[lit-ideas] Re: Trilling on Eliot, VI, the notion of human progress
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 16:14:24 -0700 (PDT)
Marx was writing in a time when the poor were spending 60 to 80% of income on
food in good times. They got clothes a couple of times in their entire lives,
taken from disease victims when they could get the clothes. That was only a
couple of hundred years ago. Starving people are placid, but hungry people
are prone to revolution. (The varied and sundry "springs" and "occupy cities"
that are going on today, otherwise known as the bread riots.) Ironically, in
the U.S. at least there hasn't been revolution precisely because of food stamps
and other government subsidies. As an experiment, Lawrence, limit your
calories to 1000 or so for a couple of weeks, and pretend it was going to
be forever, and ask again about material systems. I forget the character in
the Old Testament who sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of lentil
soup. What do you think he would say about material systems? It's easy to say
we'd never sell our
birthright, but we've never known persistent and chronic hunger either, even
starving to death. Our unprecedented excess for the last 100 or so years of
humanity's existence has nothing to do with any 'ist' or 'ism', socialist,
capitalist or any other kind, or any religion or modern ingenuity (no such
thing). Instead it has everything to do with fossil fuels, absolutely
everything.
Andy
________________________________
From: John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, November 2, 2011 11:50 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Trilling on Eliot, VI, the notion of human progress
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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