[PEN-L:33475] Re: extra terrestrial interventions.

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/27/02 4:13:15 PM Pacific Standard Time, cburford@xxxxxxxxxx writes:

> I am disappointed by Melvin's contribution - Re: [PEN-L:33437] Re: Rael: "atheist, non-profit, spiritual organisation", 


You do raise an interesting question concerning the rise of commodity production and exchange in connection with gold that I would like to comment on. Below is the dialogue exchange. I state:

<Zecharia Sitchin asserts that the "Gods" or more accurately the "Lords" and "Masters" or Nefilim - "those who fell from above," came to earth seeking gold. This gold was sought for several reasons, including its inherent quality as a conductor of electrical current and as particles to buttress the outer atmosphere of the 12th planet. 

Depending on ones point of view, the above tends to serve as an explanation of why Gold emerged in human culture as a "valuable" substance before the rise of commodity production and exchange or before the emergence of value in the commodity form.>

You state the following in reply: 

>Extraordinary to give credence to such an explanation of such a largely useless metal as gold, when there is a very clear explanation in Marx, linking the emergence of gold and other substances, to the development of commodity exchange. 

Engels dated the law of value back at least 7,000 years. A broadly Marxist approach is not invalidated by evidence that certain commodities, eg flint tools, are now known to have been produced systematically in certain areas of the world as long as 1/2 million years ago presumably for barter.<

(End of dialogue exchange) 


I do not believe that gold is "a largely useless metal," linked to "to the development of commodity exchange."  Gold and copper were used in man's early "civilized life" and other alloys. Gold was used for making vessels, and later became valuable in temple building. Gold was considered more valuable than copper because it does not oxidize - rust, and is easier to bend and shape. Many of these vessels used were most certainly the property of the "ruling elite" but only much later enter the realm of commodity exchange as a mode of exchange. 

A deeper question involves the difference between producing something for systematic use (its use-value) as opposed to this "something" entering the sphere of systematic exchange (the combination of unity of use-value and exchange value). The use of gold as a valuable metal occurs before any systematic exchange of products in human society, and this applies to bronze, tin and silver. 

It is not correct in my opinion to speak of flint tools as a commodity - ("produced systematically in certain areas of the world as long as 1/2 million years ago presumably for barter.")  I draw a line of distinction between the long emergence of the law of value - it's genesis, and the value form, whose official title is called commodities or "the commodity form of products."  Products are created in human society for their use value property and rudimentary exchange - barter, comes later. This rudimentary exchange called barter is not the modern meaning of the word exchange. 

The gold vessels of antiquity are products of human labor but are not commodities. These products of labor are not governed by the law of the exchange of equivalent amounts of human labor and how a particular society or group understands "what is equivalent."


Here, I am not arguing Mr. Sitchin's thesis - which he does well enough on his own, but defending my statement that 

"Gold emerged in human culture as a "valuable" substance before the rise of commodity production and exchange or before the emergence of value in the commodity form."

If given the chance, I would rewrite the above sentence to state: 

"Gold emerges in human culture as a prized metal substance before the emergence of the law of value or the conversion of societal products into commodities - items produced for their exchange properties."  

The "ancient mining" of gold was not for its exchange value property. It is only later in history that these preexisting metals, after being shaped by human labor, undergo their transformation into a commodity form. 

It is in the future that the "commodity form" will be obliterated and products - will in the main,  lose their mode of _expression_ as exchange values. The agency of this change is not God in my opinion, but grows out of the developments in the material powers of the productive forces. In this sense the advent of advance robotics, computerization and digitalized production process will continue to render ever greater quantities of human labor superfluous to the production process and compel a change in how society is organized and products distributed. Products increasingly produced by robotics can have no value, because value is the socially necessary amount of labor in a product. 

I would venture to say that the robot shall carry the historic toil of man and man shall be compelled to carry the burden of being himself. 

 ...........

You state:


>The basic question is whether you believe that prehumans could have been intelligent. They were. We do not need to despise them, or to project onto some superhuman entities, superhuman intelligense. Prehumans needed to be intelligent to survive and reproduce in a society in which most of us would have perished. As indeed all hominid species except one have perished. The struggle for survival is precarious.

This strange tale of visits by UFO's to a French journalist in 1974, or the literal meaning of ancient Babylonian or Sumerian texts, are indistinguishable as afar as I can see, from historical idealism, for all the concreteness of their metaphors. They are a Deus ex machina. Which is what all creation myths are.

The problem is a variant of the wider problem. Is the athropic perspective on the universe and human history just an artefact arising from the fact that we are looking back and regard our position as self-evidently uniquely privileged? Or do we think that there was some sort of predestiny, guided by God, gods, or extra-terrestials, or Fate, which has brought history to its present point? <


Comment

Human agency - however one describes it, arises before instruments, tools, means of production and there development whose sum total creates the "stuff" of which the material powers of production becomes operational. 

Marxist ideologist and theorist are forever condemned (predestined - yes?) to explain exactly what they are talking about. As ideologist, Marxist are compelled to explain themselves in the manner in which the people of the era in which they live think things out. Thus, concepts such as fate, destiny and predestined become material categories that cannot be separated from the impact of the material power of the productive forces. What is meant by the word "destiny" today is not the same as 200 years ago because words can be stagnate - unchanging sounds, while imbued with a different meaning. 

Destiny and fate, has most certainly brought mankind to its current state of existence. Destiny means that mankind development is inexplicably fused to and governed by the evolution of the material power of the productive forces. How one explains this development called history has been debated throughout all of recorded history. The standpoint of Marx, which is an approach or conception of how society evolves on a certain basis, locates development in the material power of production as the primary - not singular, factor. 

Thus, by the word historical idealism I understand you to mean an explanation of the societal advance that locates the axis of change outside mans productive activity and attributes societal development to unknowable properties outside of man's self - human agency. 

What is meant by "the societal advance" is the progressive accumulation of productive forces or the quantitative and qualitative development - enlargement, of mans ability to survive as a species and produce expanding material wherewithal. 

What accounts for man's evolutionary-biological leap from one state of development to another will be hotly debated for perhaps hundreds of more years. To attribute an evolutionary-biological leap to the material power of production, before it arises as a societal force is an interesting proposition, which I do not accuse you of making. This of course is the "missing piece (kink in the chain of events) of the puzzle." 

Between destiny - the evolution and continued expansion of the material power of the productive forces, and fate - how one live out their daily life during a specific period of time, lies "the class struggle" or how society is continuously reconfigured on the basis of the revolution in the mode of production as impacted by human agency. 

Through out all of recorded and spoken history handed down from one generation to another, mankind has looked to the heavens - the stars. This has not changed, but rather has been reconfigured on the basis of the expansion of the material power of the productive forces. Mankind is poised to search the heavens - the stars, to seek explanation of our genesis and reconfigure the meaning of "purpose" and "meaning."  This is how I understand man's destiny. 

Fate is the complex daily interaction of billions of individual wills that produce the unforeseen result. Generally, this unforeseen result does not look like anything the individual will aspire for, because a complex interactivity of billions is involved.  

Much of our ancient literature that is slowly becoming available to the masses is labeled idealist in contradistinction to materialist. The rub is that materialism is reconfigured on the basis of epoch making changes in the mode of production, which would indicate to me that there exist ancient materialist explanations of social life. 

Much of the ancient scared texts I have read are rigorously materialist explanations articulated within a "philosophic form" of discourse that locates man's genesis in the heavens or as it is called - God. I personally draw immense emotional satisfaction from the profound insight of much of this ancient literature. 


Melvin P.