As K. Marx notes, "people begin with production", because only it provides a person with the satisfaction of his material needs. Labor, as we know, is a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls metabolism. On the basis of material activities, human consciousness grows. The formation of consciousness is primarily associated with the emergence in the course of labor activity specifically human attitude to the outside world, which is mediated by new motives, incentives for activity.

All animal behavior makes sense for him only insofar as it is somehow directed to the satisfaction of biological needs - food, sexual, defensive. True, in some animals, especially in anthropoid apes, one can notice a developed orienting-exploratory activity. If the monkey has nothing to do, then it begins to feel the objects around it. It would seem that there is behavior that is not motivated by a biological need. However, this is not so: under natural conditions, such actions contribute to the detection of biologically important traits for the organism; therefore, they are opportunistic in nature. With this trait in mind, Marx emphasized that the animal also produces. It builds a nest or dwelling for itself, as a bee, a beaver, an ant, etc., do. But the animal produces only what it itself or its cub directly needs.

Of course, man is also a biological being. In order to live, he must eat, drink, procreate, etc. But his biological needs have lost their purely animal character. So, the food consumed by a person should not only be high-calorie, but also be specially prepared. Qualitatively new needs arise and develop in a person in the course of social life. Among them, first of all, is the need for labor activity, changing objects, and hence the tools themselves. All this leads to the formation of a fundamentally new relationship between man and the world around him. Significant for a person are not only those phenomena that are directly related to the satisfaction of an immediate material or biological need, but also those that serve these needs indirectly. Already the production of tools of labor in itself is the creation of such objects that are not directly included in the system of satisfying immediate needs.

Based on the development of specifically social material needs, a system of, so to speak, non-utilitarian needs is formed in a person. This is a need for communication, knowledge of the truth, an aesthetic need, etc. In connection with this, a specific theoretical, aesthetic, etc. attitude of a person towards his object arises. Since human labor is feasible only in the presence of social relations and a person's awareness of his function in an integral system, his relationship with other people, to the extent that a person himself becomes an object of knowledge. Knowing the outside world, people are forced to move on to understanding themselves, their practical and spiritual activities. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness.

Social needs not only determine the range of objects to be known, but act as determinants of the significance of objects, their role for a person. The thing is that the objects of knowledge and activity, being included in the sphere human activity, act for him not only from the side of natural ~ properties, but also as socially significant, having value. Value (practically utilitarian, aesthetic, etc.) is a certain function that an object acquires in the course of human activity, serving to satisfy some needs. As you can see, although value is a feature of objects associated with their natural characteristics, it is not reduced to them; it is, as it were, the second, already the social being of the thing. Therefore, in the process of cognition, the object is revealed by the subject, and how a natural phenomenon, and as significant for its activities. This means that evaluation activity becomes a factor in the cognition of an object. An evaluative attitude, during which the meaning of an object for the subject is revealed, its internal connection with certain human needs is revealed, and constitutes a specific side of the human relationship to the outside world. A person, in other words, carries out cognition by applying to them certain socially developed measures - practical, theoretical, aesthetic, moral, etc.

Rebuilding the sphere cognitive activity and the system of social relations is carried out under the influence of human labor activity, is associated with the formation of the ability to set goals. Goal setting is a specific feature of a person, born in him in the process of labor, based on needs and characterizing the peculiarity of consciousness. This follows from the fact that the satisfaction of human needs is carried out in the course of changes in the phenomena of the external world. The presentation of the results of activity in the form of an image to be created is the main content of the goal. The goal is a reflection of reality in the mind of a person in the form that it should become in the process of practice. Setting a goal means not only the formation of an ideal result of activity, but also certain conditions, means and forms of activity. Emphasizing the connection of all these components, K. Marx noted that the result of labor should have been present in a person's head "ideally, as an internal image, as a need, as an incentive and as a goal" *.

* K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch., vol., 12, p. 718.

