Re: animal lib?

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 11 Jan 1996, Lisa Rogers wrote:

> Why can only humans "labour"??  Engels says in his essay on human
> bio-evolution, that labour begins with the use of tools.  Why?  Of
> course he thought that only humans used tools, but we now know
> different.  Of course, we do more of it than other animals, but what
> about it is some kind of defining divide?
>

Louis: There's an interesting discussion of this question in Harry
Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital". He argues that animals other
than homo sapiens make instinctual use of tools. Spiders don't need to be
taught how to spin a web.

But on the other hand, a fascinating documentary on birds was shown the
other month on PBS which distinctly showed that a certain type of
woodpecker had to "instruct" its young how to fashion a twig in just the
right way to pluck insects out of the hollow of a tree.




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