Link to Volume 1:<
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2026/10/blog-post_339.html<
Volume 3<
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2026/10/auto-bio-mio-3.html
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The essay on Women's Liberation , linked immediatly below , perfects Marxism’s historical materialism. I believe I’m world famous in Marxism for this and a couple of other theoretical articles ; I get people from every continent and dozens of countries coming to my blog . < <
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/07/for-womens-liberation-comradely.htm
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http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/12/materialism-necessity-and-freedom.html
I am Professor of Marxism as evidenced by this blog. I am an auto-didact largely through books and literature from CPUSA and from the Soviet Union. Read most of the critical classics by Marx , Engels, Lenin and many commentators . <
I don’t say I _am_ a Marxist-Leninist ; I say I _profess_ Marxism-Leninism; try to practice it , although that is difficult with imperialism ruling my world . <
Back in college in Ann Arbor , oh them good ole days of intellectual pursuit, pursuit of truths about Human life ,Living with my cohorts roomate brilliant students Stan Sheinbaum, Steve Weiss, Bernie Seibers , Jim Conley, et al. in West Quadrangle, South Quad , student apartments , Mary Markley Dorm; before that Party education as an anthropology major in 1968 to 1972, i understood the basic idea of Materialism from anthropologist Leslie A. White's Technologist -Energy Capture determinist theory of Human Cultural Evolution.
Many years later as i developed my anthropology ( Science of Human Life) theories (I was pushed to develop them be cause I started _teaching_ anthropology as professor at Wayne County Community College District at 63 years old , I discovered that White should have based his ideas about Evolution of Culture on the Darwinian idea that _fitness_ is measured by _population growth or shrinkage ; with Energy Capture / protein capture as secondary measure . <
Marshall Sahlins , one of White's famous students , criticzed White's formula . <
Sahlins should have made my criticism basing Cultural Evolutionary analysis in Darwinian evolutionary theory . I think Sahlins avoided the Darwinian evolutionary schools of his day as they were too much infested with so-called Social Darwinism which is actually anti-social . Sahlins put his materialist focus on Stone Age Economics to excellent use in his book by that name especially the chapter " The Original Affluent Society." See my use of that essay in The Spirit of my learning in anthropology from all my professors at the University of Michigan <
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2024/06/stone-age-was-more-civilized-than-so.html ?
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White theory is basead on Lewis Henry Morgan's _Ancient Society_ . Engels based _Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ on _Ancient Society. <
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/03/leslie-white-founded-evolutionary.html
We had a "Layer Cake " as in the drawing below with the barrel ; think of the barrel as a layer cake . The lower material structure layers determine the upper superstructure layers . <
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Hope you , dear reader, can see how this is analogous to Marx famous claim in his Contribution to Critique of Political Economy : " In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. " <
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm <
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/for-people-owning-too-big-to-fail_18.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/free-all-caring-and-re-productive.html<
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/we-cant-pay-our-bills-we-cant-pay-our.html<
Culturally inherited adaptations give human species high Darwinian fitness; critique of Engels "Role of Labour" Culturally inherited adaptations give human species high Darwinian fitness Darwin’s natural laws , physiology laws , DNA-gene laws, and ecological laws are the central organizing principles of Modern Biology. The laws of symbolically constituted language and culture as the defining characteristics of humans are the central organizing principles of anthropology. Symbolic communication and behavior give humans a way of adapting ( in the Darwinian sense ) that is more efficient than adapting based on random genetic mutation, because cultural adaptations are caused by the adaptive problem ( problems in the struggle for existence) that they solve ; the adaptive problem causes humans to invent in symbolic thought , imagination, a solution to the adaptive problem . With language and culture , Necessity is the mother of invention ( which is a materialist philosophical , not idealist , explanation, because the material survival necessity changes the ideas of the human inventor , changes her culture ) Culture allows non-random Darwinian adaption , unlike genetic adaptations ; the adaptive solution does not arise only coincidentally with the problem it solves , not just by luck as with genetic adaptations. For example , we might hypothesize that Homo erectuses invented clothes or controlled fire in response to moving into colder regions North of Africa . The acts of invention were caused by the problem in the struggle for