Panel presentation on Engels’s _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the Stste _

https://youtu.be/ThjxYooK9cc By Charles Brown Here are some observations on the heroic revolutionary and humanitarian Frederick Engels’s book , _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State_; the origin of so-called Civilization or Cities .



First , let’s discuss and make some inferences from the terms in the title of Engels’s book .



The “Family” referred to is the _male supremacist _ Family. In the Chapter titled “The Family “ , Engels discusses the Mother Right family and it’s overthrow. The Mother Right family is an institution in which descent is traced through the female line . Engels says :


“The overthrow of mother right was the _world historical defeat of the female sex_ . The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of woman , especially conspicuous among the Greeks of the heroic and still more of the classical age , has gradually been palliated and glossed over , and sometimes clothed in a milder form ; in no sense has it been abolished. “


Clearly , Marxists following Engels’s implication here aim to abolish male supremacism in families as well as in income , social, political and economic power; just as we aim to abolish private property.



In the Preface to the First Edition to _The Origin_, Engels says : “ According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other.”


This would seem to be an advance over the formulation of the materialistic conception of _The Manifesto of the Communist Party _ - “ The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles “; in that The Manifesto’s formulation emphasizes the struggles of antagonistic productive classes as the determining factor in history; there is no reference to the reproduction of human beings / perpetuation of the species.



Next with reference to “Private Property “ it is the aim of Marxists to abolish it as per The Manifesto: “…the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. “


That is wise of us Marxists because private property is synonymous with greed ( the love of money ) , slavery -antagonistic economic classes , conquest of land and slaves ; and necessarily linked to the state , war ,conquest.



But for private property no state ; the State implies , in modus ponens sense of implication, Private Property; no Private Property , no State . Thus , we Marxists hold that upon abolition of Private Property , the State withers away . The State is not abolished directly, as anarchists hold .



As for the process of abolition of the male supremacist family, I’ll follow Engels’s speculative lead : “ Full freedom of marriage can therefore only be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual inclination.


And as sexual love is by its nature exclusive – although at present this exclusiveness is fully realized only in the woman – the marriage based on sexual love is by its nature individual marriage. We have seen how right Bachofen was in regarding the advance from group marriage to individual marriage as primarily due to the women. Only the step from pairing marriage to monogamy can be put down to the credit of the men, and historically the essence of this was to make the position of the women worse and the infidelities of the men easier. If now the economic considerations also disappear which made women put up with the habitual infidelity of their husbands – concern for their own means of existence and still more for their children’s future – then, according to all previous experience, the equality of woman thereby achieved will tend infinitely more to make men really monogamous than to make women polyandrous.


But what will quite certainly disappear from monogamy are all the features stamped upon it through its origin in property relations; these are, in the first place, supremacy of the man, and, secondly, indissolubility. The supremacy of the man in marriage is the simple consequence of his economic supremacy, and with the abolition of the latter will disappear of itself. The indissolubility of marriage is partly a consequence of the economic situation in which monogamy arose, partly tradition from the period when the connection between this economic situation and monogamy was not yet fully understood and was carried to extremes under a religious form. Today it is already broken through at a thousand points. If only the marriage based on love is moral, then also only the marriage in which love continues. But the intense emotion of individual sex-love varies very much in duration from one individual to another, especially among men, and if affection definitely comes to an end or is supplanted by a new passionate love, separation is a benefit for both partners as well as for society – only people will then be spared having to wade through the useless mire of a divorce case. What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual – and that will be the end of it.


Let us, however, return to Morgan, from whom we have moved a considerable distance. The historical investigation of the social institutions developed during the period of civilization goes beyond the limits of his book. How monogamy fares during this epoch, therefore, only occupies him very briefly. He, too, sees in the further development of the monogamous family a step forward, an approach to complete equality of the sexes, though he does not regard this goal as attained. But, he says:


When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system, and will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved greatly since the commencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still further improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the monogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the requirements of society ... it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor.( from _The Origin_ ) “



. After writing _The Origin_ , Engels saw fit to put an anthropological footnote in the famous first sentence of _The Manifesto of the Communist Party _ : “ The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles. 2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1881) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]”





There are no antagonistic classes in Stone Age societies . It is pre-private property. So, its history is not a history of class struggles over about 2.5 million years of the beginning of human history, pre-written history. There is relatively very slow change in society comparatively , _because_ there is no class struggle, the engine of change .



The Stone Age begins circa 2.5 million years ago with the fossil Homo habilis with whom are found stone tools made according to design, imagination, language ability, thinking in symbolic signs or words. However , there is no alphabetic writing . The first clear evidence of Alphabetic writing is approximately 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Later , It comes to Greece in the complex of the male supremacist family, private property and the state essayed in Engels’s book.



The Early Old Stone Age (Lower Paleolithic), did have full language or symbolic sign communication , even if not articulate speech , but in other media such as bodily sign language -dance , singing or partially articulate voice , clicks, music- rhythm , et al. The evidence of this is the stone tools made by design and other abilities , such as controlling fire ; then eventually picture writing .



The word “origin “ in the title of Engels’s book implies that Engels is hypothesizing that the male supremacist family , private property and the state did not exist before that origin , of course; that the Stone Age was so-called primitive communism. The evidence from European ethnohistories and ethnographies of Stone Age societies corroborate this most profound implication of the thesis of _The Origin_ and the late footnote to the first sentence of _The Manifesto _ , discussed above .


I have a blog item in which I argue the implication that if there was not male supremacy, private property and the state in the first 2.5 million years of the genus homo , and about 200,000 years of Homo sapiens , when we were “hardwired “ genetically , then these three institutions are not genetically based . Male supremacy, greed , and the war are not human _nature_ . So, in arguments over whether capitalist institutions are “just” human nature , we can argue that they are not ; based on evidence, data , facts . Communism is in harmony with our genetic nature . Here is my blog item :


http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2018/04/male-supremacy-greed-and-war-are-not-in.html


Male supremacy, greed and war are not in our genes The male supremacist family, private property (classes; greed), and the state ( special repressive apparatus ) arises as a complex together circa 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. They are still together in a complex that dominates the human species in 2022. Before that for the about 2.5 million years of the Stone Age ( true Civilization) there was gender equivalence, sharing and peace in the species; that's when we were substantially "hardwired " genetically . So, the implication is that male supremacy and class divided society and war are not in our genes.

