Theses on Humanity

By Charles Brown Objective reality exists (Lenin); this is the definition of materialism . Humans uniquely of all animals think of objective reality in words or symbolic signs ( see semiotics) . So, human practice , activity , action behavior is in the form of the anthropological concept of culture or symbolic sign / word ruled behavior ( see anthropologists Leslie A. White and Marshall Sahlins ; Charles Brown definition of culture and language ).

This Cultural behavior is the Hegelian unity of the universal / practice contradiction. For Hegel, the proof of the pudding recipe is in the eating , the proof ( or disproof ) of the recipe theory is in the taste of the eating ; or as Marx has it , the proof of the truth of theory is in practice ( human practice is cultural activity).

Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach is Marx’s dialectical critique of materialism, activist materialism ( see CB essay “ Activist Materialism “). It boils down to a Hegelian critique of all previous materialism: humans practice thinkingly ( in words or symbolic signs), uniting the universal , which is in their language or words, and practice . And the truth or falsity of that thinking is proven in that practice.

Reproductive practice is the primary or direct determinant of selves , human thinking subjects ; productive activity is the secondary or indirect determinant ( see CB “For Women’s Liberation “

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/07/for-womens-liberation-comradely.html)

The origin of language and culture was in childcare or reproductive labor circa 2.5 million years ago with Homo habilis, beginning of the Stone Age or toolmaking based on imagination or a “blueprint” like an architect ( See Marx in Capital on unique characteristic of human labor) . We know this because the Stone tools are made in styles or with thinking in symbolic signs / words . I hypothesize that the invention of words ( using something to represent something it is not ; arbitrary relation between sign and thing signified) was mothers inventing names for children for more efficient childcare. This is a materialist hypothesis because it is in the material practice of reproduction . Necessity is the mother of invention is a folk aphorism statement of the materialism philosophical principle.

The Ancestor Veneration of Stone Age peoples , Hegel’s universal or Idea religions’ supernatural/ immortal gods /God, Natural ( non-supernatural) Soul are all Culture and Language ( collective consciousness) or knowledge passed from _dead_ generations to living generations. This gives those dead generations a certain ( but not literal ) immortality. ( with religions gods are literally and fictionally attributed immortality) . Passing knowledge down through generations is a unique human capacity made possible because of the displacement capacity that symbolic signs give to human communication.

( see https://owlcation.com/stem/The-difference-between-animal-and-human-communication on displacement; displacement is the ability to communicate regarding that which is not concrete, not immediately available to the senses , not in the present, but in the past , future or physically far away)

. Thereby knowledge accumulates over the generations as in the scientist Isaac Newton’s saying that he stood on the shoulders of giants ( Newton is venerating his ancestors). Newton is able to share the experiences of dead generations. No other species can do this .


Phylogenetic logic or Darwin’s Tree of Life Logic is a dialectical logic. In evolution Ancestral Genus characteristics are preserved , and new species characteristics naturally selected overcome ancestral characteristics. Evolution is a dialectical process , not surprisingly-smiles


In human evolution, Antoinette Blackwell’s critique of Darwin is that it is the “survival of the nicest” ( http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/09/survival-of-nice-and-fertile.html) - cooperation and balance between humans , not savage rivalry and competition, is selected for; especially cooperation and balance between females and males because heterosexual mating , not success in the struggle for existence, is the most powerful determinant of fitness ; fitness is success in passing on genotypes to future generations. This success is only indirectly determined by success in the struggle for existence; it is directly determined in reproduction, including child rearing . Furthermore, for humans , their original success in the struggle for existence through the 2.5 million years of the Stone Age is cooperative, not individual; it is from each according to ability for the group , to each according to need . So individual fighting ability effectiveness is shared with the group (not used against other humans in “competition and savage rivalry “, Blackwell’s words) .

It is Individual _courting_ ability that is selected for; therefore larger and smarter brains are selected for by courting success from Homo habilis through Homo sapiens; not so much by individual success in the struggle for existence.


Language and culture give humans a LaMarckian-Like adaptive mechanism: the adaptation is caused by the adaptive problem that it solves ; it does not arise randomly relative to the problem it solves as with selection for genetic mutations that arise randomly relative to the adaptive problems that they solve .

( http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/05/culturally-inherited-adaptations-give.html)

Why is written history a history of class struggles? Why is the principle of historical materialism true ? See my essay “Materialism, Necessity and Freedom : Rehearsal of The Fundamentals of Marxism“ “ http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/12/materialism-necessity-and-freedom.html

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/01/annotation-of-marxs-theses-on-feuerbach.html