Marxism-Thaxis] On necessity and law in human history Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Wed Feb 1 07:41:35 MST 2006
Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Dennett's Breaking the Spell Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] www.darwin.ws Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do think that with respect to law in human history, necessity in human history, at the stage of the transition to socialism, the issue of the unity of subject and object is to some extent, well vulgar, a street hussle, theatre even. I'd say that Marx and Engels were vulgar enough to realize that they had to _sell_ socialism to the masses , including people from all classes. Historical objective necessity can take the masses of human up to the water of socialism, but it cannot make them drink. The socialist revolution will not occur without working class consciousness and purposeful aim to win it, make it so. However, the workers are more likely to take the tremendous effort involved in making socialism if they think it is "necessary", a historical necessity, in line with the laws of history. A lot of middle strata people are more likely to aim for it if it is an "historical necessity" too. Even many bourgeoisie will go for it if they think , somehow, the "have" to do it, that the "Must" ! To the extent that there are laws, objective laws, of human history , they do tend toward socialism, as a more rational way to organize society. So, in that regard , Marx and Engels are not selling snake oil. But that last , critical, and qualitatively different little/big leap at the end, must take place in the subjective consciousness of each individual human, or the great mass of them. There is no objective factor that _forces_ people, workers and middle strata workers, to want and aim for socialism, ending capitalism. On the other hand, as Chavez says, in this era after Marx and Engels, after Lenin, there are certain objective factors, such as nuclear weapons and capitalisticgenic ecological pollution , which now threaten our species in a qualitatively new way, and begin to constitute objective necessities for ending capitalism everywhere on earth and starting worldwide socialism. There is developing greater objective necessity for socialism now than in the eras Marx or Lenin. Of course, a given individual can respond to these "necessities" with resentment or nihilism or misanthropy, indifference or malice toward the continuation of the human species. Given the many inhumanities of man toward man , there is not guaranteed dissuasion of this any given soul. At any rate, there is a tremendous component of persuasion involved in building revolutionary elan and spirit, even leaving aside those who are in extreme despair about the whole world. Declaring that history's laws require socialism is in an important sense a strategy for persuading ( "selling") those who were thinking in terms of "laws" of science in the 1800's. Within capitalism, not so much in history in the larger sense, Marx did discover certain strong tendencies or patterns of motion, cyclical patterns, given the basic rules that capitalists and workers follow in their relations, that is given the property relations. There will , in a lawlike manner, be a large mass of poor people. The absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. There is a tendency or law of monopolization, one capitalist swallows a few. There is a law or tendency of socialization of labor or production. These laws do not directly derive from meeting physiological requirements. Historical necessity , such as it is, derives from the requirements society puts on individuals to meet their physiological and reproductive requirements. The key realm of modern society which sets the requirements for getting physiological and reproductive requirements met is the economy. The process of getting these physiological and reproductive requirements met is mixed in with getting many other needs or wants met in this economy. But Marx and Engels focus on the economy, and class relations, as the main source of necessity and law in human affairs (objectively determining individual will), because it is where biological necessity impinges. There is a profound historical contradiction here in that a main aim of human progress or accumulation of knowledge has been to _free_ us from this very determining effect of biological necessity ! Culture and tradition of science have had the aim of making us literally "supernatural" . I mean this in a non-religious sense, non-mystical sense. Merely, masters and mistresses of nature. For the mastery of necessity is freedom. This freedom is in a sense above nature. Certainly beyond the limitations that nature put on humans 200,000 years ago at our origin. So, the contradiction is that the advance of science and technology potentially frees us more than ever from the necessity deriving from physiological requirements of which I speak above. Yet, capitalism and all class society substitutes an artificial scarcity or inability to meet physiological requirements for the many in order to control them. It denies most people the immediate and easy access to freedom from the demands of physiological necessity (or easily meeting them) that society is now capable of providing. It denies them . It thereby creates or maintains an artificial "necessity or law"into human affairs by artificially bringing people close to failing to meet their physiological and reproductive requirements. Or allowing them to exist in a state such that they are in jeopardy of not meeting their natural requirements, when everyone could be easily and certainly free from such jeopardy by the level of our technological development. This artificial return to threat or jeopardy of failing to meet natural requirments is in the form of class, wage-labor today. I think this is the sense in which Engels uses "law" in human affairs and history. Peace in ! CB This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