Epigenetics is not inheritance of adaptive, acquired characteristics

By Charles Brown Epigenetics is not inheritance of adaptive , acquired characteristics; it's not LaMarkian. It is modification of an inheritance. The genes are an inheritance. Epigenetics modifies a gene, modifies its expression, modifies an inheritance. In the famous fictional hypothetical of LaMark, a giraffe acquires a long neck by stretching it to reach food high up , solving an adaptive problem; then the stretched neck , an acquired characteristic, is inherited by the giraffe's offspring . LaMarck's is natural selection theory . The stretched neck is selected for by the adaptive problem of food high up . In epigenetics, there is no adaptive problem solved by the gene suppression/expression. Furthermore, The modified gene is not inherited, nor is the phenotype of the modified gene inherited by the next generation. So, there is no inheritance of acquired characteristics. Biology text books declare that the genetic mutations that create phenotypes that solve an adaptive problem are random . What is meant by random here ? It is that the mutations are not caused by the adaptive problem they solve; the mutations arise _randomly_ relative to the adaptive problem they solve ; they arise coincidently with the problem they solve . In the discussions of epigenetics, there is no discussion of the epigenetic changes solving any adaptive problem or raising the fitness of the organism in which they occur. But if they happen to solve some adaptive problem , they still arise _randomly_ relative to that problem . The epigenetics change is not caused by the adaptive problem that it solves , as the giraffe neck stretching is caused by the adaptive problem of food being too high up. So, the epigenetic changes to phenotypes are the same as genetic mutation changes to phenotypes. Epigenetics are NOT a basis for a LaMarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics anymore than genetic mutations are . And genetic mutations are not LaMarckian. Furthermore, epigenetic markers are determined by genes ; they are not acquired characteristics; they are inherited characteristics; to the extent the epigenetics markers are inherited , they are inherited characteristics, not acquired characteristics. So, epigenetic changes cannot be the basis of inheritance of _acquired_ characteristics. On Jan 30, 2022, at 8:58 PM, Charles Brown wrote:  Inheritance of acquired characteristics/ LaMarkian fictional hypothesis of how the giraffe got a long neck is a natural selection theory . Epigenetics is not a theory of natural selection. LaMark’s giraffe stretches it’s neck to adapt to the problem in its environment of food being too high up. Long neck giraffes are thereby selected for over short neck giraffes . Epigenetic effects are not selected for, so they can’t be LaMarkian as they are not part of a selection theory . Furthermore, the giraffe stretches its neck in response to the problem it solves ; the adaptive problem causes its own solution. Epigenetic changes are not caused by an _adaptive problem-; so they are not LaMarkian on a second count . Finally, they are not inherited by the third generation, because by definition epigenetic effects do not change the underlying genetic structure. That’s three reasons that Epigenetic are not LaMarckian . They are not inherited , so they are not _inheritance_ of acquired characteristics. http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/02/inheritance-of-adaptive-acquired.html On Jan 30, 2022, at 6:19 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote:  Back in February of last year, we at Greater Boston Humanists had Professor Loren Graham speak on Lysenko in contemporary Russia.Aare Contemporary Russian advocates of Lysenkoism attempt to use recent findings in epigenetics to support Lysenkoan views of evolution. Professor Graham is quite familiar with Lysenko, Back in the seventies he interviewed Lysenko, and in his own words, he found Lysenko to be a rather scary figure. By the time that he was interviwed by Graham, Lysenko was stripped of most of the power and influence that he had under both Stalin and Khrushchev. During Stalin's day, Lysenko could, and did, have scientists who disagreed with him sent to labor camps, where many of them died. Most famously, the geneticist Nikolai Vavilov. https://www.meetup.com/GreaterBostonHumanists/events/276153581/?fbclid=IwAR2PF9AbjeKoxbiGcEmGPcWr_UnJMoZftMRyLpxZCffrwT3MHjRR_0slgJU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_synthesis_(20th_century)#Towards_a_replacement_synthesis numerous theorists had pointed out that the disciplines of embryological developmental theory, morphology, and ecology had been omitted. They noted that all such arguments amounted to a continuing desire to replace the modern synthesis with one that united "all biological fields of research related to evolution, adaptation, and diversity in a single theoretical framework."[104] They observed further that there are two groups of challenges to the way the modern synthesis viewed inheritance. The first is that other modes such as epigenetic inheritance, phenotypic plasticity, the Baldwin effect, and the maternal effect allow new characteristics to arise and be passed on and for the genes to catch up with the new adaptations later. The second is that all such mechanisms are part, not of an inheritance system, but a developmental system: the fundamen

Russian CP leader is a Christian communist

Zyuganov is a Christian communist. According to Zyuganov, Jesus Christ was the first communist, claiming the Bible may be read through a socialist perspective.[42] Zyuganov also stated that Communism does not need to antagonize the Christian Orthodox Church.

Zyuganov, numerous times, during his 1996 campaign spoke of his appreciation for the Russian Orthodox Church, seeking to earn the vote of religious voters.[4][19] In his first campaign visit to Siberia, Zyuganov proclaimed that he, "like Josef Stalin", had great respect for the Russian Orthodox Church.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Gennady_Zyuganov .

