Voyou said: 

I think Marx makes this point somewhere in the 1844 Manuscripts, but I
can't find the exact reference right now. 

^^^ Here's where Marx makes the point about sex being "doubly" social,
both naturally and culturally(socially) social. ^^^^^^^ 

"In the approach to woman as the spoil and hand-maid of communal lust
is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself,
for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and
undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner
in which the direct and natural species-relationship is conceived. The
direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the
relation of man to woman. In this natural species-relationship man’s
relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, 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. ( how's that for essentialism ? -CB) 


>From this relationship one 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_ (emphasis added , CB: it is th most natural
social relation). It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s
natural behaviour has become human, or 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 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. 


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm 




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