Suchergebnisse

Any anthropology that calls itself Marxist must have as its starting point the intermediation of labor between human society and nature. The labor is abstract labor; as concrete labor it is work. The society in question is not society in general or the human community in abstracto, but a particular, historical society, whether primitive or civilized. The question that is posed thereby is twofold: first, it is the problem of the place in nature of the human kind, or the problem of location; second, it is the historical problem of the transition of humanity from the natural to the cultural order. Nature has its history, as does the human society, but the unit that we take for the observation of natural history is far wider than the unit of observation of human history. In the former case it is the biological species whose history is taken up; in the case of human history it is the communal life of the village, and the social life of the tribe, city or nation. The time period of natural history is geological time, which is one or more orders of magnitude greater than the time periods of ethnography and historiography.

The science of anthropology has traditionally studied the relations of the human kind to nature and the relations within society, the original animal condition of the human being, the preservation and overcoming thereof, the establishment of human culture, and its material, mental or artistic expression. Anthropology is founded on the presupposition of the variety of human societies and cultures, the differences between them, and the varieties in the developments and relations of each. It is an academic discipline above all, and has no internal commitment to practical undertakings. At best it has nurtured liberal spirits who embraced the "party of humanity", and who have defended the concept of the whole against any expression of innate superiority of one group over another. It is an abstract social science which has only now separated itself from a spurious natural-science view of humanity, and this latter has given birth to a monster, the biology of racism, the reduction of cultural differences to natural or innate differences, and the assignment of these to a scale of higher or lower races. This academic anthropology did not strangle its offspring until long after it had done its harm.

The separation of the contributions to the theory and practice of socialism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was not seriously posited during their lifetimes, but only in the following generation. The separation, as opposed to the contributions of their entire working lives, of the respective quality of thinking in either case, was a matter of which Engels was conscious, for he wrote: "Marx was a genius, we others were at best talents. Without him the theory today would be far from what it is. Therefore it rightly bears his name." The evaluation by Engels of the relation between the two was duly repeated by their biographers. Mehring wrote: "There is no doubt that Marx was philosophically the greater of the two and that his brain was more highly trained." Mayer compared the two: "Marx was driven by the harsh goad of genius; Engels lived under the gentler domination of his rich humanity." Ryazanov simply posited that the collaboration of the two and their mutual support proceeded in perfect harmony, with the minor thesis of Engels's supportive role. Both Mehring and Ryazanov cited Engels's own words of modesty quoted above. Auguste Cornu has written with reference to the beginning of the collaboration: "Engels' study of the origin of communism was more on the economic and social level than on the philosophical and political plane, and portrayed it as a necessary product of the development of capitalist society. This lent definition to Marx's still theoretical and abstract conception." Cornu, who is of the orthodox school, had reference to the articles on political economy in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844) by Engels. While he concedes nothing to the higher intellectual attainments of one over the other, he develops the theme of the power of abstraction of Marx, of concretion of Engels. That there was identity of thought and activity of Marx and Engels is the view which seeks to establish orthodoxy of the socialist doctrines of various parties; the qualitative difference of their brain power, accordingly, implies no difference in the substance of the production in either, whether in the theory or practice of socialism resp. communism.

The neutral approach of the natural scientist to the study of the physical environment contrasts with the social science approach. The unit of study is the same: in both cases it is the society, but instead of value-free adapta tions (of the natural sciences), the social sciences tend to evaluate environmental relations as beneficent or dangerous to man. American society has its adaptive niche on the North American continent, but in its brief history, we note a change in attitude from the first settlers' confident belief that nature will provide for man's wants, to our present sense of the threat to social existence generated by environmental problems. This is coupled with a growing conviction that past policies of uncontrolled depletion have brought about the change from an ecology of abundance to an ecology of scarcity. In order to comprehend our present strait, compare the civilizations of olden Central Asia, where water was in scarce supply. There, however, water was not a threat, but a positive value; its scarcity was dealt with by practical legal and technical means. Thus, there is no necessary connection between scarcity and a given set of attitudes. We are passing through a climacteric at present regarding quantity and quality of water supply, and as we change our philosophy of natural resources generally, so do we change our management policies toward them in particular. We are making up our minds that what was cheap or free will now become expensive. The pills of rising costs and taxes are a bitter dosage.

The interaction between a society & its physical environment is discussed in the context of environmental problems. As an example, a comparison is made between the depletion & mismanag of US water resources & the practices of a traditionally water-poor culture in the arid zones of Central Asia. It is seen that the econ, technological & legal customs of the traditional societies of Central Asia which were & knew themselves to be water-poor, contrast with US practices. An interaction is noted between the relations in natural & soc ecology. Often threats perceived in the natural environment are directly connected with threats in the soc environment. The US has proceeded from a period of confidence & control over the potentialities of its natural environment & predominantly external peace to a period of threat & war. Depletion of US natural resources & soc well-being have gone hand in hand with this. The threat to a society only seemingly arises from the natural ecological relations; it actually lies in the shift from one set of relations to the next. in the case of the US, it is the shift from an ecology of abundance to one of scarcity. Society will suffer if the dangers to the biological environment go unrecognized. These dangers are threats to our biological constitution, to our soc org, & to the economy as it exploits the natural resources. Planning must meet these threats to ensure our continued existence & must be used to direct to a greater degree the interrelations between the cultural (industr, agri'al) product & the natural resources. M. Maxfield.