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/

On the History of Early Christianity First Published: In Die Neue Zeit, 1894–95. Translated: by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1957 from the newspaper. Transcribed: by director@marx.org. Proofread: Alvaro Miranda (August 2020). Early Christian relief I The history of early Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter, Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome. Both Christianity and the workers’ socialism preach forthcoming salvation from bondage and misery; Christianity places this salvation in a life beyond, after death, in heaven; socialism places it in this world, in a transformation of society. Both are persecuted and baited, their adherents are despised and made the objects of exclusive laws, the former as enemies of the human race, the latter as enemies of the state, enemies of religion, the family, social order. And in spite of all persecution, nay, even spurred on by it, they forge victoriously, irresistibly ahead. Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain. If, therefore, Prof. Anton Menger wonders in his Right to the Full Product of Labour why, with the enormous concentration of landownership under the Roman emperors and the boundless sufferings of the working class of the time, which was composed almost exclusively of slaves, “socialism did not follow the overthrow of the Roman Empire in the West,” it is because he cannot see that this “socialism” did in fact, as far as it was possible at the time, exist and even became dominant – in Christianity. Only this Christianity, as was bound to be the case in the historic conditions, did not want to accomplish the social transformation in this world, but beyond it, in heaven, in eternal life after death, in the impending “millennium.” The parallel between the two historic phenomena forces itself upon our attention as early as the Middle Ages in the first risings of the oppressed peasants and particularly of the town plebeians. These risings, like all mass movements of the Middle Ages, were bound to wear the mask of religion and appeared as the restoration of early Christianity from spreading degeneration. [1] But behind the religious exaltation there was every time a very tangible worldly interest. This appeared most splendidly in the organization of the Bohemian Taborites under Jan Žižka, of glorious memory; but this trait pervades the whole of the Middle Ages until it gradually fades away after the German Peasant War to revive again with the workingmen Communists after 1830. The French revolutionary Communists, as also in particular Weitling and his supporters, referred to early Christianity long before Renan’s words: “If I wanted to give you an idea of the early Christian communities I would tell you to look at a local section of the International Working Men’s Association.” This French man of letters, who by mutilating German criticism of the Bible in a manner unprecedented even in modern journalism composed the novel on church history Origines du Christianisme, did not know himself how much truth there was in the words just quoted. I should like to see the old “International” who can read, for example, the so-called Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians without old-wounds re-opening, at least in one respect. The whole epistle, from chapter eight onwards, echoes the eternal, and oh! so well-known complaint: les cotisations ne rentrent pas – contributions are not coming in! How many of the most zealous propagandists of the sixties would sympathizingly squeeze the hand of the author of that epistle, whoever he may be, and whisper: “So it was like that with you too!” We too – Corinthians were legion in our Association – can sing a song about contributions not coming in but tantalizing us as they floated elusively before our eyes. They were the famous “millions of the International”! One of our best sources on the first Christians is Lucian of Samosata, the Voltaire of classic antiquity, who was equally sceptic towards every kind of religious superstition and therefore bad neither pagan-religious nor political grounds to treat the Christians otherwise than as some other kind of religious community. On the contrary, he mocked them all for their superstition, those who prayed to Jupiter no less than those who prayed to Christ; from his shallow rationalistic point of view one sort of superstition was as stupid as the other. This in any case impartial witness relates among other things the life-story of a certain adventurous Peregrinus, Proteus by name, from Parium in Hellespontus. When a youth, this Peregrinus made his début in Armenia by committing fornication. He was caught in the act and lynched according to the custom of the country. He was fortunate enough to escape and after strangling his father in Parium he had to flee. “And so it happened” – I quote from Schott’s translation – “that he also came to hear of the astonishing learning of the Christians, with whose priests and scribes he had cultivated intercourse in Palestine. He made such progress in a short time that his teachers were like children compared with him. He became a prophet, an elder, a master of the synagogue, in a word, all in everything. He interpreted their writings and himself wrote a great number of works, so that finally people saw in him a superior being, let him lay down laws for them and made him their overseer (bishop) .... On that ground (i.e., because he was a Christian) Proteus was at length arrested by the authorities and thrown into prison ... As he thus lay in chains, the Christians, who saw in his capture a great misfortune, made all possible attempts to free him. But they did not succeed. Then they administered to him in all possible ways with the greatest solicitude. As early as daybreak one could see aged mothers, widows and young orphans crowding at the door of his prison; the most prominent among the Christians even bribed the warders and spent whole nights with him; they took their meals with them and read their holy books in his presence; briefly, the beloved Peregrinus” (he still went by that name) “was no less to them than a new Socrates. Envoys of Christian communities came to him even from towns in Asia Minor to lend him a helping hand, to console him and to testify in his favour in court. It is unbelievable how quick these people are to act whenever it is a question of their community; they immediately spare neither exertion nor expense. And thus from all sides money then poured in to Peregrinus so that his imprisonment became for him a source of great income. For the poor people persuaded themselves that they were immortal in body and in soul and that they would live for all eternity; that was why they scorned death and many of them even voluntarily written by his sacrificed their lives. Then their most prominent lawgiver convinced them that they would all be brothers one to another once they were converted, i.e., renounced the Greek gods, professed faith in the crucified sophist and lived according to his prescriptions. That is why they despise all material goods without distinction and own them in common – doctrines which they have accepted in good faith, without demonstration or proof. And when a skilful imposter who knows how to make clever use of circumstances comes to them he can manage to get rich in a short time and laugh up his sleeve over these simpletons. For the rest, Peregrinus was set free by him who was then prefect of Syria.” Then, after a few more adventures, “Our worthy set forth a second time” (from Parium) “on his peregrinations, the Christians’ good disposition standing him in lieu of money for his journey: they administered to his needs everywhere and never let him suffer want. He was fed for a time in this way. But then, when he violated the laws of the Christians too – I think he was caught eating of some forbidden food – they excommunicated him from their community.” What memories of youth come to my mind as I read this passage from Lucian! First of all the “prophet Albrecht” who from about 1840 literally plundered the Weitling communist communities in Switzerland for several years – a tall powerful man with a long beard who wandered on foot through Switzerland and gathered audiences for his mysterious new Gospel of world emancipation, but who, after all, seems to have been a tolerably harmless hoaxer and soon died. Then his not so harmless successor, “Doctor” Georg Kuhlmann from Holstein, who put to profit the time when Weitling was in prison to convert the communities of French Switzerland to his own Gospel, and for a time with such success that he even caught August Becker, by far the cleverest but also the biggest ne’er-do-well among them. This Kuhlmann used to deliver lectures to them which were published in Geneva in 1845 under the title The New World, or the Kingdom of the Spirit on Earth. Proclamation. In the introduction, supporters (probably August Becker) we read: “What was needed was a man on whose lips all our sufferings and all our longings and hopes, in a word, all that affects our time most profoundly should find expression ... This man, whom our time was waiting for, has come. He is the doctor Georg Kuhlmann from Holstein He has come forward with the doctrine of the new world or the kingdom of the spirit in reality.” I hardly need to add that this doctrine of the new world is nothing more than the most vulgar sentimental nonsense rendered in half-biblical expressions à la Lamennais and declaimed with prophet-like arrogance. But this did not prevent the good Weitlingers from carrying the swindler shoulder-high as the Asian Christians once did Peregrinus. They who were otherwise arch-democrats and extreme equalitarians to the extent of fostering ineradicable suspicion against any schoolmaster, journalist, and any man generally who was not a manual worker as being an “erudite” who was out to exploit them, let themselves be persuaded by the melodramatically arrayed Kuhlman that in the “New World” it would be the wisest of all, id est, Kuhlmann, who would regulate the distribution of pleasures and that therefore, even then, in the Old World, the disciples ought to bring pleasures by the bushel to that same wisest of all while they themselves should be content with crumbs. So Peregrinus Kuhlmann lived a splendid life of pleasure at the expense of the community – as long as it lasted. It did not last very long, of course; the growing murmurs of doubters and unbelievers and the menace of persecution by the Vaudois Government put an end to the “Kingdom of the Spirit” in Lausanne – Kuhlmann disappeared. Everybody who has known by experience the European working-class movement in its beginnings will remember dozens of similar examples. Today such extreme cases, at least in the large centres, have become impossible; but in remote districts where the movement has won new ground a small Peregrinus of this kind can still count on a temporary limited success. And just as all those who have nothing to look forward to from the official world or have come to the end of their tether with it – opponents of inoculation, supporters of abstemiousness, vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists, nature-healers, free-community preachers whose communities have fallen to pieces, authors of new theories on the origin of the universe, unsuccessful or unfortunate inventors, victims of real or imaginary injustice who are termed “good-for-nothing pettifoggers” by all bureaucracy, honest fools and dishonest swindlers – all throng to the working-class parties in all countries – so it was with the first Christians. All the elements which had been set free, i.e., at a loose end, by the dissolution of the old world came one after the other into the orbit Christianity as the only element that resisted that process of dissolution – for the very reason that it was the necessary product of that process – and that therefore persisted and grew while the other elements were but ephemeral flies. There was no fanaticism, no foolishness, no scheming that did not flock to the young Christian communities and did not at least for a time and in isolated places find attentive ears and willing believers. And like our first communist workers’ associations the early Christians too took with such unprecedented gullibility to anything which suited their purpose that we are not even sure that some fragment or other of the “great number of works” that Peregrinus wrote for Christianity did not find its way into our New Testament. II German criticism of the Bible, so far the only scientific basis of our knowledge of the history of early Christianity, followed a double tendency. The first tendency was that of the Tübingen school, in which, in the broad sense, D.F. Strauss must also be included. In critical inquiry it goes as far as a theological school can go. It admits that the four Gospels are not eyewitness accounts but only later adaptations of writings that have been lost; that no more than four of the Epistles attributed to the apostle Paul are authentic, etc. It strikes out of the