It’s not just a way to understand what’s happening around me, but also to learn about who I truly am. Considering that it’s a little related to psychology, the concept is somewhat unclear. Consequently, when I speak about this subject, it sounds vague. That being said, I will try to avoid any of this in this post.
The post is basically about “human nature” and its connection to alienation.
The earliest humans reshaped their environment to overcome the cruelty of nature by improving their living conditions. As a result, they eventually divided themselves into a class system due to limited resources. There were an increasing number of people but not enough resources for everyone, which pushed them into class-societies. Well that’s how I see it anyway.
We are social animals, both as individuals and as a society. In the face of life-threatening dangers, we are forced to become selfish and reduce ourselves to individuals. The fact remains, however, that we are significantly more likely to survive when we are living in safe communities. I like to believe that this is the dialectics of morality.
The human brain, combined with its hands, both working together are responsible for our evolution into modern humans. We could have only reached our state of consciousness if this “process” never stopped. Our continuous cooperation with each other was the only possibility for this to be successful.
It is necessary that this process always leads to more effective communication with our comrades, notably developing language, in parallel with improving our living conditions. It is only by doing so, that we will enhance our tools and the process itself. To me, this must be a law in evolution, simply because the transition from ape to man cannot be done without developing our ability to communicate. In other words, we have to be a sort of friendly, loving, and helpful person. Those qualities must have been different for each period of human history, depending on the modes of production. We can see those qualities’ benefits as we make our way from capitalism to socialism. However, I can’t deny the atrocities committed throughout history. That being said, it does seem like after each change of modes of production it gets better. The opposing forces keep the best aspects of each while simultaneously merging, and putting the seeds of its next collapse. This is why I believe in a dialectics of morality.
To be clear, this camaraderie is certainly not with our opponents, but for each other as comrades. Only those who help us build the new world can genuinely be regarded in this way. Our efforts will attract countless others as we move toward a socialist society. The connection between us is going to be the foundation of this new society we are working to establish. It’s a feeling of mutual trust, rather than a competitive distrust.
I always hated the idea of “survival of the fittest”. Without a Marxist perspective, a person cannot understand what it means to be the “fittest”. I am certain the most important factor for our evolution is cooperation, as it has always been and will remain this way. As social animals with consciousness, we are in the hands of our emotions. Yea, I know that’s vague.
What we call “self-consciousness” can only be developed with more than a hundred thousand years of cumulative socialization. Our best tool, in the end, is our capacity to connect to those around us in a meaningful way. As we continue to evolve, the physical structure of our bodies no longer appears to benefit our evolutionary success. I believe that our brains are experiencing an evolutionary development, both in the area of intelligence and emotions. There is no doubt that evolution continues to be relevant to this day. And for clarity, I am not talking about an idealist view of evolution, in which humans become one single organism, whether telepathically or technologically.
The nature of humans is to live in peace together, which is undermined by class-society. I believe alienation is a manifestation of such a situation. We’re losing control of our collective efforts, and it leaves us feeling lost.
The peace within an individual is connected to the peace within society as a whole. The two cannot function independently of the other. It’s the same in a family living together. And as long as the family has any connection with others, such as neighbors, the formula still applies.
In reality, we are not necessarily antagonistic to each other, but to our environment. To conclude, once we win the fight against the cruelty of nature we will find nothing of this cruelty in the communist human beings.
this is mostly related to what is brought up in Origin of Family. Class society was historically progressive due to the evolution in generalized commodity production, however, it also brought about a contradiction of private accumulation. I bring up this being related because primitive societies lived as a community with a matrilineal framework, and the contradiction of private accumulation (origin of private property), coincides with the first class division, that between man and woman, which starts the eventual alienation of the working class from their labour, from others, and effectively from themselves.
“In an old unpublished manuscript written by Marx and myself in 1846 I find the words: “The first division of labour is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class antagonism that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opened the epoch that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others.”
they eventually divided themselves into a class system due to limited resources
I’m not sure i agree with this. There was frequent and sometimes quite severe scarcity of resources in pre-class societies. It’s not like we lived in abundance for the tens of thousands of years that we were hunter-gatherers. I would suggest that the development of class societies has more to do with a qualitative change in the mode of production triggered by what was effectively the first true development of productive forces in human history. Settled societies required a higher degree of co-ordination of productive activity and this resulted in a stratification of society for the purpose of managing said production. At the same time specialization of labor played a big role in solidifying this stratification. It is true however that scarcity upholds class society and that we will need to address it before we can progress fully into the advanced classless society that we call communism. Hence why one of the primary tasks of socialism is to greatly increase the level of development of productive forces.
This is a minor point of criticism. I have no issues with the rest of your analysis and i largely agree with your views on alienation and co-operation.
Your explanation is logical and sounds like a good marxist analysis. Thx for correcting
