Our regular author, well-known left-wing journalist, member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Alexander Lobanov, sent his next polemical text. Today is the first chapter of this interesting and useful material.
foreword
Before me is another anti-communist concoction – AT. Wilczek. "Farewell to Marx". (History algorithms)". Thank God, written by an intelligent person that encourages debate, and that in itself is interesting. Of course, and this little book contains the entire gentlemanly set of democrats: passions in the gulag, marginal,. lumpen, utopia and something else, not so obvious, but also harmful.
However, communist utopia, more precisely – trust in her, Wilczek agrees to leave us, I’m ready to move it even to the not so distant future, as long as she doesn’t stop the bourgeoisie from picking our pockets now.
This gentleman is ready to shower himself with pleasantries even in front of Marx., but before Marx the scientist, separating him from Marx the revolutionary. Marx's revolutionary ideas must be buried, and purely scientific to castrate. Here's a, the emasculated Marx is very attractive to Mr. Wilczek. For, to get rid of Marxism, our master is trying first of all to deal with isthmatism, then go prove it, that Marx understands nothing about surplus value, Well, the theory of the revolutionary transformation of society itself will fall.
For a long time, Marxism was protected from criticism in our country., and a combination of vintage, in the West there are well-known arguments against him (but unknown to us) with a truly new situation in the country creates a sense of urgency, significance and some people had a feeling, that Wilczek can really compete with Marx. That's why I decided to oppose Wilczek. Of course, I would have no hope of defeating Wilczek on his scientific field, but, Fortunately, Wilczek chose the genre of scientific and artistic essay, he won’t be able to beat me with his special knowledge, but he is clearly not friendly with history and geography. And therefore, behind the gentleman's ear, yes to the sun. (And it would be necessary for all gentlemen!)
But for now we will perform this operation only with Wilczek’s book , and we will try to follow the plan of this work.
Chapter 1
Origin of the story
Wilczek starts with Adam, from the origin of man. At first I couldn't understand, why did Wilczek spend so much time on this?, seems like a special question. Especially –how he expected to defeat Marx on this field, he also recognizes the origin of man from the ape, and then it came. For our “materialist”, the role of labor in the origin of man is like a bone in his throat.. Why? Now you'll understand. According to Wilczek, man was not created by labor, and a gene mutation, causing alienation from the animal world. poor, unadapted creature, with a deficiency of instincts, but with an overdeveloped simian tendency to imitate, a person becomes a parasite, host of large predators, eats scraps after them, imitating both a large predator and its victims, the main thing, competitors in collecting scraps, mastering their organization and methods of action.
So far everything seems to be correct, but why did these mutant monkeys turn into people?, and not another type of corpse eater like hyenas, after all, the ancestors imitated them?
Our theorist claims, that Marx and Engels, speaking about the role of labor in the origin of man, they don't understand anything about biology, and they are rather weak with logic and in general – typical Lamarckists.
How Wilczek reasons? Labor- this is an activity on the unborn, non-instinctive program, specific human activity, and therefore labor could not create man, since he must exist before man, but this is impossible. Why? It turns out, genetics completely denies the possibility of instinctive, animal-like forms of labor. Well, you have to! And I didn't even know, that bird is a weaver, knot "stitching" leaves, beaver, dam builder or monkey, knocking down fruit with a stick, turns out to be Marx's invention. Or maybe it's not fiction, maybe they do that, because they didn’t read the mythical geneticists or, that likely, g. Vilchek. The labor activity of animals is a well-known fact., anyway, for biologists, but these are either regular actions at the level of instincts (ant, a weaver, beaver), or episodic actions as a result of specific thinking (monkey). But be that as it may, and subhuman, animal labor – this is reality. but, a counter-argument follows easily from Wilczek’s book – let reality, but it wasn’t hard work that made a man out of a monkey- this is something low, then smelling, unspiritual. And Wilczek’s supposed rightness, can see "basically literate", and those who follow the labor theory are forced to resort to “wild speculation” and put labor in its place «absolute spirit», attribute to "primordial man", animal, fantastic monkey, supernatural intellectual abilities for him". (It's a monkey, stacked box on box and knocked down a banana with a stick, or gnawing off twigs on a twig, to roll an apple out from behind bars – possessor of supernatural intellectual abilities – and big ones, to start doing ancestral work, animal labor- and not required).
