The biologist has no judgement about whether the lighter or darker moth is better or worse than the other. They simply acknowledge the reality that each evolves because they are, in different material conditions, better suited to those conditions than the other. And, this is the same argument that Lenin advances against the Narodniks who wanted to determine what was a natural or preferred path to follow simply on the basis of subjectivism. The Marxist, however, observes the reality of the material conditions as they exist, and observes what forms of property they create, which replaces the existing forms of property; what classes of people are then created by these different forms of property, and it is on this basis that they discern the direction of forward movement, and so what constitutes progress and what reaction.
Marx notes, in terms reminiscent of Darwin,
“To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does, is to assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order to safeguard the welfare of the individual, so that, for instance, no war may be waged in which at all events some individuals perish. Sismondi is only right as against the economists who conceal or deny this contradiction.) Apart from the barrenness of such edifying reflections, they reveal a failure to understand the fact that, although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.” (p 117-8)
(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9)
In other words, society evolves through a succession of different modes of production. The evolution of these different modes of production is conditioned by material conditions, and these material conditions are by no means identical across the globe, so that there is no pre-ordained sequence through which society must always go. For example, in large parts of the globe society experienced the Asiatic Mode of Production, in which a bureaucratic collectivist state controlled the means of production, and a bureaucratic caste ruled, not as owners of the means of production, but via control over them. What is common in all these modes of production is that the vast majority must labour, whilst a minority appropriates their surplus labour. However morally reprehensible this may be, for Marx, analysing this process of social evolution scientifically, it is not only necessary but progressive. It is these exploiting classes that force the producers to produce surplus value, and out of it is developed higher levels of science and culture, which is the basis for developing the forces of production, which then drives on the productive relations, and creates the next, higher level of social development. Capitalism is by far the most effective means of doing this, and so the most progressive form of social development seen in Man's history, as he and Engels describe in The Communist Manifesto.
“To assert, as sentimental opponents of Ricardo’s did, that production as such is not the object, is to forget that production for its own sake means nothing but the development of human productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself.”
(ibid)
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