In the formation of a plan of activity, the creative nature of consciousness is revealed. If the subject creates a certain product, thing, object, then, first of all, in the process of ideal activity, the subject forms an image of what is created in the form of a visual representation, which is objectified by him in diagrams, drawings, image plans, in sign systems. Created models or images of the future go far beyond the present, the past, and therefore beyond the boundaries of reproducing ideas.

The creative activity of consciousness makes it possible to reproduce the dynamics of an object. In case of goal setting we are talking about the reproduction of the dynamics of the object in the course of practical activities; placing objects in connection with the tools of labor, the subject causes changes in them, allowing them to fully understand their nature.

In goal-setting, the result of activity is defined in its relation to the objective properties of the objects being changed, as well as to the change itself, since here it is always given in unity with certain means and forms of activity. If, as a result of activity, the objective laws to which the subject of activity is subject are correctly taken into account, the necessary means are selected and adequate forms of activity are determined, then plan being created will be adequate to the future result. In this case, the mental transformation of the object in the course of creating a plan that expresses the final result of people's actions will also be adequate.

Fromm. Marx's concept of man

The most common misconception is the idea of ​​the so-called "materialism" of Marx, according to which Marx supposedly considered the main motive of human activity to be the desire for material (financial) gain, for convenience ... this idea is supplemented by the assertion that Marx did not show any interest in the individual and did not understand spiritual needs of a person: as if his ideal was a well-fed and well-dressed “soulless” person. Therefore, the socialist paradise of Marx is presented to us as a society in which millions of people are subordinate to the all-powerful state bureaucracy, as a society of people who gave up their freedom in exchange for equality .... they lost their individuality and turned into millions of robotic automatons controlled by a small, materially more endowed by the elite.

Marx's goal was the spiritual emancipation of man, freeing him from the bonds of economic dependence, restoring his personal integrity, which was supposed to help him find ways to unite with nature and other people. Another thesis that Fromm wants to prove is that Marx's philosophy is rather a spiritual existentialism (in secularized language), and it is precisely in view of its spiritual essence that it does not coincide, but opposes the materialistic practice and the materialistic philosophy of our century.

Another reason for this falsification is that the Russian communists appropriated Marxist theory and tried to convince the world that they were followers of Marx in their theory and practice. For them, socialism is not a society that is fundamentally different from capitalism in terms of the problem of man, but rather it is a kind of capitalism in which the working class is at the top of the social ladder, for them socialism is, in the ironic expression of Enegels, " modern society but without its drawbacks.

The words "materialism" and "idealism" in Marx and other philosophers do not mean the mental motivation of behavior ... but in the philosophical language, "materialism" characterizes the philosophical direction, which believes that the world is based on moving matter. At the same time, Marx spoke out against that philosophical materialism, which argued that the material substratum underlies not only material processes, but also mental and spiritual phenomena. "The main drawback of all previous materialism - including Feuerbach's - is that the object, reality, sensibility is taken only in the form of an object, or in the form of contemplation, and not as a human sensory activity, practice, not subjectively."

historical materialism. The history of society: a mode of production is a certain way of activity of these individuals, a certain type of their life activity, their certain way of life. What is the vital activity of individuals, such are they themselves. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production - coincides both with what they produce and with how they produce. ... His philosophy is neither materialism nor idealism, but a synthesis of naturalism and humanism.

The most important error lies in the assumption that historical materialism is a psychological theory, which is occupied by human passions and sufferings. But in fact, it is not a psychological theory, it only states that the way a person produces determines both his thinking and his desires, and not that his main desire is the desire for maximum material gain. This means that the economy is determined not by any spiritual impulse, but by the mode of production; not by subjective "psychological" but by objective "economic and sociological" factors. The subject of history, the author of its laws, is a truly real whole person, "real living individuals" and not the ideas put forward by these people. The study of Leonard Krieger (1920) - for Marx, the true substance of history is human activity at all levels: in the mode of production, in social relations and other spheres of being. It would be appropriate to call Marx's understanding of history an anthropological interpretation of history, because his understanding is based on the fact that people themselves are both creators and actors of their historical drama. In Capital "wouldn't it be easier to write it (history), since, according to Vico, human history differs from the history of nature in that the first is made by us, the second is not made by us."