Mr. Wilczek, allegedly, for materialism and monism, and here is Marx – creates a “false materialistic idea” And what kind of materialism does our hero have?? "Alienation is taken as the beginning of the determination of the historical process, which determined the transition from life according to instinct to life according to image and likeness. All relationships: labor, demographic, ideological ones do not grow out of each other, and together from a single root of the image, in which they exist in rudimentary form. At first they are very tightly coupled: the way of activity is clearly and strictly linked to the way of life, the nature of relationships in the community, any weapon is at the same time a fetish, and the fetish is a tool, technology is ideology, and ideology is technology, everything has an undifferentiated practical and spiritual meaning, utilitarian and at the same time sacred meaning."
That's it. This is only from a monkey that climbed down from a tree. So who ascribes to the "primordial man", animal, monkey" fantastic, supernatural intellectual abilities for him. And where did this “image” come from?, spiritualized a person? In the Bible, at least, clear – God breathed soul into man, and Wilczek's? so here, after gene mutation, which caused the alienation of man from the world of animal instincts, the ancestral man began to live according to someone else’s plan, imitating animals, and in his brain he formed an image of this beast, whom he imitated, from whom he studied and this image became the basis of everything – his claws and teeth are the prototype of tools, and the beast itself – this is the prototype of both the devil and the cultural hero, a menagerie –prototype of human society. It's new! The beast breathed soul into man. no more, nothing less. But why did the life of a parasite and a hangover elevate the monkey and not lower it to all fours?, our theorist does not explain, and I can't explain it – Well, here's the image – and all.
But, as I already said, he reproaches Marx and Engels for Lamarckism and modernism and frightens the reader, disagree with him, that he lacks “basic literacy”. Of course, now the old view of human origins: the monkey took the stick, front paws are busy, I had to get back on my feet, started working – hands have developed; seems naive, but reproaching Engels for Lamarckism is still the same, why blame Ptolemy for incorrectly assessing the shape of the earth (she's not a ball, and the geoid) or to Copernicus that, what did he say about the circular rotation of the earth, whereas in reality it is elliptical.
Well, where was Engels to know about genes and mutations? But we know.
Oh well. An upright mutant appeared with a loosened, suppressed instinct of herd hierarchical subordination, took up meat gathering, imitating jackals, hyenas and other scavengers. Let it go, as Wilczek states, man began to split bones with a stone, imitating the teeth of predators, but animals could not teach conscious work to humans. After all, sea otters also break shells with stones., and some birds crack ostrich eggs with a stone – it's all animal labor.
The beast may even come up with a connection between the tool and the desired result., a monkey can even make tools, but no one is capable of using tools to make tools, except a person, because for this you need to have a ready-made image of this weapon in your brain. And for this image to take shape, Long-term experience of animal and semi-animal labor is required, long period of using ready-made tools, making the necessary sticks with teeth and nails, accidental chipping of stone, giving the desired result, needed labor. It is regular work, regular use of tools accustomed prehumans to mastery of the material(stone, wood, bone, he mastered it by touch, and visually, and speculative; learned to compare, recall. And probably, the first gun made was made in an attempt to achieve that convenience, "grip" of the stone, what do you remember from the last time at the lost stone?, but what is this stone missing?. It was labor that created the first image and this image was the image of a convenient stone, This is where the humanization of the monkey came from. And from this image of a comfortable stone all other images come, up to the most abstract: God, Sophia-Wisdom, higher dimensions and parallel worlds. Everything from there, from a sweaty and angry troglodyte, removing a bad ledge from a convenient stone. But for Mr. Vilchek, work has nothing to do with creating an image and imaginative thinking. It all comes back to the basic question of philosophy – what comes first- matter or consciousness. In this case – material production, work or image.
But it would seem, what's the difference? Well, labour, not effort, what does this mean for our day??
But no, the most direct.
"If labor is taken as the cause of development, production, then in theory a quasi-hierarchical chain of determinations inevitably arises: the level of productive forces determines the level of production relations, production relations determine property relations, and they in turn determine all the others". But Mr. Wilczek does not agree with this. After all, if Marx is right about this, then he is right in other respects and gentlemen “new Russians” have no rights to privatize our factories, and Mr. Wilczek (after all, in “private life”, out of service, lackeys also call themselves masters) you won't get a sweet bone from the master's table.
So he’s trying to combine the incompatible, idealism with materialism, because it is not God who breathes the soul into a person, and the beast, indulges in intricate reasoning, scares the reader, but still can’t explain, why was man born, not a two-legged hyena-like monkey, stone splitting brain bones – You never know there have been two-legged animals in the history of the earth since dinosaurs.