historical narrations all miracles and contradictions, considering them as unacceptable; but from the rest it tries “to save what can be saved” and then its nature, that of a theological school, is very evident. Thus it enabled Renan, who bases himself mostly on it, to “save” still more by applying the same method and, moreover, to try to impose upon us as historically authenticated many New Testament accounts that are more than doubtful and, besides, a multitude of other legends about martyrs. In any case, all that the Tübingen school rejects as unhistorical or apocryphal can be considered as finally eliminated for science. The other tendency has but one representative – Bruno Bauer. His greatest service consists not merely in having given a pitiless criticism of the Gospels and the Epistles of the apostles, but in having for the first time seriously undertaken an inquiry into not only the Jewish and Greco-Alexandrian elements but the purely Greek and Greco-Roman elements that first opened for Christianity the career of a universal religion. The legend that Christianity arose ready and complete out of Judaism and, starting from Palestine, conquered the world with its dogma already defined in the main and its morals, has been untenable since Bruno Bauer; it can continue to vegetate only in the theological faculties and with people who wish “to keep religion alive for the people” even at the expense of science. The enormous influence which the Philonic school of Alexandria and Greco-Roman vulgar philosophy – Platonic and mainly Stoic – had on Christianity, which became the state religion under Constantine, is far from having been defined in detail, but its existence has been proved and that is primarily the achievement of Bruno Bauer: he laid the foundation of the proof that Christianity was not imported from outside – from Judea – into the Romano-Greek world and imposed on it, but that, at least in its world-religion form, it is that world’s own product. Bauer, of course, like all those who are fighting against deep-rooted prejudices, overreached his aim in this work. In order to define through literary sources, too, Philo’s and particularly Seneca’s influence on emerging Christianity and to show up the authors of the New Testament formally as downright plagiarists of those philosophers he had to place the appearance of the new religion about half a century later, to reject the opposing accounts of Roman historians and take extensive liberties with historiography in general. According to him Christianity as such appears only under the Flavians, the literature of the New Testament only under Hadrian, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. As a result the New Testament accounts of Jesus and his disciples are deprived for Bauer of any historical background: they are diluted in legends in which the phases of interior development and the moral struggles of the first communities are transferred to more or less fictitious persons. Not Galilee and Jerusalem, but Alexandria and Rome, according to Bauer, are the birthplaces of the new religion. If, therefore, the Tübingen school presents to us in the remains of the New Testament stories and literature that it left untouched the extreme maximum of what science today can still accept as disputable, Bruno Bauer presents to us maximum of what can be contested. The factual truth lies between these two limits. Whether that truth can be defined with the means at our disposal today is very doubtful. New discoveries, particularly in Rome, in the Orient, and above all in Egypt, will contribute more to this than any criticism. But we have in the New Testament a single book the time of the writing of which can be defined within a few months, which must have been written between June 67 and January or April 68; a book, consequently, which belongs to the very beginning of the Christian era and reflects with the most naive fidelity and in the corresponding idiomatic language the ideas of the beginning of that era. This book, therefore, in my opinion, is a far more important source from which to define what early Christianity really was than all the rest of the New Testament, which, in its present form, is of a far later date. This book is the so-called Revelation of John. And as this, apparently the most obscure book in the whole Bible, is moreover today, thanks to German criticism, the most comprehensible and the clearest, I shall give my readers an account of it. One needs but to look into this book in order to be convinced of the state of great exaltation not only of the author, but also of the “surrounding medium” in which he moved. Our “Revelation” is not the only one of its kind and time. From the year 164 before our era, when the first which has reached us, the so-called Book of Daniel, was written, up to about 250 of our era, the approximate date of Commodian’s Carmen, Renan counted no fewer than fifteen extant classical “Apocalypses,” not counting subsequent imitations. (I quote Renan because his book is also the best known by non-specialists and the most accessible.) That was a time when even in Rome and Greece and still more in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt an absolutely uncritical mixture of the crassest superstitions of the most varying peoples was indiscriminately accepted and complemented by pious deception and downright charlatanism; a time in which miracles, ecstasies, visions, apparitions, divining, gold-making, cabbala and other secret magic played a primary role. It was in that atmosphere, and, moreover, among a class of people who were more inclined than any other to listen to these supernatural fantasies, that Christianity arose. For did not the Christian gnostics in Egypt during the second century of our era engage extensively in alchemy and introduce alchemistic notions into their teachings, as the Leyden papyrus documents, among others, prove. And the Chaldean and Judean mathematici, who, according to Tacitus, were twice expelled from Rome for magic, once under Claudius and again under Vitellius, practised no other kind of geometry than the kind we shall find at the basis of John’s Revelation. To this we must add another thing. All the apocalypses attribute to themselves the right to deceive their readers. Not only were they written as a rule by quite different people than their alleged authors, and mostly by people who lived much later, for example the Book of Daniel, the Book of Henoch, the Apocalypses of Ezra, Baruch, Juda, etc., and the Sibylline books, but, as far as their main content is concerned, they prophesy only things that had already happened long before and were quite well known to the real author. Thus in the year 164, shortly before the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, the author of the Book of Daniel makes Daniel, who is supposed to have lived in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, prophesy the rise and fall of the Persian and Macedonian empires and the beginning of the Roman Empire, in order by this proof of his gift of prophecy to prepare the reader to accept the final prophecy that the people of Israel will overcome all hardships and finally be victorious. If therefore John’s Revelation were really the work of its alleged author it would be the only exception among all apocalyptic literature. The John who claims to be the author was, in any case, a man of great distinction among the Christians of Asia Minor. This is borne out by the tone of the message to the seven churches. Possibly he was the apostle John, whose historical existence, however, is not completely authenticated but is very probable. If this apostle was really the author, so much the better for our point of view. That would be the best confirmation that the Christianity of this book is real genuine early Christianity. Let it be noted in passing that, apparently, the Revelation was not written by the same author as the Gospel or the three Epistles which are also attributed to John. The Revelation consists of a series of visions. In the first Christ appears in the garb of a high priest, goes in the midst of seven candlesticks representing the seven churches of Asia and dictates to “John” messages to the seven “angels” of those churches. Here at the very beginning we see plainly the difference between this Christianity and Constantine’s universal religion formulated by the Council of Nicaea. The Trinity is not only unknown, it is even impossible. Instead of the one Holy Ghost of later we here have the “seven spirits of God” construed by the Rabbis from Isaiah XI, 2. Christ is the son of God, the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, by no means God himself or equal to God, but on the contrary, “the beginning of the creation of God,” hence an emanation of God, existing from all eternity but subordinate to God, like the above-mentioned seven spirits. In Chapter XV, 3 the martyrs in heaven sing “the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” glorifying God. Hence Christ here appears not only as subordinate to God but even, in a certain respect, on an equal footing with Moses. Christ is crucified in Jerusalem (XI, 8) but rises again (I, 5, 18); he is “the Lamb” that has been sacrificed for the sins of the world and with whose blood the faithful of all tongues and nations have been redeemed to God. Here we find the basic idea which enabled early Christianity to develop into a universal religion. All Semitic and European religions of that time shared the view that the gods offended by the actions of man could be propitiated by sacrifice; the first revolutionary basic idea (borrowed from the Philonic school) in Christianity was that by the one great voluntary sacrifice of a mediator the sins of all times and all men were atoned for once for all – in respect of the faithful. Thus the necessity of any further sacrifices was removed and with it the basis for a multitude of religious rites: but freedom from rites that made difficult or forbade intercourse with people of other confessions was the first condition of a universal religion. In spite of this the habit of sacrifice was so deeply rooted in the customs of peoples that Catholicism – which borrowed so much from paganism – found it appropriate to accommodate itself to this fact by the introduction of at least the symbolical sacrifice of the mass. On the other hand there is no trace whatever of the dogma of original sin in our book. But the most characteristic in these messages, as in the whole book, is that it never and nowhere occurs to the author to refer to himself and his co-believers by any other name than that of Jews. He reproaches the members of the sects in Smyrna and Philadelphia against whom he fulminates with the fact that they “say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan”; of those in Pergamos he says: they hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. Here it is therefore not a case of conscious Christians but of people who say they are Jews. Granted, their Judaism is a new stage of development of the earlier but for that very reason it is the only true one. Hence, when the saints appeared before the throne of God there came first 144,000 Jews, 12,000 from each tribe, and only after them the countless masses of heathens converted to this renovated Judaism. That was how little our author was aware in the year 69 of the Christian era that he represented quite a new phase in the development of a religion which was to become one of the most revolutionary elements in the history of the human mind. We therefore see that the Christianity of that time, which was still unaware of itself, was as different as heaven from earth from the later dogmatically fixed universal religion of the Nicene Council; one cannot be recognized in the other. Here we have neither the dogma nor the morals of later Christianity but instead a feeling that one is struggling against the whole world and that the struggle will be a victorious one; an eagerness for the struggle and a certainty of victory which are totally lacking in Christians of today and which are to be found in our time only at the other pole of society, among the Socialists. In fact, the struggle against a world that at the beginning was superior in force, and at the same time against the novators themselves, is common to the early Christians and the Socialists. Neither of these two great movements were made by leaders or prophets – although there are prophets enough among both of them – they are mass movements. And mass movements are bound to be confused at the beginning; confused because the thinking of the masses at first moves among contradictions, lack of clarity and lack of cohesion, and also because of the role that prophets still play in them at the beginning. This confusion is to be seen in the formation of numerous sects which fight against one another with at least the same zeal as against the common external enemy. So it was with early Christianity, so it was in the beginning of the socialist movement, no matter how much that worried the well-meaning worthies who preached unity where no unity was possible.