Marx's entire critique of capitalism rests on the argument that capitalism has made the interests of capital and material gain the main motive of man; his whole concept of socialism was based on the fact that socialism is a society in which material interest ceases to be the dominant interest.

The most important factor in the process of self-production of the human race is in its relation to nature. At the beginning of history, man blindly submits to nature, he is chained to it. Gradually, as he evolves, he changes his attitude to nature and thereby himself. Labor is a factor placed between man and nature; labor is the desire of man to regulate his relationship with nature. Labor changes the relationship of man to nature, and hence man changes in labor, through labor. ... At some point, a person will develop to such an extent natural springs production, that the antagonism between man and nature will finally be eliminated. At this moment, the prehistory of mankind will end and truly human history will begin.

“People enter into production relations independent of their will, which correspond to a certain stage in the development of their material productive forces. Their totality constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms correspond. public consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general. (the ancient social production organisms are incomparably simpler and clearer than the bourgeois one, but they rest either on the immaturity of the individual person, who has not yet torn himself off the umbilical cord of natural ancestral ties with other people, or on direct relations of domination and subordination. ... This real limitedness is reflected ideally in ancient religions that deify nature and in popular beliefs.The religious reflection of the real world can disappear altogether only when the attitude of practical Everyday life people will be expressed in their transparent and reasonable connections with each other and with nature). ... The production of ideas, ideas, consciousness is initially directly woven into material activity and into the material communication of people, into language real life. The formation of ideas, thinking, spiritual communication of people are here still a direct product of the material relationship of people. ...Consciousness can never be anything other than a conscious being, and the being of people is a real process of their life.

Development occurs as a result of contradictions between the forces of production (and other objective conditions) and the existing social system. “Not a single social formation perishes before all the productive forces have developed, for which it gives enough scope, and new, higher production relations never appear before the material conditions for their existence have matured in the bowels of the old society itself.” If the method of production or social organization hinders rather than promotes the development of existing productive forces, society, under the threat of decline, chooses for itself a mode of production that corresponds to the new productive forces and contributes to their development. Regarding violence, it plays the role of the last push in the development, which has basically already taken place by itself. Violence is the midwife of every old society that is burdened with a new one.

Consciousness. Only when false consciousness turns into true consciousness, that is, only when we understand, realize reality, instead of distorting it through fictions and rationalizations, will we be able to realize our real and truly human needs. Marx never forgot that not only circumstances make a person, but the person himself creates circumstances. “The materialist doctrine that people are the products of circumstances and upbringing, that, consequently, changed people are the products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, this doctrine forgets that it is people who change circumstances...”

Human nature is “human nature in general” and “human modification” that manifests itself in every historical epoch, in accordance with this, two types of human needs: permanent (sustainable), which constitute an essential part human nature, and "relative" needs: aspirations and passions, which are not the main part of human nature, and their occurrence is determined by the specific social structure and certain conditions of production and exchange. ... A man is a raw material that cannot be changed in terms of his structure, but at the same time, a man really changes in the course of history, develops, transforms, is a product of history, and since he himself creates history, he creates himself himself too.

Labor is above all a process between man and nature, a process in which man mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature by his own activity. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature. In order to appropriate the substance of nature in a form suitable for his own life, he sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: arms and legs, head and fingers. Acting through this movement on the external nature and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops the forces dormant in her and subordinates the play of these forces to his own power.