existence of cold body temperature. The adaptive problem caused its own solution. Relying on the adaptation by way of genetic changes ( maybe to grow fur) would mean waiting on a genetic mutation NOT CAUSED BY THE COLDER TEMPERATURE, a mutation not caused by the adaptive problem, but arising coincidentally with the problem it solves. In this hypothetical thought experiment, survival in the struggle for existence, material necessity, changes the cultural ideas of the inventors , adds a custom of clothes , costumes to the their customs , their traditions , their culture. Non-randomly arising solutions to adaptive problems are La Marckian-LIKE. In LaMarck’s famous thought experiment as to “how the giraffe got its long neck”, the adaptive problem of food only available high up _causes_ the giraffe to solve the problem by stretching its neck ( this is a fictional account). The solution does not arise _randomly_ relative to the problem it solves. More adaptive problems are solved if the problem tends to cause its own solution than if the solutions just happen luckily to occur as with _random_ genetic mutations solving adaptive problems. Thus , with culture, language (symbolic inheritance, symbolic imagination and symbolic communication ) humans have a more efficient adaptive process than all other life forms. Humans have both cultural , non-random adaptation and random genetic mutation adaptation . Other life forms , species , only have random genetic mutation adaptation. How does symbolic thinking allow humans to invent solutions to adaptive problems in response to the problem arising ? Because symbolic thinking allows imaginative thinking or imagination is a form of symbolic thinking ; imagination empowers invention. Furthermore, symbolic thinking allows SYMBOLIC INHERITANCE of adaptive inventions by future generations ! Genes and culture/words are inherited - IN DIFFERENT WAYS . For example , almost all the words in the vocabulary of a living generation were invented by dead past generations , inherited. (paragraph) Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations through SYMBOLIC INHERITANCE . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it . Accumulated knowledge gives a growing ability to adapt, in Darwin’s sense , to problems in the struggle for existence . https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/09/symbolic-inheritance.html Symbolic Inheritance For anthropology, culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance is the unique species characteristic of _homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance 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 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. Since the advent of civilization, sometimes it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Greed, slavery, war, male supremacy, Egoism originate with Civilization ! It is better termed Savagery and Barbarism. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture , stone tools , scientific knowledge (!) standing on the shoulders of dead generations , 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 Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging and kinship organized , peaceful and sharing societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species ' existence, 90% plus Differentia specifica of human species is symbolic communication and behavior - language and culture . I write here a critique of Engels’ essay “The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” in part based on Marx’s claim that human labor is differentiated from all other species “ labor by the role of imagination “! ( (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm ) Otherwise , in his anthropological _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ , Engels is profoundly correct on the difference between the Stone Age and Civilization and other issues. http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/01/panel-presentation-on-engelss-origin-of.html My critique of Engels on this point is informed by the current biological ( human evolution) and cultural anthropological facts on origin of tool use , stone tool use ; and the nature of language and culture as SYMBOLIC communication and behavior . Origin of tool use and origin of language and culture is the issue Engels speculates concerning in “The Role of Labour in the transition from Ape to Man“. My basic difference with him is that language and culture allowed the invention of labor with Stone tools created by imagination; not labor created language and culture ( symbolic communication and behavior ; see definition of symbolic signs below ) ; I plead not guilty to the charge of philosophical idealism -smiles . The origin of humans is the origin of language and culture , NOT the origin of bipedalism and hands freed from walking on all fours . ( see pre-human , habitually bipedal primates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine) “Engels never finished Dialectics of Nature. Haldane, in his preface to the 1939 publication of Dialectics of Nature, regrets that it remained unpublished for a long time, and writes, “Had his remarks on Darwinism been generally known, I for one would have been saved a certain amount of muddled thinking.” One of its unfinished fragments is on the role of labor in human evolution, more specifically the evolution of the hand. It is the evolution of the hand through the process of labor—creating tools—that distinguishes humans from