Marxist Animalism
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“Humans cannot live without bacteria, which are vital to the process of breaking down and recycling nutrients in forest and field. Bacteria, of course, can live very nicely without humans and did it for billions of years before we showed up.”
– Chicago Tribune.
Pannekoek. As i’ve said, bourgeois progressivism and evolution-as-ladder typical Marxist outdated view!
John, whilst I accept that humans are part of nature, they are are passing species which will disappear from evolution in the same way as they rose from evolution, it must be said that (at this particular point in time) they are remarkable because of the way that they have evolved and spread so quickly.
They have demonstrated behaviour on a scale that no other animal in the earth’s evolution have every done and impacted on the planet in a profound way. That is not being self congratulatory it is an observation based on what I know of both evolution and the history of the planet, as a matter of fact I can’t see how I can congratulate myself for something I didn’t do.
This behaviour has it’s origin not in our physical capacity, which is rather unremarkable when compared to other animals, or our sensory ability, which is similarly unremarkable. Any examination of why it is that humans have had the impact they have had involves an examination of how it occurred, i.e. what makes humans different not just from other animals, but for instance from our very near biological relatives. My contention is that it is the development of cognitive abilities, based on the use of internal and external language which have been responsible for this. I am not saying it is a good thing or a bad.
Differentiation is not a bad thing, it doesn’t demean from the whole. For instance if I am to differetiate between the Phytomyza ilicis and other forms of Agromyzidae I would look at the fact that the former mines holly leaves only, this doesn’t make is special, but it does make it unique.
Similarly I do not feel I have a feeling of superiority over any life form, however I do not have any qualms about killing other life forms if I need to or if it is in the interest of myself/humanity. In the same way that the bateria Yersinia Pestis is not concerned for me if it kills me, I am not concerned for it if I kill it.
As you say, humans have indeed changed the environment more than any other animal I can think of. So? What has that got to do with superiority? It’s what we human apes do.
So far, it is making our early extinction likely.‘Tool – making’ is what makes us human. It has enabled our consciousness to accelerate at unprecedented speed to a point where we can use technology instead of it, and the class struggle it gives rise to, using and defining us. As I said we represent nature becoming aware of its self, something unique as far as we know and nature recognises no superior or inferior species – just successful and unsuccessful ones. Please don’t insult us again with your usual accusations – it just gives the impression, Mr. Oswald, that as well as self loathing you also go in for self righteousness.
Glad you’re enjoying the class struggle. You must be very happy. Success is subjective. Fellow animals have their struggles, societies and cultures. Human societies are what humans do. Whether “successful” on both the social and evolutionary planes has yet to be seen.
As the entirety of human existence is a milli-second of Dec. 31st in the Earth’s calendar so far, we cannot use the word “successful” in evolutionary terms at all. Is success to be happy? Is it species longevity? If that’s the case, only millions of years hence could humans answer that. We could be a very tiny blip in time indeed.
You would probably like to see me out of the Party.
One thinks of the colonialist, saying the natives have lived here for thousands of years, but done nothing with the land. We will take them in hand and make a success of the land. Teach them how to be successful, like us. Work and graft. End the stupor of centuries.
This is the bourgeois thinking which informed Marx and the society of his time. Marxists want to impose this on natural evolution.
Wez, I think we ought to challrenge him on his claim that Marxists are committed to the ladder theory of evolution leading to humans at the top as superior to all other animals. I think he’s probably picked this up from some anti-Marxist “animal-rightist” writer who has mistaken the Leninist ideology of the old USSR for Marxism (which of course he should know, and in fact does know, is not Marxism at all).
So, if he doesn’t mean “Leninism” when he says “Marxism”, he would seem to be claiming that this is the view of the Party or Party members. If so, we are going to have to ask him to quote chapter and verse. Stephen J. Gould, who he admires and is a critic of the ladder theory, is also quite popular amongst Party members (despite his being soft of religion). Here, for instance, is a review of one of his books.
Incidentally, that book review quotes this passage from Gould (which is making the same point as Pannekoek):
“the biological basis of human uniqueness leads us to reject biological determinism. Our large brain is the biological foundation of intelligence: intelligence is the ground of culture: and cultural transmission builds a new mode of evolution more effective than Darwinian processes in its limited realm—the “inheritance” and modification of learned behaviour.”
To denigrate the human species is counter-productive from his own seeming main concern of wanting to protect other animals since humans, thanks to the nature of their brain and the culture it permits, are the only animal that can take action to do this. Humans are the hope of other animals and of the biosphere generally.
Of course he can rail against humans and the working class for not doing what they could in this respect but that’s not going to get the world any nearer to socialism, as the only framework within which humans can act to save the planet and other animals on it.
You are a master of the non sequitur Mr. Oswald – just as nobody here has claimed superiority as a species I did not claim that we were successful as a species; merely that we have the chance to become so. Human societies are not just ‘ what humans do’ but rather what we do creates our humanity. Again sarcastic statements like ‘Glad you’re enjoying the class struggle. You must be very happy’ do not help your case.
I think, and I am happy to be corrected, the jist of what John is saying is that through the process of property relations, which had their genesis in the capture and “ownership” of animals, class society began.
I would argue that regardless of the ownership of animals the ownership of crops would and did have the same effect. So had humans become complete vegans at that stage of their development, class society would have developed.
In a similar vein John appears to be arguing that without the development of class society we would have remained at the stage of primative communism and would have been spared the horrors of future class societies, i.e slavery, feudal bondage, wage slavery, as well as the impact of capitalism, with all the horrors it brings: mass destruction of the environment, disease, warfare, Love Island and Simon Cowell, to name but a few.
Had this been the case and primative communism had rrevailed humans and the planet might well have been better off, but the fact of the matter is it didn’t happen that way. I’m not to blame for that, nor are any other living humans responsible for the advent of property ownership or class society. So we are where we are and the only sensible solution to getting rid of captialism is to organise for socialism. Which is what we are doing. I haven’t met a socialist yet who believes we are some kind of superior being or that we are the top of the ladder in terms of evolutionary race.
I don’t really understand what your beef is John. (I admit that’s not a very appropriate choice of wording, but no cattle were harmed in the production of this post)
Whether we save the biosphere may or may not be possible, but we can’t begin to try until socialism, which we have yet to establish. May I remind you that what we will have to try and rectify as best as we can is damage that we have caused. Our human intelligence irrationally caused it, and our human intelligence must rationally act to reverse it. So our intelligence is a double-edged sword. It drives us frenziedly toward self-destruction just as surely as it is also a useful tool toward comfort and ease. It is not an absolute good. If we establish socialism, we have a chance at what you term success as a species, but this has yet to be seen. As it is, we have put ourselves under the necessity of such a revolution in the first place, because of our transformational abilities re: our environment. A species which wipes out its own natural, environmental base, and hence itself, in one million years since its appearance can hardly be called an evolutionary success. And if it does rectify this, it still remains to be seen if it can call itself such a success another 100 million years hence.
I’m not blaming humans. I don’t blame, because we are what we are. I seek only to root out speciesism, which, as ALB knows, I have found rife in both party and Standard.
I have never said humans were not unique. Our neocortex is unique. Every being is unique.
Bonobos are unique.
Bees are unique.
Elephants are unique, etc, etc.
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