Alienation. Thus, the central place in Marx's work is occupied by the problem of alienated meaningless labor into free creative labor (rather than an increase in wages for alienated labor on the part of an individual or abstract capitalist). ... This service is always the deification of that into which the person himself has invested his creativity and then forgot about it and perceives his product as something standing above him. "The fetishization of the commodity" .... All existentialist philosophy, starting with Kierkegaard, is an age-old movement of protest against the dehumanization of man in an industrial society. In the atheistic dictionary, the concept of "alienation" is equivalent to the word "sin" in the language of the deists: the rejection of man from himself, from God in himself. ... Labor ceases to be a part of the nature of the worker, therefore the worker in his work does not affirm himself, but denies himself, feels not happy, but unhappy, does not freely develop his physical and spiritual energy, but exhausts his physical nature and destroys his forces. In the process of labor man is not conscious of his own creative powers. Therefore, the main thing for Marx is the liberation of a person from such a form of labor that destroys his personality, from such labor that turns him into a thing and makes him a slave of things. His critique of capitalism is directed not against the method of distribution of income, but against the mode of production, against the destruction of the individual and turning him into a slave.

Communism according to Marx - the positive abolition of private property - the self-alienation of man, the true appropriation of human essence by man and for man; and therefore as a complete, occurring in a conscious way and with the preservation of all the wealth of the previous development, the return of a person to himself as a social person, that is, human.

Rough communism - the dominance of property property obscures the view so much that people are ready to destroy everything that is not subject to socialization. They want to discard by force such factors that do not fit into the concept of real property - talent and so on. Physical, immediate possession is for them the goal of being; the concept of "worker" is not canceled, but applies to everyone; relations of private property are replaced by relations of public property, which extends to the whole world, up to the socialization of wives. Rough communism is the realization of ordinary human envy, which is the other side of the coin with the name greed, which does not allow the other to be richer, and therefore calls for equalization.

"The prehistory of human society is completed with the bourgeois social formation." There is one dead mechanism in the factory, independent of man, and people are attached to it like living cogs. In times of handicraft and manufacture, man himself uses the tools of labor. In the factory, man serves the machine, man becomes an appendage of the machine. “In capitalism, all methods of increasing the productivity of labor in social production are carried out at the expense of the individual worker; all these means are transformed into means of suppressing and exploiting the producer, they turn the worker into a partial man, an appendage of the machine ... that is, they take away from him his spiritual, his creative forces. An alienated person is not only alien to other people, he is devoid of humanity, both in a natural, natural and spiritual sense. Man becomes a means of his individual existence. What can we say about the vulgar interpretation of communism, when a person is interpreted as a means of ensuring the existence of a class, a nation, or a means of the state.

Private property does not know how to transform a crude need into a human need. The expansion of the range of products and needs becomes an inventive and always prudent slave to inhuman, unnatural and far-fetched desires. Industry speculates on the refinement of needs; it speculates to the same extent on their rudeness, moreover, on artificially evoked ones.

Marx did not limit his goal to the liberation of the working class, but dreamed of the liberation of human essence by returning unalienated, free labor to all people, of a society that lives for the sake of man, and not for the production of goods, in which man ceases to be an ugly bastard, but turns into a full-fledged developed human being. An employee, an intermediary, a company representative, a manager today are people even more alienated than a professional worker. The activity of the worker is still to some extent an expression of his personal abilities (dexterity, reliability), and he does not need to sell his personality: a smile, an opinion. They can literally be called the word "man-system, organized man." They are not in a creative relationship with the world; they worship things and the machines that produce those things - and in this alienated world they feel abandoned and alien.

Bibliography

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site were used.

NATURE AND SOCIETY

1. THE PLACE OF WORK IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF SOCIETY AND NATURE

Labor is first of all a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature. In order to appropriate the substance of nature in a form suitable for his own life, he sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: arms and legs, head and fingers. Acting through this movement on the external nature and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature.

Marx K. Capital, vol. I. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 23, p. eighteen.

Since this labor is an activity aimed at mastering material elements for one purpose or another, it needs substance as a prerequisite. In different use-values, the proportion between labor and the substance of nature is very different, but use-value always contains some natural substratum. As an expedient activity aimed at mastering the elements of nature in one form or another, labor is a natural condition for human existence, a condition for the exchange of substances between man and nature, independent of any social forms.

Marx K. Toward a critique of political economy. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 13, p. 22-2?.

Animal only enjoys external nature and produces changes in it simply by virtue of its presence; man, by the changes he makes, makes it serve his purposes, dominates above her. And this is the last essential difference between man and other animals, and man again owes this difference to labor.