Distribution of Unpaid Labour with Wimen’s Movement into the Workforce

https://www.midwesternmarx.com/youth-league/the-distribution-of-unpaid-labour-with-womens-movement-into-the-workforce-by-aidan-ulrich 1/5/2022 The Distribution of Unpaid Labour with Women’s Movement into the Workforce. By: Aidan Ulrich 0 COMMENTS Picture During World War II, many North American women were put in the workforce for the first time. Middle-class housewives felt financial independence from their husbands and saw the opportunity of renegotiating the distribution of unfulfilling housework. After the war, the women who took up these jobs were expected to return to their previous lives as housewives; however, dissatisfaction with this change generated the second-wave feminist call for a return to the workplace. Since then, the number of paid working women has risen, but how did this movement of North American women into the workforce affect their part in domestic labour? The results were far from ideal. The movement ignored the conditions of racialized women which were fundamentally different from the white middle-class framing of the movement (Rio), and women are still left with the majority of unpaid labour alongside new forms of exploitation in the economy (Bianchi et al.). The second wave of feminism brought more women into the paid economy to alleviate household exploitation but failed due to the movement’s lack of intersectionality and a failure to foresee how the growing workforce would allow neoliberal capitalism to further exploitation. The ideal outcomes of receiving a paid job failed in part due to many second-wave feminists treating the conditions of unpaid labour for white middle-class women as universal for all North American women (Rio). Many African American women were not burdened by unpaid labour; rather, they longed for the ability to do it. Black women were often paid domestic labourers who would have wished to act as caregivers for their own children and work in their own homes instead of being paid to work in the houses of predominately white families, but their economic position made this impossible (Rio). Framing unpaid labour as the locus of exploitation excludes the many women who have only known labour oppression within paid work. North American Black women often never faced a husband who would unfairly divide household labour, since economic opportunities meant many Black women could not get married (Rio). This trend continues today; in 2018, only 26% of Black women from the United States were married, while 46% of all women were married (“Black Women Statistics”). Having an income independent of a man is not used as a tool of independence from husbands for many Black women who could never be married or chose not to be. The large number of women gaining paid work had no effect on Black women’s part in unpaid labour, who were already working low-paying jobs (Rio). Examining the effects of “women’s movement into the workforce” is dishonest to a certain extent to the working-class women who were always exploited in the economy, and the only meaningful change of women’s work was for middle-class citizens. Not only was the movement built upon a universalization of white women’s experience, but the goal to equalize unpaid labour was not met for most women. The middle-class women who moved away from housewife positions did see a more equitable distribution of unpaid labour in the household, but the results were underwhelming. When women’s paid labour participation increased, to some extent, men increased their part in household work in a nuclear family model (Bianchi et al.). A more equitable division of household labour is predicted to occur with women in the workforce due to the bargaining power narrative (Rio). This narrative predicts that paid work increases women’s economic power, ending the reliance on men’s earnings, which would give women the ability to bargain with husbands for a fairer share of unpaid work around the house (Rio). This model excludes the lower-class women and unmarried who are burdened with both housework and paid labour (Rio). Despite the exclusiveness of the model, overall trends point to less household labour for women and more for men. In 1965, it is estimated that American women performed 6.1 times the weekly hours of housework compared to men, and in 2009-2010, American women did approximately 1.6 times that of men, while married women do 1.7 times more than their husbands (Bianchi et al.). Married mothers from the United States are worse off, estimated to work nearly twice as much on housework when compared to married fathers in 2009-2010 (Bianchi et al.). Without a doubt the change is substantial, but considering the added labour of a paid job, there is a double burden of labour for the women who maintain the majority of unpaid work. For the middle-class women who moved into the labour force, the sizeable changes in unpaid labour distribution did not live up to the intended outcomes of the movement, and further still, many of these middle-class families would find themselves in worse conditions resembling that of the lower classes. North American middle-class families now usually require two working parents to support a family, meaning that women have no choice but to work paid labour, and they often lack the time to do household work, similar to the overburdened conditions of racialized women since before the second wave of feminism (Rio). There has been falling average household incomes since 2000, meaning more paid work is required of both parents in a nuclear family, leaving little time for household unpaid work, even with an equitable distribution of labour (Craig). Rather than a source of liberation, women in the workforce turned into a necessary site of additional exploitation for many women who would wish to have more time to do the unpaid work around the house. The larger labour force has only increased exploitation as women fought to be exploited alongside men rather than fight against the system itself. (Azmanova). Women working paid jobs as a method to fight exploitation does not address the deeper problems of the capitalist market, and because of this, only serves to solve the gendered distribution of labour, thus ignoring the alienating and unfulfilling work itself. (Azmanova). Nuclear families with two working adults often now rely on cheap commodities and hired labourers to assist in the household work, but this requires money, further entrenching the need for more paid working hours to cover the costs, causing a cycle where the “needs of the time-poor households are met through the labour of the money-poor” (Huws). The distribution of household labour has thus changed form with parts of it opened to the market for people, usually racialized minorities, to perform tasks that households no longer have the time to do. (Huws). Unpaid work is still very gendered and unequal (Bianchi et al.), and when the labour is done by the market as in the case of paid labourers, they are usually underpaid (Huws). The movement of women into work did not bring about a fair distribution of unpaid work and failed to change the nature of the labour itself. ​Universalizing the conditions of white middle-class families and failing to reach into the deeper problems associated with capitalist labour meant the issues of household work were not solved, only partly improving the gendered aspect of unpaid work. Lower-class women, largely composed of marginalized minority groups, have had to work throughout history in overburdened households (Rio), and for the middle-class women who acted as housewives, moving to paid labour brought a lower portion of housework, but still left them with an overburden of work overall (Bianchi et al.). The methods of second-wave feminism dealt solely with the distribution of flawed labour, failing to address the problems with the labour itself (Huws). A new approach is needed to assist the overworked modern individual and consider the different conditions of women with an intersectional lens. ​THE SOLUTION Families should continue to work towards a fair distribution of unpaid labour, but this alone cannot help the time-poor families who cannot do the much-needed housework after a full-time shift, nor can an ungendered distribution help single-parent families and unmarried individuals who must look after the work themselves. Bargaining out of housework made some important gains in unpaid work distribution, but the nuclear family model has increasingly shrunk, making distributive tactics more irrelevant than ever. A new organization of unpaid labour itself must be proposed to go beyond the temporary respite given with equitable work distribution, and the solution must be applicable to all low-class citizens, racialized groups, and adults outside the nuclear family model. ​Many economically stable people seek market alternatives to perform household labour for them since they lack the time (Huws), but this option is not affordable for most households. Market alternatives could successfully lessen labour burdens if they are made affordable, and the labourers working in other households are not performing exploitative labour themselves. This may be achieved with a public-sector labour force that could perform unpaid labour in a short amount of time using specialized skills and modern technology. This transformation of household work must meet two conditions for it to improve upon current conditions: labourers in the field must be paid well, and it must be readily available to all households. Activist Angela Y. Davis believes such an institution would be difficult to form under the conditions of capitalism, as industrialized housework implies expensive subsidies to make it affordable, and it is overall an unprofitable enterprise (Davis 223). Government subsidies would reflect a recognition of the importance of unpaid labour, which it undoubtedly is since it makes up over half of Gross Domestic Product (Craig). Unfortunately, all that is not profitable is often disregarded in a capitalist economy; for a subsidized non-profit labour force to succeed, there also must be an ideological change in what constitutes valuable labour. A productive change in economic thinking must entail an equal appreciation of all work, but this contradicts the profit motive of capitalism which presupposes a workforce of individuals raised with unpaid labour and sustained with free household work. Raising children takes massive amounts of time and money, and it is extremely valuable to the economy since it creates labourers who will later work in markets. The value of childcare must also be reaffirmed and acted upon with childcare supports, or even socialized childcare. These programs require a large public sector without a profit motive which is opposed to neoliberalist goals of privatizing labour wherever possible, implying a larger struggle is needed against neoliberal ideology. A new focus on meeting collective needs rather than fulfilling profit goals would alleviate the overburdened workers of today. With public institutions performing unpaid labour efficiently, the problems of overworked women can be solved. Renegotiating housework brought only minimal gains for middle-class women whose unpaid workload was somewhat lessened, but with falling household incomes, both parents in nuclear families were forced to work outside the house and now lack the time for unpaid work. These conditions are mirrored by the working-class individuals throughout history who felt the overburden of work. Equitable distribution of housework applies only to a select family model and does not propose a solution for the overwhelming labour burden of modern times. Socialized assistance would provide an end to inefficient individual housework with the recognition of unpaid labour’s value, and it would bring a non-exploitative institution to increase leisure time without excluding racialized groups and lower-class people. Works Cited ​ Azmanova, Albena. “Empowerment as Surrender: How Women Lost the Battle for Emancipation as They Won Equality and Inclusion.” ProQuest, vol. 83, no. 3, 2016, pp. 749–776., https://www.proquest.com/docview/1848814138?accountid=14739&forcedol =true&pq-origsite=primo&forcedol=true. Bianchi, S. M., et al. “Housework: Who Did, Does or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?” Social Forces, vol. 91, no. 1, 13 Sept. 2012, pp. 55–63., https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sos120. “Black Women Statistics.” BlackDemographics.com, 3 Sept. 2021, https://blackdemographics.com/population/black-women-statistics/. Craig, Lyn. “Coronavirus, Domestic Labour and Care: Gendered Roles Locked Down.” Journal of Sociology, vol. 56, no. 4, 24 July 2020, pp. 684–692., https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783320942413. Davis, Angela Yvonne. Women, Race and Class. Vintage Books, 1983. Huws, Ursula. “The Hassle of Housework: Digitalisation and the Commodification of Domestic Labour.” Feminist Review, vol. 123, no. 1, 10 Dec. 2019, pp. 8–23., https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778919879725. Rio, Cecilia. “Whiteness in Feminist Economics: The Situation of Race in Bargaining Models of the Household.” Critical Sociology, vol. 38, no. 5, 7 Dec. 2011, pp. 669–685., https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920511423724. Author Aidan Ulrich has been interested in marxist thought from a young age and is currently attending the University of Saskatchewan. Aidan is majoring in political studies. Archives January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 SHARE 0 COMMENTS Leave a Reply. DETAILS

Shortening of the work-day is the realm of freedom’s basic prerequisite

[Marxism-Thaxis] "The shortening of the working-day is its ( the true realm of freedom's), basic prerequisite." Charles Brown Fri, 11 Apr 2014 06:24:29 -0700 "The shortening of the working-day is its ( the true realm of freedom's), basic prerequisite." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm Hurray for May Day ! The Haymarketters sought a shortening of the work-day. http://www.art.com/products/p22113302828/product.htm... A Garland for May Day, 1895 Giclee Print by Walter Crane at Art.com www.art.com

Some of the Slogans on A Garland for May Day: Solidarity of Labor; Production for use not for profit; No Child Toilers; Shorter Working Day, A Longer Life; Cooperation and Emulation, not Competition; Hope in Work and Joy in Leisure; Art and Enjoyment for All; A Common Wealth when Wealth in Common; Socialism means the Most Helpful, Happy Life for All. The Cause of Labor is the Hope of the World. CB "In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis

What is anthropology about ?

