined by
the homo sap clade only to the extent I am reduced to my biological
nature.

^^^^
CB: There is a biological basis for your ability to learn and transmit
culture and language.  So,  you can't be reduced to your biological
nature. However, but for certain features of your biological nature, you
couldn't transcend other aspects of your biological nature.

^^^^^

> This original human nature is characterized by being cultural in the
> anthropological sense.

I'm not overwhelmed by this observation.

^^^^
CB: But do your agree with it underwhelmingly ?

^^^^^

 After all, animals also to a
degree possess a culture. 

^^^^^
CB: This is a fundamental , uhhh, misstep. Human culture is a
qualitative leap from any transgenerational symbolic transmissions of
monkeys or apes or dolphins or birds.   None of them have kinship or
language.  What they have is not really worthy of the term "culture".
Kinship is the central originating iinstitution of culture.

I know they've now found some monkey troops with a few terms or habits
they pass on . I'm suspicious because of the contact with humans. They
teach apes sign language with small vocabs. But you don't find many apes
developing same on their own.

^^^^^6
Two more specific mechanisms seem of
paramount importance when it comes to humans: a) an emergent
consciousness that reflects upon action in the the world and does not
reduce to them, and b) a social existence that transmits to the
individual capacities that transcend the individual's capacities.

^^^^
CB: There you go: "emergence" . That's the leap we were discussing
earlier.   Human consciousness emerged or arose relatively suddenly as
the definition of origin of homo sapiens.

Yes, qualitatively greater sociality is another way to define human
nature. The main qualitatively different sociality is that between
living and dead generations. We have more social links to the dead
generations of our species than any other species. But the social links
between living members of the species is quallitatively greater than any
other species too.

^^^^

> The center of human culture is sociality, in the form of kinship,
> which creates transgenerational sociality, or communism, organizing
> the relations of the living generation based on tracing descent from
> common ancestors.

Holt it! You are covering a lot of ground here. Humans, like some
other animals are social, that I grant. 

^^^^
CB: Well, I'm saying social like _no_ other species. It is our specific
or species defining characteristic

^^^^^


Kinship I take to mean an
affinity based on blood relations, which of course is also found in
the animal world. 

^^^^
CB: No kinship is members of a living generation organizing its
relations  based on tracing relationship to dead members of the species.
No other species has kinship, strictly defined.This is why "names" are
the originally most important symbols. They connected living people by
tracing to ancestors.

^^^^^^

But what is "transgenerational sociality"? The
persistence of kindred ties, such as in a clan? I'm not sure this is
not also true of some animals, and I'm not clear as to its
significance.

^^^^
CB: I am sure that this is also not true of any  other species. Of
course, there's a lot more that come to a living generation from its
dead ancestors.  Organization of production, technology, most of the
material culture. There is an accumuilation across the generations of
the whole giant culture.  The important difference that humans have from
other species not that individuals can invent things. It is that
inventions, such as stone tools,  can be passed on to future
generations.  Individual chimps can invent tools or various forms of
social labor ( hunting formations ,  birthing methods etc.) but they
can't pass them on to future generations through language , myths ,
stories , rituals
^^^^

Just an aside. I'm not sure that kindred ties are natural rather than
socially constructed. 

^^^^^
CB: They aren't natural. They are socially constructed. That's the
point. They are the original social construction from which all other
social constructions sprung !

^^^^^

Marriage, for example, creates a new tie. In
many societies, non-blood-related children are brought into
households. Tribes are political constructs having little to do with
blood ties (the tribal Urfather was generally fictional or
semi-fictional). That is, people decide to bond with one another
because there is reason to do so.

^^^^^
CB: All this, blood tie relations and non-blood tie relations are part
of the kinship system. The members of different clans also relate. In
fact , usually the _rule_  is exogamy. In fact, the incest taboo is
universal, because it forces groups to ally.   You can't have sex your
brother or sister.  This is relations between living people being
organized based on relationships with dead ancestors. If we have the
same dead ancestor we can't have sex.  You can only have sex with
someone who has a different dead ancestor.  See what I mean ?

^^^^^^^^

And how do you get from transgenerational sociality to communism?

^^^^^
CB: Surely you know that Marx and Engels considered the original
societies as primitive communism.  There was no private property in the
original human societies . Lack of private property defines communism (
See _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_)

^^^^^^^
 I
can make guesses, but I'm sure doing so would badly veer from your
intent. And are you speaking of primitive communism?