Engels F. Dialectics of nature, - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 20, p. 495.

2. IMPACT OF SOCIETY ON NATURE

Let us not, however, be too deceived by our victories over nature. For each such victory, she takes revenge on us. Each of these victories, it is true, has in the first place the consequences that we expected, but secondly and thirdly, completely different, unforeseen consequences, which very often destroy the significance of the first. People who uprooted forests in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere in order to obtain arable land in this way, and did not dream that they initiated the current desolation of these countries, depriving them, along with forests, of centers of accumulation and conservation of moisture . When the Alpine Italians cut down the coniferous forests on the southern slopes of the mountains, so carefully guarded on the northern, they did not foresee that by this they were cutting the roots of high-mountain cattle breeding in their area; still less did they foresee that by doing so they would leave their mountain springs without water for a large part of the year, so that during the rainy season these springs could pour all the more furious streams into the plain. Potato distributors in Europe did not know that they also spread scrofula along with mealy tubers. And so, at every step, the facts remind us that we do not rule over nature in the same way that a conqueror rules over a foreign people, we do not rule over it like someone who is outside nature - that we, on the contrary, are our flesh, we belong to it with blood and brain and are inside it, that all our dominion over it consists in the fact that we, unlike all other beings, are able to cognize its laws and correctly apply them.

And we, in fact, every day learn to understand its laws more and more correctly and to know both the closer and more distant consequences of our active interference in its natural course. Especially since the great advances in natural science in our century, we are becoming more and more capable of being able to take into account also the more remote natural consequences of at least the most common of our actions in the field of production and thereby dominate them. And the more this becomes a fact, the more people will again not only feel, but also realize their unity with nature, and the more impossible will become that senseless and unnatural idea of ​​some kind of opposition between spirit and matter, man and nature, soul and body, which has spread in Europe since the decline of classical antiquity and has received its highest development in Christianity.

But if millennia have already been required for us to learn to a certain extent to take into account in advance more distant natural consequences of our actions aimed at production, then this science was given much more difficult in relation to more distant public the consequences of these actions. We have mentioned the potato and the scrofula that accompanied it. But what can scrofula mean in comparison with the consequences that the reduction of the diet of the working population to mere potatoes had for the living conditions of the popular masses of entire countries? What does scrofula mean in comparison with the famine that in 1847, as a result of the potato disease, befell Ireland and which brought to the grave a million exclusively - or almost exclusively - Irish Irish who eat potatoes, and forced a million to emigrate across the ocean! When the Arabs learned how to distill alcohol, it never occurred to them that they had thus created one of the main weapons with which the indigenous inhabitants of the then-undiscovered America would be exterminated. And when Columbus later discovered this America, he did not know that by this he awakened to a new life the institution of slavery that had long disappeared in Europe and laid the foundation for the trade in blacks. People who in the 17th and XVIII centuries worked on the creation of the steam engine, did not suspect that they were creating an instrument that, more than anything else, would revolutionize social relations throughout the world and which, especially in Europe, by concentrating wealth in the hands of a minority and proletarianizing the vast majority, it will first deliver social and political domination to the bourgeoisie, and then it will provoke a class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, a struggle that can only end in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the destruction of all class antagonisms. – But even in this area, we, through a long, often cruel experience and through comparison and analysis historical material, we gradually learn to understand the indirect, more remote social consequences of our production activity, and in this way we are able to subordinate these consequences to our domination and regulation.

However, this regulation requires more than mere knowledge. This requires a complete revolution in our hitherto existing mode of production and with it in our entire present social system.