apes. Engels writes, “Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour.” It is not the evolution of the hand that led to our evolution as a species but the coevolution of the hand and labor as a historical process.” The bottomline of my critique in the blog below is : Language and culture , symbolic communication and symbolically guided behavior, originate 2.5 million years ago and enable homo habilis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis) to make the first Stone tools . ( THE ORIGIN OF HUMANS IS IN THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE , SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION AND BEHAVIOR) It is NOT that the ancestral bipedal species (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecine) to homo habilis started using its hands ( freed by bipedalism ; standing on two feet instead of four freeing the hands ) and that caused them to start symbolic communication and behavior as Engels speculates . ( this is not idealist philosophical error on my part ; I will explain why not below) Here is Engels’ essay The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm The following is my blog item critiquing Engels‘ essay. http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/02/more-leisure-is-homo-sapiens-species.html More Leisure is Homo sapiens species essence ; May Day demand More Leisure ( than our ancestral primate species had) is our species essence ( See "The Original Affluent Society" by my anthropological mentor and senior anthro major advisor ,Marshall Sahlins , in _Stone Age Economics_ ) . Foraging is a mode of direct appropriation from nature , not a mode of production; making a living by gigging smart not working hard. It was not that bi-pedalism and the origin of hands originated a new labor that caused the invention of tradition , names and words . The invention of culture and language in childcare by mothers ( I’m saying mothers invented names , words , symbolic communication to improve childcare, reproductive labor ) was extended to making a living ( the Darwinian struggle for existence) ; language and culture revolutionized the human struggle for existence by making it smarter, wiser, because of accumulation of knowledge over many generations . Language gives humans the capacity for dead generations to leave communications about their experiences to future living generations) . Also More leisure gives more time to think and thereby work even smarter. Symbolic communication allows : Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors . Engels is wrong in "The Role of Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man" when he says "First labour, after it and then with it speech ..." CB : First long childcare , then names and speech invented by mothers to do better childcare , and then a transition to LESS toil in the struggle for existence , to smarter struggle for existence informed by ancestral experience , and more leisure as compared with primate species ancestral to homo habilis and the origin of the Stone Age . Stone tools were invented to allow making a living less toilsome and more efficient . Perhaps the topic would be better named the transition in the struggle for existence in the transition from ape to man : the origin of imagination. Stone Age society is Societas ( anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan’s term in _Ancient Society_ ) beginning 2.5 million years ago ; to circa 6,000 years ago with the beginning of Civitas ( Morgan ) private property, greed , slavery and heavy labor ( as Engels teaches in _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the State _ ) . Slavery is the origin of Hard work , work ethic. With so-called civilization, hard work ethic comes to dominate cultural ideas . So, hard labour is not our Stone Age, species-being , but civilization-being, which is a small fraction of the full time of our species history. I think Engels anachronistically projects the determining role of labor on ideas ( the historical materialist principle ) back onto the Stone Age origins of language and culture . In fact the invention of language and culture revolutionized the bipedal primates’ struggle for existence by making it less of a struggle . Toilsome struggle was introduced with _slave_ labor in so-called civilization where historical materialist determination originates. Nonetheless , Marx and Engels do propose transition from the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom . Freedom is Leisure and smart work through technology . Jobs lost to technological invention should be translated into more leisure time for the masses, a May Day demand. [Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 05:54:49 -0700 What about the transition in labor in the transition from ape to man ? This essay uses "labor" in the sense that it is something that apes do; it is their struggle for existence , for survival in the Darwinian sense . So, it is not the same "labor" ( or is it work ?) that produces capitalist surplus value in _Capital_I, but the “labor “ more general to all animals that Marx describes in Chapter so and so , where he says the difference between the labor of spiders and bees and that of man is imagining the project as a plan first ( this implies that spiders and bees labor). "Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm So, Marx’s implication ( contra Engels in “The Role of Labor “ ) is that in the transition from ape to man, labor transitioned in part by