* From: Ted Winslow
________________________________
Charles Brown wrote:
Perhaps the individuals of individualistic capitalism are the
historic
product of the contradictions of class divided society.
But individuals are also the made in intimacy , not only in that
babies are
born of intimacy, but essential character of the intimates
themselves is
developed in intimate relations. The one is the product of the two,
the
social cell of two people
Ted W.: Marx means something specific by "individuality."
^^^^
CB: Yes, and I'm interested in what you have to say about that below.
First, I'm saying that the individual is in part created by the alienations
of class divided societies. This "negative" individuality is sublated to a
positive individuality in communism.
Furthermore, I am reading Marx critically and sublatingly. Marx's analysis
of the individual must be supplemented, in part using this passage on
intimacy that I copy below ,and others and its logic from The Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. There, Marx discusses alienation in
capitalism at length. Alienation is the motor that creates individuality
down through history, culminating in the proto-communist individuals of
capitalism. The creation of individuality is a contradictory process, it
involves struggle.
Using the following passage , which I sent to PEN-L the other day, we
derive a second main historical basis of the development of individuality,
that is out of intimacy:
The direct natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the
relation of man to woman, . In this natural species-relationship, man's
(sic) relationship to nature is immediately his relation to man ( sic ),
just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature - his own
natural
destination. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested,
reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has
become nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence
of man. From this relationship on can therefore judge man's whole level of
development. From the character of this relationship follows how much man as
a species-being, , as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself;
the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to
human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which the human essence in
him has become a natural essence - the extent to which his human nature has
come to be natural essence -the extent to which his human nature has come to
be natural to him. This relationship also reveals the extent to which man's
need has become a human need; the extent to which, therefore, the other
person as a person has become for him a need - the extent to which he in his
individual existence is at the same time a social being .(end quote)
>From the socalled Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
http://gfdl.marxists.org.uk/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
CB: Individuals, characters, personalities are made in childcare , _and_ the
intimates' (adults') characters/personalities are developed through that
intimacy, as well.
^^^^^^^
Ted W:
The specific meaning is indicated by the idea of "true individuality," of
"free individuality," as the "universally developed individual." This is the
individual with the fully developed "capabilities" required for that
activities that define "the realm of necessity" and "the true realm of
freedom" of an ideal republic. Such development involves "an incalculable
medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers." As conceived by
Marx, the human historical process is an "educational" process of internally
related stages through which this development occurs. This process
substitutes rational self- determination for instinctive determination.
Relations of personal dependence (entirely spontaneous at the outset) are
the first social forms, in which human productive capacity develops only to
a slight extent and at isolated points. Personal independence founded on
objective [sachlicher] dependence is the second great form, in which a
system of general social metabolism, of universal relations, of all-round
needs and universal capacities is formed for the first time. Free
individuality, based on the universal development of individuals and on
their subordination of their communal, social productivity as their social
wealth, is the third stage. The second stage creates the conditions for the
third. Patriarchal as well as ancient conditions (feudal, also) thus
disintegrate with the development of commerce, of luxury, of money, of
exchange value, while modern society arises and grows in the same measure.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm
It has been said and may be said that this is precisely the beauty and the
greatness of it: this spontaneous interconnection, this material and mental
metabolism which is independent of the knowing and willing of individuals,
and which presupposes their reciprocal independence and indifference. And,
certainly, this objective connection is preferable to the lack of any
connection, or to a merely local connection resting on blood ties, or on
primeval, natural or master-servant relations. Equally certain is it that
individuals cannot gain mastery over their own social interconnections
before they have created them. But it is an insipid notion to conceive of
this merely objective bond as a spontaneous, natural attribute inherent in
individuals and inseparable from their nature (in antithesis to their
conscious knowing and willing). This bond is their product. It is a historic
product. It belongs to a specific phase of their development. The alien and
independent character in which It presently exists vis-à-vis individuals
proves only that the latter are still engaged in the creation of the
conditions of their social life, and that have not yet begun, on the basis
of these conditions, to live it. It is the bond natural to individuals
within specific and limited relations of production. Universally developed
individuals, whose social relations, as their own communal
[gemeinschaftlich] relations, are hence also subordinated to their own
communal control, are no product of nature, but of history. The degree and
the universality of the development of wealth where this individuality
becomes possible supposes production on the basis of exchange values as a
prior condition, whose universality produces not only the alienation of the
individual from himself and from others, but also the universality and the
comprehensiveness of his relations and capacities. In earlier stages of
development the single individual seems to be developed more fully, because
he has not yet worked out his relationships in their fullness, or erected
them as independent social powers and relations opposite himself. It is as
ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness [22] as it is to
believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill.
The bourgeois viewpoint has never advanced beyond this antithesis between
itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the latter will accompany
it as legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm
So "true individuality" in Marx's sense could not have existed at the
beginning of human history. Moreover, the idea is rooted in an ontology
that's inconsistent with the ontology underpinning neo- Darwinian
evolutionary theory.
Ted
_CB: Yes because, as I said, the individuals of individualistic capitalism
are the historic product of the contradictions and alienation of class
divided society. The true individuals of communism are sublated alienated
individual personalities from capitalism, the highest level of development
of class divided society, the highest level of alienation of the individual.
