File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 138


Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 23:17:40 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: "A fisher or hunter is averse to society" (fwd from moderator)   



m-i;

The following bounced to the moderators: Louis Godena

_______________________________________________

        
In the Manifesto, Marx does say that his proposals apply only to "the most
advanced countries", and so not for countries like Russia, to reply here to
Lewis Proyect who finds the Communist Manifesto inconsistent with what Marx
wrote to the Russians.  This may seem like a small text on which to hang an
argument that already at the time of the Manifesto Marx allowed for multiple
paths of historical development.  In his letter to Vera Zasulich on March 8,
1881, Marx defends Capital Vol. 1 from the charge of proposing a single
model of historical development by referring to an equally slight text.
Referring to the expropriation of the agricultural producer, the text of
Capital cited in the letter reads:  "To date this has not been accomplished
in a radical fashion anywhere except in England... But *all other countries
of Western Europe* [emphasis by KM in his letter] are undergoing the same
process."  Marx interprets Marx:  "Hence the `historical inevitability' of
this process is *expressly* limted to the *countries of Western Europe.*
Marx explains that the development of capitalism in Western Europe are
"inevitable" only given the existence of "private property based on personal
labor" in European society.  But this is not the case in Russia, where
"communal property" is dominant.  Marx concludes, "Hence the analysis
provided in Capital does not addues reasons either for or against the
viability of the rural commune, but the special study I have made of it, and
the material for which I drew from original sourcaes, has convinced me that
this commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia ..."
    While Louis sees Marx extricating himself gradually from a stagist
conception of historical inevitability, Marx explains that he has been
studying the specific dynamics of Western European society, while reserving
judgment for other parts of the world until specific study has been made.
    Was this the case even at the time of the Communist Manifesto?  The
slight evidence in the Manifesto that I cite is hardly any better than that
cited by Marx himself from Capital.  Are there more substantial texts to
this effect?
    One might start by examining Marx's detailed defence of the poor
peasants' customary right to fallen wood in his 1842 article on "Debates on
the Law of Thefts of Wood".  There he vigorously attacks failure of the law
to reflect more than the private interests of the forest owners.  The essay
concludes:  "The savages of Cuba regarded gold as a fetish of the Spaniards.
They celebrated a feast in its honour, sang in a circle around it and then
threw it into the sea.  If the Cuban savages had been present at the sitting
of the Rhine Province Assembly, would they not have regarded wood as the
Rhinelanders' fetish?  But a subsequent sitting would have taught them that
the worship of animals is connected with this fetishism, and they would have
thrown the hares into the sea in order to save the human beings."
    Marx is here arguing as an Hegelian.  He interprets Hegel as an opponent
of exclusive private interests (the standpoint of "abstract right" at the
beginning of the Philosophy of Right).  He evokes the standpoint of the poor
peasants, as well as the hunter-gatherers of pre-Columbian Cuba against the
dominance of private interest or private property.  This is also what he
does in his letters to Vera Zasulich, almost forty years later.

It is precisely their *social* orientation, not the aversion to society that
characterizes the "state of nature" theories stemming from Hobbes and Locke,
that Marx underscores.  So I don't think we can impute the ideas of Lord
Kames to the young or old Marx.

Best wishes,

Jim Lawler

>Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>>Lord Kames, one such subscriber to the theory, wrote in 1758:
>>
>>"The life of a fisher or hunter is averse to society, except among the
>>members of simple families. The shepherd life promotes larger societies, if
>>that can be called a society, which hath scarce any other than a local
>>connection. But the true spirit of society, which consists in mutual
>>benefits, and in making the industry of individuals profitable to others as
>>well as themselves, was not known till agriculture was invented.
>>Agriculture requires the aid of many other arts. The carpenter, the
>>blacksmith, the mason, and other artificiers, contribute to it. This
>>circumstance connects individuals in an intimate society of mutual support,
>>which again compacts them within a narrow space."
>>
>>Who can not make the connection between this statement and the war against
>>the American Indian? The life of a fisher or hunter is averse to society. A
>>higher stage comes in the form of agriculture, which compacts all these
>>admirable, industrious tradesmen in a "narrow space." Obviously, anybody
>>who stands in the way of such compacting progress has to be eliminated.
>>
>>Comninel's verdict on the "stages" theory is worth repeating verbatim:
>>
>>"The four stages theory is liberal ideology in classic form. Situated in
>>Lockean materialism; taking 'utility'--or the pursuit of pleasure and
>>avoidance of pain--as a social principle; presuming that human arts develop
>>in response to necessity; seeing progress in individual capacities as more
>>significant than the disruption of the social whole: the four stages theory
>>could be carried so far as to become the very embodiment of Pangloss's
>>world unfolding as it must, in this best of all possible worlds."
>>
>>While Marx integrated the theory of the bourgeois revolution into an
>>all-encompassing political system that transcended it, there are still
>>traces of the undigested muck that rise to the surface from time to time.
>>The Communist Manifesto gives open expression to it, as does volume one of
>>Capital. It took him an entire lifetime to digest this theory and put it in
>>its proper place, as nothing but a specific event that capped off
>>historical developments in specific European countries. In his letters to
>>the Russian populists, he made it crystal-clear that the "stagist" approach
>>was not something that he endorsed. Proof of this was his clarion call to
>>prevent capitalist development in the Russian countryside at all costs. The
>>zemstvos would provide the basis for socialism; waiting for an urban
>>proletariat to develop was Plekhanov's "contribution." Unfortunately, the
>>"productivist" and "stagist" model of Marxism with its bourgeois liberal
>>roots lingers to this day. The only explanation is that bourgeois power is
>>so enormous as to cloud the thinking of those who struggle to overthrow it.
>>Working class militancy is what's required, not cheer-leading for a
>>"revolutionary" bourgeoisie that never really existed.
>>
>>Louis Proyect
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>
>



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