Date: Tue, 9 Apr 96 10:34:09 GMT
Subject: Tools, Prometheus, Thucydides



I started on this train of thought wondering to myself why it is that
the role of tool production is crucial to understanding human society
is obvious to me and completely non obvious to Lisa, but it then 
wondered off in other directions.

The first answer I came up with is that the further you go backwards in
human history, the less sophisticated the tools are, and proportionately
less time is spent producing them and using them.

When conventional historians approach the history of the devlopment of 
capitalism, they cannot avoid looking at things in ways similar to a 
Marxist approach. So, when they look at later feudalism, they tend to see
how new relations of production developed within it but became held back
by the the overall social set up. They can also see how after these fetters
were removed, there was an enourmous expansion in the means of production.
They express it in non Marxist terms ( eg "industrial revolution" ) but
the reality they are looking at hits them in the face.

But when it comes to medieval history, it's mostly kings and queens and
who married who. Occasionally you get statements like "the British 
won at agincourt becuase of their long bows" , but never any discussion
of why they had long bows and the French didn't.

This was true of the history I was taught at school, anyway ( except I was
taught the kings and queens stuff first, and the more "social" stuff later ).

So when it comes to "primitive" humans, while I would still argue that
tool production and use were crucial, it appears on the surface as
one, relatively minor, part of the whole package.

Interestingly, when it comes to classical Athens, some sources show that
there was a certain understanding that what marked humans out from animals
was "techne" , a word that encompasses technology, but means something
more like "know how" or "skill". Perhaps this is because the greeks
underwent a quite rapid "civilisation" , so preserving an oral memory
of their previous "uncivilised" state.

The Prometheus myth, where Prometheus, against Zeus' wishes, steals fire
and gives it to humans, from which all other skills flow ( agriculture, 
metal working, medicine, "the arts" ) illustrates this, of course in an
alienated way ( a rebel god gives it to humans, not humans create it for
themselves ).

Also, Thucydides in his introduction to his History of the Pelopennesian War
quite clearly relates the ability to wage war and the level of civilisation
to the level of surplus ( mistranslated as "profit" ) that the early greeks
were able to extract from their surroundings. When I read it, I was struck
by just how close it was to a Marxist analysis, in contrast to what came after,
both in the ancient world and in modern historians.

I realise of course that my knowledge is very much bounded by a particular,
"classical" body of knowledge - it would be interesting if anyone could
offer comparisons.

Adam.

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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