All the methods of production that have existed up to now have had in mind only the achievement of the immediate, most immediate useful effects of labor. The further consequences, which appear only later and exert their effect through gradual repetition and accumulation, were completely ignored. The original common ownership of land corresponded, on the one hand, to such a level of development of people, which generally limited their horizons to what lies closest, and on the other hand, it assumed the presence of a certain excess of free land, which provided a certain scope for weakening possible bad results. this primitive economy. When this surplus of free land was exhausted, common property also fell into disrepair. And all the higher forms of production that followed it led to the division of the population into different classes and thus to the opposition between the ruling and oppressed classes. As a result, the interest of the ruling class became the driving factor of production, since the latter was not limited to the task of somehow supporting the miserable existence of the oppressed. This has been carried out most fully in the capitalist mode of production now dominant in Western Europe. The individual capitalists who dominate production and exchange can only care about the most immediate beneficial effects of their actions. Moreover, even this beneficial effect itself - insofar as it concerns the usefulness of the goods produced or exchanged - completely recedes into the background, and the only driving force is the profit from the sale.

The social science of the bourgeoisie, classical political economy, deals primarily with only those social consequences of human actions directed towards production and exchange, the achievement of which is directly meant. This fully corresponds to the social order of which it is the theoretical expression. Since individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of immediate profit, only the immediate, most immediate results can be taken into account in the first place. When an individual manufacturer or merchant sells a commodity that he has made or purchased at an ordinary profit, this satisfies him completely and he is not at all interested in what will happen next with this commodity and the person who bought it. The same is true of the natural consequences of these same actions. What was the business of the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned the forests on the slopes of the mountains and received fertilizer in the ashes from the fire, which was enough for one generation of very profitable coffee trees - what did they care about the fact that tropical showers then washed away the now defenseless upper layer soil, leaving behind only bare rocks! With the present mode of production, as regards the natural as well as the social consequences of human actions, only the first and most obvious result is taken into account. And at the same time they are still surprised that the more distant consequences of those actions that are aimed at achieving this result turn out to be completely different, for the most part completely opposite to it; that the harmony between supply and demand turns into its polar opposite, as the course of every ten-year industrial cycle shows, and as Germany, having experienced a little prelude of such a transformation during the "collapse", could see it; that private property based on one's own labour, in its further development, necessarily turns into the absence of property among the working people, while all property is more and more concentrated in the hands of the non-workers...

Engels F. Dialectics of nature. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 20. p. 495-499.

The naturalistic understanding of history - as it is found, for example, to one degree or another in Draper and other natural scientists, who stand on the point of view that only nature acts on a person and that only natural conditions determine him everywhere historical development, - suffers from one-sidedness and forgets that man also acts back on nature, changes it, creates new conditions for his existence. From the "nature" of Germany, as it was in the era of the resettlement of the Germans, there is damn little left. The surface of the earth, climate, vegetation, animal world, even people themselves have changed infinitely, and all this is due to human activity, while the changes that have occurred during this time in the nature of Germany without human assistance are negligible.

Engels F. Dialectics of nature. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 20, p. 545-546.

Animals, as already mentioned in passing, also change external nature by their activity, although not to the same extent as man, and these changes in their environment, which they make, have, as we have seen, the opposite effect on their culprits, causing them to turn certain changes.

After all, in nature, nothing happens in isolation. Each phenomenon acts on the other, and vice versa; and in forgetting the fact of this all-round movement and interaction lies in most cases what prevents our natural scientists from seeing clearly even the simplest things. We have seen how goats hinder the reforestation in Greece; on the island of St. Helena goats and pigs, brought by the first navigators who arrived there, managed to exterminate almost without a trace all the old vegetation of the island and thus prepared the ground for the spread of other plants brought by later navigators and colonists. But when animals have a lasting effect on the nature around them, this happens without any intention on their part and is, in relation to these animals themselves, something accidental. And the more people move away from animals, the more their impact on nature takes on the character of deliberate, planned actions aimed at achieving certain, previously known goals. An animal destroys the vegetation of some locality, not knowing what it is doing. A person destroys it in order to sow grain on the vacant soil, plant trees or break a vineyard, knowing that this will bring him a harvest several times greater than what he sowed. It carries useful plants and domestic animals from one country to another and in this way changes the flora and fauna of entire parts of the world. Furthermore. With the help of various artificial methods of breeding and growing, plants and animals change under the hand of man in such a way that they become unrecognizable.