taking on more mental labor, imagination and planning , as a component. Imagination is a form of symbolic thinking . Symbolic thinking defines humans , differentiates humans from all other species despite the false and exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some primatologists [Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man c b Thu, 27 May 2010 13:32:42 -0700 Engels: “But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.” ^^^^^ CB: Ahhh but how ? How did the experience of repetition of use of _a_ hand by one individual get transferred to the brains of the next generation and the next , become the experience of _The_ hand ? If Patriarch/Matrirach uses his hands thousands of times his increasing dexterity is based on accumulated experience in that one individual's brain. The next generation's brains go back to "square one" at birth and childhood . The only way to accumulate the knowledge across generations is by mediating the learning experience with language, imagination, symbolic communication The only way to "stand on the shoulders of giants" is to receive messages from them through a system of symbols, words . ( as in those days there wasn't the technology to take enough pictures) "The" hand is not the hand of an individual, but The Hand, as a concept, an organ of the species. IT OCCURS TO ME THAT ENGELS IS ENTERTAINING A LAMARCKIAN OR INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISIICS HYPOTHESIS OF SKILL WITH THE HAND PASSED ON TO NEXT GENERARTIOS ; AS LAMARCK’S HYPOTHESIS ON HOW GIRAFFES GOT LONG NECKS . AT THAT TIME, EVEN DARWIN HAD NOT DISMISSED INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS AS TRUE. LATER BIOLOGY FOUND THAT RANDOM GENETIC MUTATIONS WERE THE SOURCE OF VARIETY OF CHARACTERISICS WITHIN A SPECIES. ( Symbolic signs - words being the best example - have an _arbitrary_ relation between the sign and the thing signified . They are using something to represent something that they are not. In my class , I write my name on the board -Charles Brown . Then I point out that the marks on the board are not me; but they are used to represent me. So a name is using something to represent something it is not . There is an arbitrary relation between a name and the person named . “What’s in a name ? A rose by any other is just as sweet. The opposite of a symbolic sign is an _indexical_ sign . There is a necessary ( not arbitrary ) relationship between the sign and the thing signified . A favorite example is smoke and fire . Smoke is an indexical sign of fire . Only humans have symbolic signs . Humans and all other animals communicate or read indexical signs ; humans have both -despite the exaggerated claims for chimps and gorillas by some animals rights primatologists. Symbolic and indexical signs are basic ideas of semiotics .( http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/) The arbitrary relation between symbolic signs and thing signified gives humans a DISPLACEMENT capacity . Humans can communicate with each other about events that are not in their immediate sensory field , like things that happened a week ago , or things that are on the other side of town See https://owlcation.com/stem/The-difference-between-animal-and-human-communication I CLAIM TO HAVE DISCOVERED BY LOGICAL IMPLICATION THAT THE UNIQUE DISPLACEMENT CAPACITY OF HUMANS ALLOWS ACCUMULATION OF KNOWLEDGE OVER GENERATIONS BECAUSE A LIVING GENERATION CAN SHARE THE EXPERIENCE OF DEAD GENERATIONS , SHARE _DISPLACED_ EXPERIENCES . Therefore , it was the ability to experience the displaced experiences of dead generations, symbolic thinking , that allowed the first humans to make Stone tools ( reverse of Engels’ idea) Again , Symbolic communication allows : Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Issac Newton put it concerning his scientific ancestors . @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism WHY IS HISTORY A HISTORY OF CLASS STRUGGLES ?<
By Comrade Charles D. Brown
By the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. The written history of hither to existing society, since the breaking up of the ancient Communist Stone Age kin group societies , is a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. Classes are groups that associate in a division of labor to produce their material means of existence.
Why are class struggles fundamental in determining the whole of society's laws and rules, it's history and culture, the "super-structure" ? Because exploited classes are coerced into producing surpluses for exploiting classes by making supply of the physiological necessities of life, of self-preservation , to the exploited classes conditional upon their producing those surpluses. Not only do exploited classes produce the physiological and derivative material necessities of life for society , but they are denied much of the fruits of their labor , thrown into poverty , unless they supply the bosses, the ruling classes , the slave masters , Lords , Bishops , Bourgeoisie, with super fruits, riches . <
Ruling classes coerce this exploitation mainly by control of the state power or special repressive apparatus.
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels implied this elementary anthropological or "human natural" rationale for this conception of class relations determining substantially the shape of society as a whole in a section titled
"History: Fundamental Conditions” , they say: "*life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life."
