>>> Ted Winslow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/10/00 07:11PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> __________
>
> CB: Does this contradict what I said ? Humans have a higher degree of tool
> development than animals before the "master/slave" relationship develops.
> Hunters and gatherers have much higher tool development than animals.
> __________
I don't know. It depends on whether you think the fact to which you point
contradicts the account of human historical development I attributed to
Marx. It doesn't.
__________
CB: What was said before this was:
>
> CB: This is an interesting thesis you put forth, but a question that arises
> for me is that humans have tools and relations of production before they have
> class exploitative relations of production ( master/slave relationship). So
> the development of the forces of production occurs without a master/slave
> relationship. It is SOCIAL labor that is the big human leap.
It's the ultimate degree of tool development that's made possible by the
dialectical process of human historical development not the mere use of
tools.
CB: So, I hadn't said that it was "the mere use of tools". So, I don't see why you say
"not the mere use of tools" in response to what I said.
I'm saying your "ultimate degree of tool development" is due to human high level of
sociality or communality. Hegel's focus on master/slave division of labor is not
historically accurate for the time at which the human difference from common "apelike"
ancestor arose in the pithecanthropenes ( "missing links"). Hegel didn't have the
benefit of modern paleo- anthropology.
____________
>
> Apes use tools.
>
> __________
>
> CB: But not symbols. Hunters and gatherers have a much higher development of
> tools than apes.
>
That because hunters and gatherers are "human" in the sense specified by
Hegel. Apes aren't.
______________
CB: I think it was because hunters and gatherers are human ( no quotes) in the sense
specified by me, not Hegel. Hegel died before the evidences of modern physical
anthropology. I know more about anthropology than Hegel.
Anyway, Hegel is obscure in many ways , so it is hard to tell everything in there, but
, I'd say that the key unique human consciousness attribute is not self-consciousness,
but other-consciousness or self-consciousness in terms of the other. Of course, with
Hegel's focus on contradiction, he may conceive of self-consciousness as a unity of
self/other-consciousness, I don't know.
_____________
>
> If you correct the mistake implicit in the idea that
> apes are human ancestors (we share a common ancestor), human anatomy (e.g.
> the human hand) is, from the perspective of Marx's ontology, the key to the
> anatomy of the "ape".
>
> ___________
>
> CB: Where is that in Marx ? Where did I say apes are human ancestors ?
Right at the moment I can't say precisely where it is in Marx, though I'm
pretty sure it's there somewhere.
_____________
CB: I'm pretty sure it is not.
___________
Engels has an essay on "The Role of
Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" but I don't think it's from there.
__________
CB: Yea, he focuses on labor , social labor, not the opposable thumb.
____________
Now that I think about it, my suggestion that the statement "human anatomy
is the key to the anatomy of the ape" is mistakenly treating modern apes as
human ancestors is itself almost certainly mistaken. The word "ape" in the
sentence is probably being used in a generic sense which includes the common
ancestor.
_____________
CB: Yea, you are contradicting yourself. But hey, maybe its a dialectical
contradiction.
____________
You didn't. I didn't mean by "you" to attribute to Charles Brown the
mistake in question.
_______________
CB: Oh
______________
>
> The opposable thumb is not as important as symbols, which allow SOCIAL labor,
> including passing on productive techniques from generation to generation.
The key is the human mind which makes possible the specifically human kind
of consciousness. It's this that underpins the kind of development of both
language and tools which is itself specifically human and distinguishes the
worst architect from the best of bees.
___________
CB: Yes, but we can be more specific. It is symbolling , the ability or tendency to
symbol, i.e. use something arbitrarily to represent something that it is not, as an
alphabetical writing system does. The letters "dog" , which do not imitate a dog in
any way, are used to represent dogs. This is dialectical in the sense that "not-a" is
"equated" with "a" , a unity of opposites. So, Hegel comes in that way. Symbols are
inherently dialectical unities ( unities and struggles of opposites).
Your "bees and spiders don't imagine before laboring" is in _Capital_ , vol. one. But
the term is "imagination" ( and maybe "plan") not "consciousness".
__________
>
> For example, it is more important to be able have a crew that can talk to each
> other, plan and all that than an opposable thumb.
An opposable thumb is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for human
being to emerge. It gives mind something to work with. That humans are
social beings is also a necessary condition.
__________
CB: I'd say the sociality, the communality is THE key. Thus, we are
socialists/communists. Communism is humanism.
_____________
>
> Pithecanthropines ( who are not apes but our direct ancestors) had symbols.
>
They had more fully developed minds than their ancestors.
________
CB: Yea, the ability to symbol according to Geertz and Sahlins.
_________
> we aren't trying to figure out what was the key to the earlier. We are
> trying to figure out the key to the later.
>
> So, given that _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ is a classic historical
> materialist text, are you saying that capitalism provides the key to feudalism
> ?
The point is that, given that the later is internally related to the
earlier, to fully *understand* the earlier and hence to fully understand how
the later emerged from it, it's necessary to start from the later; to fully
understand feudalism it's necessary to understand capitalism since
capitalism existed in it as a "potential". This is one of the reasons "the
owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk".
_____________
CB: So, you want to understand feudalism better so that you can understand capitalism
better, in that you want to know how capitalism was latent or potential in feudalism.
This gets to be a bit teleological, as Yoshie and Carrol might say. Capitalism was a
potential in feudalism, but its actual historical occurrence was a dialectic of chance
and necessity , contingency and teleology.
Anyway, Marx's position is that capitalism grew out of the class struggles in
feudalism. So, the "potential" was in the struggle for emancipation.
Comradely,
CB