Engels F. Dialectics of nature. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 20, p. 494.

Culture - if it develops spontaneously, and not directed deliberately... leaving behind a desert...

If a person has subjugated the forces of nature by science and creative genius, then they take revenge on him, subordinating him, insofar as he uses them, to real despotism, regardless of any social organization.

Obviously, Mr. Bulgakov is kept awake by the laurels of Messrs. Struve and Tugan-Baranovsky, who came up with the idea that not a person works with the help of a machine, but a machine with the help of a person. Like these critics, he also falls to the level of vulgar economy, talking about substitution forces of nature by human labor, etc. To replace the forces of nature with human labor, generally speaking, is just as impossible as it is impossible to replace arshins with poods. Both in industry and in agriculture, a person can only use the action of the forces of nature if he knows their action, and facilitate to itself this use by means of machines, tools, etc. That primitive man received what he needed as a free gift from nature is a stupid fable, for which even novice students can boo Mr. Bulgakov. There was no golden age behind us, and primitive man was completely overwhelmed by the difficulty of existence, the difficulty of fighting with nature. The introduction of machines and improved methods of production has made this struggle in general, and the production of food in particular, immeasurably easier for man. It was not the difficulty of producing food that increased, but the difficulty of obtaining food for the worker - it increased because capitalist development inflated land rent and land prices, concentrated agriculture in the hands of big and small capitalists, concentrated still more machines, tools, money, without which successful production is impossible. . To explain this growing difficulty of the existence of workers by the fact that nature reduces its gifts is to become a bourgeois apologist.

Lenin V.I. The agrarian question and the "critics of Marx". - Full. coll. cit., vol. 9, p. 103-104.

Indeed, what does the "obviousness" of the notorious "law of diminishing soil fertility" amount to? In addition, if the subsequent applications of labor and capital to the land did not give a decreasing, but the same amount of product, then there would be no need to expand the arable land at all, then an additional amount of grain could be produced on the same amount of land, no matter how small this amount may be. was, then "agriculture of the entire globe could fit on one tithe." Such is the usual (and the only one) argument in favor of a "universal" law. And the slightest reflection will show anyone that this argument is an empty abstraction that leaves aside the most important thing: the level of technology, the state of the productive forces. In essence, after all, the very concept: "additional (or: successive) investments of labor and capital" suggests change in production methods, transformation of technology. In order to significantly increase the amount of capital invested in land, it is necessary invent new machines, new systems of field cultivation, new methods of keeping livestock, transporting products, etc., etc. Of course, on a relatively small scale, "additional investments of labor and capital" can take place (and are taking place) on the basis of a given, unchanged level of technology: in this case applicable to some extent and the "law of diminishing fertility of the soil," is applicable in the sense that the unchanging state of technology places comparatively narrow limits on the additional investment of labor and capital. Instead of a universal law, we get, therefore, in the highest degree a relative "law" - so relative that there can be no question of any "law" or even of any cardinal feature of agriculture.

... "The law of diminishing fertility of the soil" does not apply at all to those cases where technology is progressing, when the methods of production are being transformed; it has only a very relative and conditional application to those cases where the technique remains unchanged. That is why neither Marx nor the Marxists talk about this “law”, but only representatives of bourgeois science, like Brentano, shout about it, who cannot get rid of the prejudices of the old political economy with its abstract, eternal and natural laws.

Lenin V.I. The agrarian question and the "critics of Marx". - Full. coll. cit., vol. 9, p. 101-102.

Once society takes possession of the means of production, commodity production will be abolished, and with it the dominance of the product over the producers. Anarchy within social production is replaced by a planned, conscious organization. The struggle for separate existence ceases. Thus, man is now - in a certain sense completely - separated from the animal kingdom and from animal conditions of existence passes into conditions that are truly human. The conditions of life which surround men and which hitherto have dominated them now come under the power and control of men, who for the first time become real and conscious masters of nature, because they become masters of their own association in society.

Engels F. Anti-Dühring. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 20, p. 224.