Production and economic classes are the starting point of Marxist analysis of human history and society because human life, like all plant and animal life must fulfill biological needs to exist as life at all. It is an appeal to biologic (which I support and imitate , all of the anti-vulgar materialist critiques to the contrary notwithstanding, but that's my other paper). Whatever humans do that is "higher" than plants and animals, we cannot do if we do not first fulfill or plant/animal like needs, physiological necessities.
Marx and Engels define scientific analysis as tracing the materially or objectively _necessary_ connections in a phenomenon. Thus, the scientific understanding of human society must be based in the materially necessary connections of human society. Fulfillment of physiological or biological requirments are the materially necessary "connections" for humans. These biological necessary connections exist in all human societies. But it is only in' class divided‘ society that , as said above, surpluses are extorted from exploited classes by ruling classes by employment and threat of deployment of the forces of destruction and violence, standing bodies of armed men , against the exploited and ruled classes less they disgorge the surplus fruits of their labor to the ruling classes.
For not only is supply of food, shelter, air etc. biologically and materially necessary for living. The _absence_ of being killed or bodily harmed by armed men is materially necessary to live. Thus, the mode of destruction is as central to the necessary connections of human society as the mode of production. The mode of destruction as critical in ruling class coercion and extortion of the ruled classes is a mode of necessity in human society and history. Thus the mode of necessity in human society consists in both the mode of production and the mode of destruction.
On Materialism ( speaking of Mao), there are two levels of the relationship between thought and being: "economics" and "physics". While society remains in the Realm (or kingdom) of Necessity , society during its class divided history, ruling classes control masses by conditioning fulfillment of the _material_ needs of the exploited classes on the exploited classes ' producing surpluses for the ruling , exploiting classes. The materialism (determinism by the material) at this level derives from the coercive use of conditional provision of material needs. In all societies, including those in the Realm (kingdom of ) Freedom ( socialist, communist future and ancient) , all people must , of course, "obey" the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, objective reality etc. "physics", in the general sense. This is the most fundamental level of materialist theory , most fundamental level of Being.
The "higher" (cultural, semiotic. super-structural, social conditioning traditions, "super”-natural, aesthetic, artistic, customary , aesthetic, religious , etc.) human activities are limited or negatively determined ( See Marshall Sahlins' _Culture and Practical Reason_ on biological limits of culture) by the productive and destructive activities, the activities that produce biological necessities or deprive human biological necessities . Cultural practices that don’t provide necessities will go “extinct”.
However , in human systems of IDEAS, SYMBOLS, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, because of the arbitrary relation between sign and thing signified a non-necessary connection, there is some lack of basis for science defined as finding necessary connections ( Marx and Engels definition of science) In other words , Arbitrary_ connection is the opposite of _necessary_ connection. This is the sense in which superstructure is not subject to scientific analysis the way that infrastructure is. Idea systems do simulate necessity as rules, such as rules of grammar or cultural rules, including state enforced laws Also in formal logic, "necessary" arises in _modus ponens_, modus tolensor "if-then", if p, then q, q is a necessary > condition of p, i.e.not q,not p. This is arbitrary and abstract necessity.
In the Realm of Necessity, ( Marx and Engels used the term "necessity"here precisely to make the point I am making here) there is a science of human conduct based on the things that human must do, i.e. necessity. As Marx and Engels had to explain to "the Germans" in _The German Ideology_, humans have physiological necessities. In meeting these, there arise scientifically discernable necessary patterns in their behavior
Historical materialism starts with human nature, our human natural species qualities, Feuerbach's "species-being” This is Marx's point in the famous passage in the Intro to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy concerning social being determining social consciousness "At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing -with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic-conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. " Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs
The economic conditions may be articulated "with the precision of a natural science" because in that sector of society biological necessities or needs are met, and as discussed above, thereby necessary connections reside. Necessary connections are the business of science.
The rational kernel of the fancy Marxist critique of we vulgar Marxists :
Being determines consciousness, but intermitently ; being determines consciousness discontinuously. ("primarily and ultimately"). Meanwhile, in between time, being and consciousness are reciprocally determiining. Being , in the form of class struggle, determines consciousness in history. However, the revolutions which are the points of determination or fundamental change ( of Hegel’s Idea ) by class struggle are intermittent and rare. Most of the time consciousness or ideology is not changing, is not in a revolutionary state of transformation. Most of the time society is in a status quo, a relative equilibrium , is not changing fundamentally.