Subject: OVERVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY ; WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ? OVERVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY ; WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ?

By Professor Charles D. Brown , Esq.

a" Wayne County Community College’s Ant 152 introduces students to the four classical branches of anthropology. Physical anthropology discovers the truth of the biological theory and facts of human evolutionary origins and human physical diversity. Archaeology and ethnology explore the development of culture through the Truly Civilized Stone Age and so-called Civilization, examining artifacts, material culture, fossil remains , etc. and examining theories about modes of production from cooperative/egalitarian foraging and horticulture to large scale domestication of plants and animals with private property, greed, economic classes , the state male supremacy . Ethnology or Socio-cultural anthropology , also gives an understanding of diverse customs , traditions; and religions , economic classes, nations and race in the present historical era of capitalism and globalism. Linguistic anthropology investigates language or symbolic communication , like culture, an exclusive human capacity enabling us to share knowledge and experience with people remote from us in time and space; and like culture , shaping our worldviews and perception and interpretation of events.

Anthropology is the study of human beings in all times and place; study that is historical , systematic and objective, that is to say scientific, based on logical consideration and testing of material evidence, and natural theories ; from 100's of thousands of years ago to the present; from Detroit to the other ends of the Earth. This is in contrast with understanding humans based on whims, superstition, untested intuition , uncritical faith or unquestioned authority or supernatural beings. It is an understanding of human societies and individuals biologically and historically, that is as they have changed and developed ,evolved ,over time and many generations of individual selves. It seeks to be truly holistic in approach and scope , looking for the _whole_ truth, nothing but the truth. It welcomes contributions to its understanding of people from all the other academic disciplines, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. It even considers respectfully and sympathetically systems of thought and belief from cultures very different than our own. In fact , learning the culture or customs, beliefs , ideas, religions of foreign and other peoples is the original focus of anthropology in contrast to sociology, psychology and history , the other social sciences , and literature and the arts, which focus on Western and European society's ways of being. In this regard , it is important to be honest and confess that anthropology and ethnology was often a "handmaiden" of European colonialism and imperialism, especially in its beginning. Anthropology and ethnology has significantly , though not completely, overthrown that legacy today and, predominantly champions the interests of the foreign peoples who are the main subjects of its study. Also, many anthropologists today study American and European culture, with applied anthropology to practical problems "at home" a major section of the discipline today. There is a sense in which sociology is the anthropology of capitalist societies .

Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding of humanity is the concept of _culture_, or the symbolic nature of human communication and social organization. Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas. Culture and language provided the human species with an enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage in the tens of thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the whole globe, again to a greater extent than any other phylum Chordata species; almist any other animal species ? This is because it made humans extremely socially interconnected both with living other humans so that human labor and methods of physical survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more importantly, socially connected to dead generations of the species through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor veneration and respect for elders , myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations' experiences. Two heads are better than one in the struggles for survival and snuggles for reproduction By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge science of many generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the stone age in prehistoric times over the course of 100's of thousands of years and starting going back 2.5 million of years with the species Homo habilis . Again , this enormous social networking within living generations and between living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture and language and symbolic communication , the _differentia specifica_ of the human species.

Another special contribution of anthropology to our wisdom is the idea of ethnocentrism or anti-ethnocentrism; and the concept of culture-bound. Ethnocentrism is the belief that the ways of one's own culture are the only proper and moral ones. It is a form of racism and xenophobia. Culture-bound ideas are theories about the world and reality based on the assumptions and values of one's own culture. A big part of the study of anthropology is to broaden one's scope , make one less parochial , open one's mind to a wider world of people. In a way, anthropology is theoretical world travel, that is going other places without having to actually go there physically; and trying on different ways of thinking about the world; with the effect that when one looks back at oneself, one gains a more objective and full understanding one's own culture, philosophy, beliefs, society, etc. It can give us a gift of seeing ourselves as others see us, as the poet once wished for. The growth of "applied anthropology" ( "applied" to domestic or Western society) is an institutional development within the discipline expressing this metaphor of looking at ourselves through the eyes of others.