^^^^^
CB: Yes.

^^^^^
 And what does
that have to do with modern communism? 

^^^^^
CB: Now there's the $64 googlplex question.  
 
In short, as Engels put it, modern communism is primitive communism at
a higher level of the dialectical spiral.  I'll elaborate if you haven't
heard this before.  Modern communism is society wiithout private
property as in the intervening class exploitative socieities, but at a
higher level of technique than primitive communism

^^^^


Primitive communism seems to be
an ideal type rather than a description. The more we know of actual
primitive societies the less we can justifiably idealize them.

^^^^^^
CB: Not idealize. Observe that they had no private property and no
exploiting and exploited classes. The more we know about them, the more
we confirm this ( I studied anthropology in college; see _ Stone Age
Economics_ by Marshall Sahlins or most ethnographies)

^^^^

And what is this "organizing the relations of the living generation
based on tracing descent from common ancestors"?

^^^^
CB: See above

^^^^
 I mean, I've never
ventured to do that. True, I share a common ancestor with my sisters,
and while that is why once in a while we touch bases, that contact
doesn't seem very significant. After all, I interact in a much more
intensive and significant way with great numbers of people who don't
share any ancestor with me.

^^^^
CB: Kinship in modern socieity doesn't work as well. I'm talking
especially about the original human societies from 200,000 years ago and
earlier until 12,000 bc at the origin of the male supremacist family,
private property and the state, the origin of class exploitative
socieity.

However, most of what we "know" , think and do comes from dead members
of the species. Every word we have written here was invented by somebody
dead.

^^^^

> It is inherently not fixed like genetic based traits. It is in fact
> a LaMarckian-like capacity, i.e. non-Mendelian, i.e. culture allows
> inheritance of acquired characteristics, violating the central dogma
> of biological genetic inheritance or the Mendelian principle.
 
In other words, culture evolves?

^^^^
CB: Yes, but more to the point, new inventions consciiously in
adaptation , "acquired" by one generation can be passed on to the next. 
Genes don't work that way. Social evolution can be LaMarckian-like. 
Genetic based evolution must be Mendelian, i.e the trait arises randomly
relative to the environment and adaptation of the individual in which it
arises

^^^^^

> Human nature is social.  Communism and its utopianism allows a
> return of society to this primitive communism but on a higher level.
> We can say that the original human nature is communism.

_You_ can say it, but it is something else to persuade others to agree
with you.

^^^^
CB: That's true of most things anybody says on this list, no ?  Why
note that here ? Do you find that you easily persuade anybody of much
you say ?

^^^^^

 There's a broad consensus

^^^^
CB: Not among the experts, anthropologists. Human nature is defined by
having culture.

^^^^

 that there is no human nature
except in a very broad sense, such as Promethean Man, or as you
suggest, we are a social animal and seek to cooperate (when we are not
killing each other).

^^^^^
CB: Right . the latter is a very important sense. I agree that we have
fallen far from the garden of eden, though even the anti-social is
social in a sense.

^^^^^^^

More seriously, I'm made uncomfortable by any suggestion that
communism is a future goal in which we recover our essential being.

^^^
CB: I disagree in that in the profound sense our essence _is_ sociality
and cooperation.   Our great leap forward originally was _social_ labor,
with the sociality organized base on kinship in a very broad sense.

^^^


 My
main concern is that it tosses materialism out the window, and a
materialism (or naturalism) seems a fundamental presupposition of
working class ideology, including its most developed form, Marxism. In
other words, in some possible communist future, we may indeed find
scope for our social nature, but the issue is how win command of our
situation in the here and now through class struggle. Speculations
about an ideal communist future and how it might relate to some kind
of obscure human essence strikes me as a distraction.

^^^^^^^
CB: After the class struggle is won by the working class, classes are
abolished, and the state whithers away , and _material necessity is
mastered, then comes freedom. Freedom is the mastery of necessity. In
communism, we transcend the materialism of class divided society,
because our obtaining the necessities of life no longer determines
everything else by or controls us.  We are able to plan all material
production, production for necessity and we are thereby freed ,
relatively.  There will still be challenges and struggle , but not with
each other . The contradictions are with nature ( Oil depletion etc.)

Haines


Good show , comrade !

Charles