Re: evolution?

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> cbcox@xxxxxxxxx 12/26/00 08:47PM >>>


George Snedeker wrote:

> why get trapped by teleological arguments about history. it is one thing to
> look back to see patterns of development which may have led up to the
> present form of society. it is quite another to see these as necessary.
> society is not a tree.

One of the most common objections non-marxists raise to
marxism is that it is a teleology. But teleology leads to either
God or to some other mystic force permeating human history.
This error above all marxists must avoid. George's last point is
crucial: Society is not a tree. (And the oak is only *potentially*,
NOT necessarily, in the acorn.)

(((((((((((

CB: The notion that a acorn has a necessary connection to an oak is not 
teleological.
Potentiality is not only a concept of contingency. It is a dialectic of 
contingency
and necessity.

This is demonstrated by the fact that an acorn has no potential to turn into an 
elm.
Or that an elm seed has no potential to turn into an oak.

If you do not use dialectic, the unity and struggle of the opposites 
contingency and
necessity, you are not doing Marxism.

To exclude all necessity is to exclude science. The notion that things are 
absolutely
contingent or chance would mean no science is possible. Science means finding
NECESSARY connections between things.

(((((((((((((




The organic metaphor can be
useful, but it is deadly taken literally.

((((((((((

CB: The organic metaphor is perfect. The organic world is not teleological. The
relationship between and acorn and an oak is not teleological. It is a 
dialectic of
chance and necessity.

(((((((((


 If society is an organism,
then for the "good of the whole" one may amputate the limbs.
Anyhow, that was Mussolini's theory. Nor is society a work
of art: even the bourgeois Henry James saw that that way
lay a ruthless manipulation of persons as just so much clay.

Carrol