Thus, if some of the ways of anthropology are a bit foreign to you , I hope you will use this course as an opportunity to step out of your intellectual comfort zone and think a little differently than you usually do; a chance to "travel" and broaden your scope without having to go through all the physical discomforts and annoyances of an actual trip abroad. Travel in a "theoretical time machine "through evolution. Hopefully it will give you some new knowledge about your humanity and fundamental commonality with all humans from all times and places; and encourage you to respect some of the differences you might have with others; you might even decide to adopt some of other people's culture a bit. On the other hand, you might understand yourself and your history and culture better and be happier with whom you are. Finally , I add a fifth and sixth sub fields to the conventional 4 : philosophical anthropology raising questions like "What is life ? " , "What is human life and human nature ?", etc. 5: Anthropological psychology Anthropological psychology because psychology is study of the Individual , the Self, that idol of American culture and symbolic inheritance . So, learning about individuals is automatically more relevant to individual student's interests , which is of course , especially in themSELVES. Anthropological Psychology ,is especially in opposition to evolutionary psychology, socio/biology , all social phony "darwinisms". Anthropological psychology places emphasis on culture , language and inter and intra - generational memories in the psyches and personalities of individual humans : the "We" in the "I". The human "I " is more "We" than other animal species' "I"'s BUT NOT ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED BY THE "WE. "; not absolutely _socially_ constructed. What is unique about the individual human psyche as compared to other primate or mammal individual's psyches , minds, brains , memories, perceptions ? The human difference is so many of our memories are symbols , words, drawings , music, dance. Symbolic communication The whole collection of memories held in our INDIVIDUAL minds: Each human individual has her WHOLE language and culture and symbols in her MEMORY ; and memories directly imitative ( not symbolic) of sensations or perceptions of the world outside her individual mind, of objective reality . We have memories. We also have direct sensation of our immediate , here and now , surroundings . BUT most of the time that we see or hear or smell or touch something or somethings there must right way come to our mind a MEMORY of it or something like it or a SYMBOL OF IT. at the same time. Why ?Because it's familiar . We recognize it. Otherwise we would constantly feel lost . Every new sensation would be strange . A main current new thought for me here is to focus on memories. Most thought is memories not perceptions and sensations of your individual external surroundings However this is true of all animals ! All individual animals have most of their thoughts as MEMORIES ! Chimps have lots of picture similar images proportionately . We have proportionately more symbolic memories: words , sentences, conversations . Anthropological Psychology : Self On the Self, I'd say every individual animal has an instinct of SELF-preservation , and therefore a self. Every brain is a Self. Humans have a personality , which is a cultural , symbolic self, with a name; an individual . It is socially constructed in association with other people; in communication between brains. The Self is in the brain, consisting of memories in brain cells. Language is in brain cells, memory cells. When you say "you" exist in language , that means "you" exist in brain cells, memory cells specifically. WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ? Our textbook_The Essence of Anthropology_, at page defines Anthropology as the study of humankind in all times and places, systematically and objectively, a very good definition. More candidly anthropologists believe that we have a profound understanding of the truth about human societies and Individuals biologically, historically and scientifically. There is but one science, the science of history. Anthropology is the life science of human beings; the natural and cultural history of the species Homo sapiens. Studying "all" of something , the whole or holistically, systematically and objectively is scientific study and knowledge , because the truth must be the whole truth. So, to say anthropology is open to evidence of human endeavor from wherever it might be is to declare anthropology has a scientific approach to knowledge of the truth. Following the motto of the poet Terrance: Nothing human is alien to anthropology , so to speak. Originally , anthropology specialized among the academic disciplines in studying human beings in times and places remote from the present and the West, traveling far in time and space , expanding the representative quality and quantity of the sample of the social sciences, such as they were , of evidence on human activity and behavior , bodily motion.. Anthropology aimed in part to expand the sample of data Western academe had on humans in a scientific endeavor to represent more fully the whole of humanity , "all" of the object of study, that is humans in _all_ times and _all_ places, not just the history of Europe - a correct scientific mission. One main and unique contribution of anthropology in expanding the sample of human life studied by modern science, including natural history, is the study of early humans and humans' immediate ancestor species in the evolutionary origin of the species _homo sapiens_. This evidence and sample represent at a minimum 200,000 years of human society and as much as 2.5 million years when the whole of the genus _homo_ is considered human society, that the human species originates with _Homo habilis_ and _Homo erectus_. "_Sapiens_" means "wise" In Latin. Homo sapiens Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise being" ) What is culture, language or _symbolic_ communication ? For anthropology, culture, language or symbolic communication are the unique species characteristic of _Homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture" is another word for "wisdom", from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions, beliefs, religion, spirituality _passed down through many generations that make us "wise" in so many ways, certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit" Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. That is successful in the Darwinian struggles to increase the species population. Since the advent about 6,000 years ago of so-called civilization, as you have no doubt heard it referred to a, sometimes it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture , stone tools or controlling fire made through culture or symbolic or imaginary thinking and communication, etc, raising our species fitness. This is evidenced by _Homo sapiens_ expanding in population and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the earth , out of what is now named Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging and kinship organized societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species ' existence, 95% or more. The first human societies had an extraordinarily high survival need to be able to rely on each other at levels of solidarity that we cannot even imagine. The intensity of the network of social connections of a band of 25 to 100 people living in the ecological food chain location close to the one described in our textbook _Man the Hunted_ , Chapter 4, would almost constitute a new level of organic organization and integrity above individual bodies or selves. Ancient kinship/family/culture /symbolic communication systems from around 2.5 million years ago ( the beginning of the Truly Civilized Stone Age were almost super-organic bodies; the human social group was as a harmonious multi-individual Body, organism. The Individual human bodies, Selves, were very frail and weak in contrast with the the bodies of the field of predators they were prey for . The dominance of the food chain that humans, ultimately reached even in the Stone Age with relatively _frail_ individual bodies. could only be reached by super-social , super internally-cooperative, super-intra-species harmonious. This was only possible with symbolic communication both within a living generation and across generations, It is clear to me that natural selection , in the classical Darwinian sense, elected hominin groups with policies and practices of of "love thy neighbor as thyself " and "charity" over those that might have derived principles of "selfishness and greed", if there were any in the Stone Age before Civilization. Anthropology demonstrates its holistic/ whole truth, and thereby scientific method of study by specialization into sub-disciplines of cultural anthropology, physical or biological anthropology, archaeology and linguistics. Paleoontological anthropology, study of early and proto-humans, is something of a combination of biological anthropology and archaeology. Clearly , the pre-eminent and world changing natural historian Charles Darwin is an initiator of paleontological anthropology with his book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex ( although for some reason anthopology classes to not name Darwin's book as the beginning of physical anthropology; I think it is) By the title to his book, Darwin may have been signaling a correction to the popular distortions of his theory which imply that "survival of the toughest warriors" rather than the "gentlest lovers" are the fittest and selected for naturally. Or as Antoinette Blackwell, excellent Darwinist theoretician termed it, cooperation and balance was selected for over competition and savage rivalry, beyond a reasonable doubt. ( The Sexes Throughout Nature is a book written by Antoinette Brown Blackwell, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1875. ) Culture is founded in kinship; symbolic communication across generations; progeny care/ancestor "worship" Please critique and challenge the following statement: In Darwin's theory of natural selection concerning living beings, the "struggle" in the struggle for existence, to live, is not between Individual Selves of the same species to the point of Individual Bodies, somebodies,of the same species killing each other except very rarely. Most of the deaths before passing on genes to the next generation, are due to failures in struggles with some Individual Body of _another_ species., plant and animal, as predator and prey; or struggle against bad weather, heat exhaustion, sunburn It is easy to see how some people get a misconception of Darwinian natural selection because it _is_ posed in most of it prime formulations with a sort of emphasis on the fact of indirect "competition" in the sense that for the typical bodily form of a species to change under Darwin's theory, some members with genes that change species typical traits must more successfully pass them on than members with species typical traits over successive generations until the new trait is universal and the old typical trait is extinct. But this does not necessarily or even conventionally imply direct physical conflict between Individuals of the two types but the same species in the day-to-day struggle for existence to survive as Individual Bodies. This is demonstrated by the famous anthropological micro-evolutionary study of sickle cell genes on pages 44 to 46 of _The Essence of Anthropology_. There is no direct physical competition between the people of the various genotypes with different fitnesses in the different environments in the study. It is not an Individual , but a species, a group of the same type who "evolve", "adapt" or "survive". Individuals must live their individual life long enough to reproduce for the species to survive. However, every individual eventually dies. "Survival" of the individual means living long enough to pass on genes or a geno-type to the future generations. If mutated genes, changed geno-type, are passed on, there is a potential unit of evolution between the parent and the offspring. That is evolution occurs between Individuals of different generations, not in one Individual Self. If the mutated genotype results in a phenol-typical trait that is adaptive in some significant way, it may become an evolutionary change by the species through several individuals. An Individual organism, Some Body, has an instinct for self-preservation. This is said to be the first law of nature. This is an instinct to live as long as possible before the inevitable end, as all animals are mortal. Every Individual Some Body has a lifetime or ontogeny in which it is born, develops, exists and dies. The development of an Individual overtime is not evolution , but ontogeny. Significantly, the institution of war which arises in human history with so-called civilization around 6,000 years ago involves human Individuals violating their natural instinct of self-preservation. Going into battle is to risk one's individual life for a social value of some type, nationalism or religion, not the exercise of a non-existent "instinct of aggression". Humans do not even eat those they kill in war ( joke) , another unnatural aspect. No animal species kills without the motive of getting food.

Anthropological comments on Carlos Garrido’s “ From Hegel’s Philosophy of History to Marx’s Historical Materialism

Anthropological comments on Carlos Garrido's video (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwd9pGjsVaM) From Hegel’s Philosophy of History to Marxist Historical Materialism” By Charles Brown First let me point out ideas and Hegel’s Idea are material . Ideas are material ; they are the motion of neurons in the brain, synapses . ( There is no mind -body problem; minds are part of the body , the brain) However , that is not the most important point of agreement I have with what you say. My hypothesis is that Hegel’s Idea ( and Ilyenkov’s Ideal; Hegel’s Spirit, God, Mind , even Plato’s Ideas ) is the anthropological concept of Language -Culture-Tradition-Custom or Symbolic Communication -Behavior -Inheritance . When I think , I talk to myself silently _in words _; as when I silently read to myself . Ideas are words or symbolic signs -using something to represent something that they are not. My thoughts are not what they think about . With humans , symbolic signs-words guide most of our behavior ( practice, action , activity, bodily motion ) ; some behavior is guided by genetically based instincts like hunger. Symbolic signs are learned from other humans’ brains , nurture ; instincts are genetic in origin, nature . For humans , learning langusge and culture is instinctive . Each individual adult human brain has its whole Language -Culture in its memory. It has Hegel’s whole Idea ( Mind , Spirit , God) in its memory. So, when Hegel says the Idea alienates or externalizes itself as Nature, or Subject unites with Object in practice, he is saying Language-Words ( ideas are words) guide Culture ( culture is behavior, practice by a human , bodily motion outside of the brain but guided by the brain’s ideas ) . Since ideas are words or symbolic signs which represent something that they are not , culture is a unity of something with something it is not , a unity of opposites or differences. Hegel is talking about a Language -Culture in its stasis or fixity ; Marx is talking about how a Language-Culture system _ changes _. It changes because of class struggles which is Hegelian theory in that there are contradictions in class struggle . ( This by the way is why Culture-the Idea does not change much in the Stone Age compared with so-called Civilization ; because there were no class struggles then) . Now Language-Culture ( Symbolic Communication and Behavior) , the Idea , are inherited from dead generations of our species. By this dead generations gain a figurative immortality; their behaviors are duplicated in future generations. ( Newton stood on the shoulders of giants , past generations of physicists) Marx alludes to this in the following famous passage from The 18th Brumaire: “ Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Notice that because Marx is interested in change , revolution, he considers Culture-the Idea as a nightmare holding back change . And on a fundamental point he makes against Hegel , he is correct in that the current Idea -Culture was originally the product of practice of past Ideas contradicting an environment and being changed by the contradiction. (This is the sense in which Hegel’s Idea is a “reflection “ or made by objective reality ). To change something , including an Idea, is to make another something , something new. This was true both of ideas in the Stone Age and in Civilization. Homo erectus invented ideas on control of fire because of some contradiction in the struggle for existence, like meat tough to chew or cold weather. Same with the invention of large scale agriculture techniques as part of the Culture-Idea ; which originated slavery ; with slavery there originated class struggle contradictions causing changes in the Idea as described in Marx’s famous Being determines Consciousness ( but rarely in revolutions, “ punctuations in long term equilibria “, analogous to Stephen Jay Gould’s idea concerning evolution) . Marx’s aphorism might be better said “In revolutionary punctuations , Changes in Being determine changes in Consciousness ( I just thought of that ).” Most of the time in history there is reciprocal determination; Consciousness determines behavior in Being , and vice versa . Hegel seems to think that the Idea is self-changing . But Ideas are formal logic’s based on the principle of identity, abjuring contradictions . So, it is the change in the Idea that _reflects_ changes caused by contradictions with objective reality , not contradictions in the Idea itself . We are using language when we say “A is A. “ It is a violation of grammatical rules , definitions, to say “A is not A. “ But that is language failing to fully reflect objective reality where all “A’s” change or become “not A’s.” On another point , you mention that for Hegel the pure Idea is the same as Nothing. The word “Nothing “ caught my attention, because of the way I define Imagination to my students. Recall my definition of a symbolic sign as using something to represent something it is not ; the words “Charles Brown” are not me but used to represent me. I then define Imagination as using something to represent Nothing (!) . The words “Micky Mouse “ or “Hamlet “ are used to represent Nothing , because Micky Mouse and Hamlet do not exist. This is true of all the words of fiction, stories because they are imaginary . It’s true of an architect’s blueprints , because the plan doesn’t exist yet . It represents Nothing objective . Recall Marx distinguishing the labor of a human from that of a bee or a spider by the human imagining her product before producing it . Imagination is symbolic sign thinking , the uniquely human form of thought. Imagination is the human method of invention ; rearrangement of memories of experiences in objective reality . Thanks again , Comrade, for teaching me the rational kernel of Hegel that Marx and Engels may have overlooked; and inspiring me to see how the sciences of anthropology and linguistics, their concepts of culture and language , confirm and explain the truths in the thinking of Hegel, Marx and Engels. PS: Thinking Anthropologically about Plato’s Realm of Reality as Ideas, I hypothesize that Greek philosophy originates in the era of the origin of the male supremacist family, private property and the state ( as per chapter on Greece in Engels’s book); and Alphabetic writing originates in Greece in this complex of so-called Civilization. I’m thinking that the people in Plato’s cave only have oral language , speech , poets , oracles and picture-drawing artists as their wise people . Plato’s is saying that those , like him outside of the cave , who are building up the body of Culture _in alphabetic writing _ have a more complete , a more real comprehension of objective reality , because writing can record , preserve and pass on to future generations and accumulate more Ideas about experience than oral memorizing and inheritance. Students writing notes can record more than oral poets memorizing . Plato represents the alphabetic writing revolution in Greece. The Academy is a big Library . Alexander robbed the _library_ in Alexandria and gave books to Aristotle.

