[lit-ideas] Re: Trilling on Eliot, VI, the notion of human progress
- From: John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:50:34 -0500
Lawrence Helm wrote:
. . . .Postmillennialism envisions this improvement in human nature to
be accomplished by the work of the Holy Spirit. Marxism envisions
this improvement to be accomplished by Socialism. Atheists will argue
that there is no Holy Spirit to improve man by changing him in such a
way that he more closely approximates the image of Jesus Christ. Very
well, I would ask the Socialistic atheist, what in a material system
is to effect this change? Marx wasn't specific, but Socialists have
had a long time since his death to think about it We have seen
Socialism at work in many forms and stages. Has anyone at any time in
any place seen the sort of human improvement here alluded to?
Marx's early work was in part on Aristotle. There is still a lot of
Aristotle in later Marx, but pretty well buried. The whole idea of
"alienated labor" is based on a somewhat Aristotelian notion that humans
have a natural creativity and natural desire to be happy, and they are
happiest when they are most human. The problem with "labor" under
capitalism is that it becomes less and less human, more and more a
brutal struggle for animal survival.
(I would recommend the Marx essay on alienated labor, not for its
solutions to the problem, but for a pretty decent description of
contemporary society for a growing number of people.)
Anyway, what is "buried" in Marx is that human proclivity to seek
happiness and human fulfillment, and that desire is probably the driving
factor in why he says "revolution" will happen. (I happen to think that
we will probably muddle through, patching up the current model with
enough sops to satisfy enough people to avoid anything so drastic as to
require all of us to start off all over again, equally lacking of
anything made in the last 500 years.) This does not require a change in
human nature, just a chance for it to reassert itself. It is quite
possible to be either a believer OR an atheist and see human nature as
the foundation for positive social change, without positing either
millenarianism OR socialism.
Of course where Marx parts company with Aristotle is Marx's insistence
on strict material causality in all things, including social change. As
a materialist and determinist, Marx saw human nature as "inevitably"
revolting against increasing dehumanization. I think Aristotle would
have been more uncertain: maybe we will all turn into less than human
cretins, maybe we will make things better.
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