On this issue of the naturalness of capitalism, Marx is distinguished from two different bourgeois positions. First he is fighting the bourgeois ideology that capitalist self-interested profit maximizing is the natural form of all human economy, i.e. a biologically determined way, a social darwininism rooted in human darwinist evolution. No, Marx says, capitalism is a human historically , not biologically evolved, social form.
On the other hand, he is anti- bourgeois-idealist ( See _The German Ideology_) and anti-religion, so he recognizes that humans are an animal species and thus have a natural system , physiological needs that must be met for basic survival, subsistence. All economies must meet subsistence minimums, must have certain minimum use-values produced. To do this they must meet minimum natural, technological standards, etc. Capitalism must meet these minimum natural standards like any other form of society. It "can't" be but so unnatural without extinguishing the population ( though hold on to your hats with nuclear weapons, global warming and oil depletion) But capitalism is not the only way to meet natural minimums or is not the only "natural" way in this sense. In other words, feudalism was "natural" too in this sense, since it didn't extinguish the population. So, were slavery and the modes of production that were not based on private property "natural." But they evolved one into the other ( with embedding and mixing as discussed on this thread) based on historical class struggles not natural selection in the sense that species are originated ( I know Jim F. argues a selectionist social process, but I don't think he is maintaining that there is species selection process between human historical modes). Charles [was: RE: [PEN-L] Robert Brenner versus Chris Harman] I wrote: > nothing is unnatural about violence. But _in context_, i.e., the idea that capitalism develops "naturally" in the bowels of feudalism, it seemed the opposite of what was being described as "natural."< Ian: > I just don't understand the use of natural or "natural" in the discussion of the issue at all. It seems like just so much rhetorical obfuscation combined with a politics of historiography. Capitalism developed out of feudalism; using the term natural or "natural" adds nothing to the issue of explanation.< I wasn't the one who introduced the term "natural" here. But it can make sense in context. (Hardly any word's meaning can be understood out of context. Few words have any meaning out of context.) One context that may be familiar is that developed by some hairy old German with darkish skin. In one of the prefaces to CAPITAL, he wrote about capitalism having its own "natural" laws, differing from those of feudalism (or other modes of production). The way I understand this is that he was saying that there were laws of motion (or "dynamics", if you want) of the capitalist mode of production that worked independently of individual wills (and often contrary to those individual wills) -- so that the system acts _as if_ it were a Second Nature. It's sort of like Smith's Invisible Hand theory (which old Adam saw as somehow "natural"), but without the same nice results: capitalism's "natural" laws encourages crisis and conflict (and chances for communism coming). Whether or not we accept all of Marx's projected scenario, my point was that (in his view, at least) the pre-capitalist modes of production lacked this kind of dynamic independent of individual wills. Thus, for feudalism to give birth to capitalism, the rise of the centralized state (what's now called absolutism) was needed, to force the peasants off the land (as described at the end of CAPITAL, vol. I). It wasn't going to arise due to the simple dynamics of the so-called "base." Jim Devine, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; web: http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine/