This is somewhat analogous to the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould in natural history, with the punctuations being the revolutions when being determines, asserts itself, like the roof falling in periodically asserts the law of gravity, when contradictions reach a crisis. It is the long equilibria that cause the confusion and make people think that consciousness has determined being in history's revolutionary changes, or the idealist error. Also, there is a sense in which consciousness as a system of ideas does determine people's day to day conduct. When an idea grips the masses , it becomes a material force; and lots of ideas grip the masses. In fact , the masses only act based on ideas that grip them. What revolutions do is change the system of ideas that determines peoples' conduct. And only class struggles change systems of ideas or ideologies. This is the fundamental sense of being determines consciousness or part of the theory of historical materialism.
As Marx says "...so can we not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. " " In big historical changes, Necessity is the mother of invention, the mother of revolution. The necessary connections in economy and class structure periodically, though rarely , break through to "invent" a new superstructure , revolutionary ideas. Necessity is the mother of invention, new ideas. Ideology is the stabilizer of convention. Ideologies are formal logics, based on the principle of identity as their first principle. Formal logics are not "self-changing", they abdure contradictions ( non-identity) tend to sustain convention, avoid invention of new principles. This is why we don't think our way to revolution. This is why dialectical logic , with contradiction as its first principle, is rooted in class struggle , reflecting real or material contradictions.
The Second Thesis on Feuerbach - the test of theory is practice . Thus, the most practically reasonable and rational course is for the working class of our era to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. This would be the optimum for the class self-interest of the working class , collectively and individually in its billions of people. Yet, we are in a lag time, the long lag time of the "equilibrium" before the punctuation of revolution.
Irrational ideas, from the standpoint of the working class as a class - for -itself , ideas in the interest of the Bourgeoisie of many types compete with the rational idea of revolutionary class struggle for gripping the consciousnesses , the billions individual brains of working masses. False consciousness, capitalist ideology is determining being, keeping it stuck in capitalist relations of production.
Do any of the fancy Marxist theories which interrogate the principle of being determines consciousness have solutions to the riddles of the irrational, anti-class self-interest ideologies, systems of ideas and images which are gripping the masses and blinding them to their historic revolutionary mission ? That is a question on consciousness for today's challengers to materialism who also claim to be Marxist in some sense. An even more fundamental understanding of consciousness must come through an augmented Marxist feminism. As the historically constituted class of oppressed and exploited reproductive or caring laborers, the creators of subjects en masse, women have been the uncredited makers of consiousness in history. This is not just in childrearing , although that is obviously important, but in all caring labor which is critical in shaping and repairing the self. This includes housework, for the house or the home is that shelter where the adult self is itself away from work in the capitalist daily geography of the person.Thus, women's liberation and recovery of women's history is fundamental to the science of consciousness.
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/07/for-womens-liberation-comradely.html
Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism A three act play with beginning, middle and end, and non-dogmatic improvisation. Several vulgar parts . Double materialist determination; there are two levels of determination, in materialism attitude toward the relationship between thought and being: 1)"economics" and 2) "physics". 1)"economics" While society remains in the Realm of Necessity , ruling classes control masses by conditioning fulfillment of the _material_ needs of the exploited classes on the exploited classes ' producing surpluses for the ruling , exploiting classes. The materialism (determinism by the material) at this level derives from the coercive use of conditional provision of material needs.
2) "physics" In all societies, including those in the Realm of Freedom ( socialist, communist future and ancient) , all people must , of course, "obey" the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, objective reality etc. "physics", in the general sense. The first level above is based in the specific biological necessities of the second level. There is a third level of materialist determination in the Marxist thesis. It is also economic. Marx and Engels (Engels and Marx) claim that history is a history of class struggles.