Annotation of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach

by Charles Brown

CB: Theses 11 can also be number 1, as the theme through all others.

11 Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

CB : Feuerbach and Hegel interpreted , proposed theoretical understandings of , the human world without proposing adequate methods of change . Hegel seems to think that the Idea is self-changing . Hegel’s practice is behavior, activity _ in accord_ with the Idea ( Customs-Culture/ Words-Language) . Marx’s practice is to change the Idea/Customs/ Society /the Human World. Marx seeks to do this by having his philosophy grip masses and become a material force .

1 The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice [Praxis] is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance [Erscheinungsform][1]. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.

CB: This is Marx’s materialist , Hegelian dialectic . This is Marx turning Hegel off of his head onto his feet ( since Hegel is a hominin , a habitually bipedal primate -smiles) Hegel’s practice is solely subjective-theoretical; Marx takes it out of the solely subjective making it combined objective-subjective. Note this is _philosophers’_ practice ; philosophers’ practice is writing ! Mental/ Manual labor -activity , aimed at changing social consciousness. Philosophers’ main practice is in relation to the whole of society , all other people. Theoreticians of biology-physics-chemistry-astronomy are philosophers who aim at changing humans’ relationship to non-human , objective reality - mastering objective necessity. Science is discovering necessary connections in a phenomenon. Marxist Theoreticians of human history-society aim at changing human society.

2 The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. CB: Practice tests theory by determining whether humans can change the world in accord with their interpretation-theory of the world ; does the theory allow humans to master necessity ? Allow us to Change the human or non-human world ?

3 The materialist doctrine that men (sic) are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

CB: UPBRINGING, first and directly , in circumstances that impact upbringing -brain training . To change women and men , must change upbringing primarily. Self-changing/liberated women are necessary to change upbringing and women and men The educator is brought up especially by her or his mother . Fundamental Consciousness (walking , eating, sleeping, language) is primarily made by mothers , family , teachers and peers . Yes , human society has Secular Mother _Superiors_ . Feuerbach’s philosophy of love likely has rational kernels of species-being philosophy that Marx and Engels missed .

4 Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious self-estrangement [Selbstentfremdung], of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world, and a secular [weltliche] one.

CB: The secular world (objective reality ) is also conceived by humans in Words /Symbolic Signs/ Imagination . This is Marshall Sahlins’s point in _Culture and Practical Reason _ . Religion’s cultural function ( guide to behavior-activity-practice) is described by Marx as follows: “ Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality.

CB: Actually, the human essence ( unique human characteristics, Differentia specifica of genus homo ) has acquired true reality for 2.5 million years starting with homo habilis, the Old Stone Age , Stone tools designed based on symbolic communication and thinking - with Homo habilis having a bigger brain than Australopithecus.

Marx : The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

CB: Gods / imaginary immortal individual beings are symbolic representations of Dead Generations. Religion is the symbolic legacy of dead generations to living generations. It is Ancestor Veneration personified as Ancestor Worship in the transition from classless Stone Age Society to class divided Citified Society.

Marx : His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis. The latter must itself be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionised. Thus, for instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically.

CB: Yes , it is Marx’s “own” class struggle that gives rise to religion / Gods as the first ruling class’s grand deception of slaves at the origin of the male supremacist family , private property and the state . Rulers being identified with Gods. The earthly family must be sublated - overcoming male supremacy and preserving Mother Wit and much Caring Labor.

5 Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants sensuous contemplation [Anschauung]; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.

CB : yes contemplation of what the individual’s senses comprehend , experiential -empirical thinking or brain function ; simultaneously contemplating and practicing. However , critically , for humans abstract thinking ( memories of the individual’s past experience,_and_ words which share past generations’ and other living individuals’ experiences with the individual human’s brain ) merges with and guides practical-concrete individual sensuous activity. Only humans have this abstract thinking , word -thinking , word brain function.

6 Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged: 1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual. 2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.

CB: Actually , the human essence, human unique nature _is_ culture-custom , of which religion is a major part ( the other being all language and secular custom-culture). And culture and language _are_ abstractions _taught_ ( not inborn) to each individual. And culture-custom-language _are_ the ensemble of social relations , including social relations with both living and dead through language and culture; most of language and culture being passed on from dead generations. Humans individuals are theoretically ( but not practically ) isolated under capitalism ( many sided alienation from others) Language / culture / symbolic communication is the human natural-species unity of many individuals . It is hardly a dumb generality , but the essence of intelligence. Social intelligence is the highest Darwinian species intelligence- most fit intelligence. It gives humans a LaMarkian-like adaptive mechanism, which is non - random , unlike random genetic mutation adaptations. Cultural adaptations are caused by the adaptive problem that they solve .

7 Feuerbach consequently does not see that the ‘religious sentiment’ is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual that he analyses belongs in reality to a particular social form.

CB: Agree 8 All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.

CB : However , not all religion is mysticism . There are objective-scientific truths , rational kernels in the Bible , for example . These are practical- rational theories inherited from dead generations through Words ; words can outlast people and things they represent , BECAUSE SYMBOLIC SIGNS ARE _NOT_ WHAT THEY REPRESENT . They prove their rationality in practice.

9 The highest point reached by contemplative [anschauende] materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society [bürgerlichen Gesellschaft].

CB: To the extent contemplative materialism thinkers stand on the shoulders of dead generations ( like Isaac Newton stood on the shoulders of giants of past scientists) , they are not contemplating as single individuals.

10 The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society or social humanity.

CB : no comment

11 Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

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1. “Dirty-Jewish” — according to Marhsall Berman, this is an allusion to the Jewish God of the Old Testament, who had to ‘get his hands dirty’ making the world, tied up with a symbolic contrast between the Christian God of the Word, and the God of the Deed, symbolising practical life. See The Significance of the Creation in Judaism, Essence of Christianity 1841