The answer to the question "Why is history a history of class struggles ?" is the philosophy of historical materialism. Why is it that economic material relationship of exploiting and exploited classes causes the changes which are called "history" ? The alternatives at the time Marx wrote the thesis were especially Great Men in state and economic power and Big Ideas as in Philosophie of Great Men. Marx in wanting to take a scientific approach to the question, looked to necessity upon the theory that science details necessary connections between things. There is no necessity as strict in the realms of ideas or Great Men as the necessity of biology, and by extension the area of economics of material production of minimal life sustaining necessities or Being or Existence . There still must be made an argument as to why and what changes by class struggle determination in the sense that history is a history of class struggles. What changes through the course of history ? If it were the structure of the relationship between classes, then what about tautology ? So, Big Ideas (or Consciousness) and Great Men _types_ change as the change that is history.
However, Being determines consciousness intermittently, rarely in terms of the total time of the many generations of people. Most generations don't experience a fundamental or revolutionary change. And so on the rare, intermittent determinism of the structure of ideas by the Realm proper of Necessity:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1998-March/007351.html
Although biology only limits us partially in a sense because We human beings have culture (super-natures and natures ) this contradiction between biology and culture is still where it is at in generating universals or big generals.
Being determines consciousness is still a focal rule of thumb (guide to action) for building a universal, real common interests among huge numbers of people, the masses.
My first post-Marx development of species-being is to derive women's liberation organically from historical materialism's premises, as Marx and Engels derive workers' liberation from those species-being historical premises. It is a correction of classical Marxism, but based on Marxsim's own premises.
In ways its too vulgar for pomos and fancy marxists. However, the pomos and their old cousins, Frankfurt school, Gramsci, existentialists, et al. all the fancy marxists have taught us something: being determines consciousness discontinuously, intermittmently, rarely. Through most of the actual time of history ( day-to-day life; quotidien), consciousness and being are reciprocally determining. Only rarely, in revolutions, primarily and ultimately does being utterly determine consciousness. Today, that means that the direct naked appeal to the working class' class self-interest is inadequate in itself-necessary but not sufficient in the formal logical sense -to inspire revolution. That appeal cannot be dropped - the vast majority are working class, wage laborers - but must be complemented with appeals to other consciousness, other consciousness determined by being (race and gender are the main forms ) and consciousness that is determined more by consciousness , religion, television , school, peers . Overall one wants to change the world based on interpreting it, changing it through practical-critical activity, a unity of theory and practice still. Sent from my iPhone
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/blackwellian-critique-abstract-not.html~
Charles Brown
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/09/symbolic-inheritance.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/05/culturally-inherited-adaptations-give.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2019/03/genus-homos-darwinian- <
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/09/symbolic-inheritance.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/02/more-leisure-is-homo-sapiens-species.html
Better termed ancestor veneration not wordhip ; Ancestors are not literally immortal like Gods
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/05/identifying-something-with-something-it.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/symboling-is-identifying-something-with.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/04/words-are-little-communisms.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/04/homo-communis.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/07/for-womens-liberation-comradely.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/03/emmeline-pankhurst-revolutionary.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/let-beauties-beautify-you-you-beast.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/remix-of-blackwell-concrete-abstract.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/blackwellian-critique-abstract-not.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/08/darwins-claim-of-superiority-of-men.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/10/cultural-darwinian-adaptations-not.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/03/all-american-socialism.html Socialism with American Characteristics
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/03/theory-of-structure-of-symbols-and.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2020/12/differentia-specifica-of-human-species.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2018/04/male-supremacy-greed-and-war-are-not-in.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2020/10/abolish-fascist-republican-party.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2020/04/we-must-reverse-reaganism-by-abolishing.htm
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-holier-than-thou-left.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-origin-of-society-by-marshall.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2020/02/anthropological-psychology.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/founding-anthropological-psychology-im.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-anthropological-psychology.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2019/03/belafonte-musician-and-political.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2019/03/because-exploited-classes-are-coerced.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2019/03/anthropology-test-questions.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2018/08/overview-of-anthropology-what-is.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2018/01/declaration-of-independence-declares.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/10/black-and-white-unite-and-fight.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-questions-anthropology-dare-not-ask.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/locus-and-levels-of-material-necessity.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/11/for-people-owning-too-big-to-fail.html
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2026/10/charles-brown-bibliography.html
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