Just as primitive man, in order to satisfy his needs, in order to preserve and reproduce his life, must fight against nature, so must civilized man fight, in all social forms and under all possible modes of production. With the development of man, this realm of natural necessity expands, because his needs expand; but at the same time, the productive forces that serve to satisfy them also expand. Freedom in this area can only consist in the fact that the collective man, the associated producers rationally regulate this metabolism of his with nature, put it under their common control, instead of it dominating them like a blind force; perform it with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most worthy of their human nature and adequate to it. But nevertheless it still remains the realm of necessity. On the other side of it begins the development of human forces, which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can flourish only on this realm of necessity, as on its basis.

Marx K. Capital, vol. III. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 25, part II, p. 287.

3. IMPACT OF NATURE ON SOCIETY

Once capitalist production is given, then, ceteris paribus and for a given length of the working day, the amount of surplus labor varies depending on the natural conditions of labor and, in particular, on the fertility of the soil. However, it by no means follows from this that the most fertile soil is the most suitable for the growth of the capitalist mode of production. The latter presupposes the domination of man over nature. Too wasteful nature "leads a person, like a child, on the harness." It does not make its own development a natural necessity... Not the regions of the tropical climate with its mighty vegetation, but the temperate belt was the birthplace of capital. Not the absolute fertility of the soil, but its differentiation, the diversity of its natural products, constitute the natural basis of the social division of labor; due to the change in those natural conditions in which a person has to live, there is a multiplication of his own needs, abilities, means and methods of labor. The need for social control of any force of nature in the interests of the economy, the need to use or curb it with the help of large-scale structures erected by the hand of man, plays a decisive role in the history of industry.

Marx K. Capital, vol. I. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 23, p. 522.

If we ignore the greater or lesser development of social production, then the productivity of labor will turn out to be connected with natural conditions. These latter can be entirely reduced to the nature of man himself, to his race, etc., and to the nature surrounding man. The external natural conditions are economically divided into two large classes: the natural wealth of the means of life, hence the fertility of the soil, the abundance of fish in the waters, etc., and the natural wealth of the means of labor, which are; active waterfalls, navigable rivers, timber, metals, coal, etc. At the initial stages of culture, the first kind is of decisive importance, at a more high steps- the second kind of natural wealth.

Marx K. Capital, vol. I. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 23, p. 521.

4. POPULATION GROWTH AND SOCIETY DEVELOPMENT

But the most frank declaration of the war of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat is Malthusian theory of population and based on it new poor law. We have already spoken about the theory of Malthus here more than once. Let us repeat briefly only its main conclusion, namely, that there is always an excess of population on earth and therefore need, poverty, poverty and immorality will always reign; that such is fate, such is the eternal destiny of people - to be born in too in large numbers whereby they form distinct classes, some of which are more or less rich, enlightened and moral, while others are more or less poor, unhappy, ignorant and immoral. From this follows the following practical conclusion - and this conclusion is drawn by Malthus himself - that charity and funds for the poor, in essence, are devoid of any meaning, because they only support the existence of a "surplus population" and encourage its reproduction, and by its competition it lowers wages. the rest ... Therefore, the task is not at all to feed the "surplus population", but to somehow reduce its number as much as possible ... This theory has now become the favorite theory of all true English bourgeois, yes This is quite understandable: after all, it is very convenient for them ...

Engels F. The position of the working class in England. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 2, p. 504.

What does Malthus do?

Instead of his (also stolen) chimera about geometric and arithmetic progression, which he kept as a "phrase", he used Anderson's theory to confirm his theory of population. He retained the practical conclusions of Anderson's theory, in so far as they corresponded to the interests of the landlords - this fact alone proves that Malthus understood as little as Anderson himself the connection of this theory with the system of political economy of bourgeois society - he turned this theory against the proletariat, without entering into consideration of the counterarguments of its author ...

Malthus is characterized deep meanness thoughts, - baseness, which only a priest can afford ... who sees in human poverty the punishment for the fall ... This baseness of thought is also manifested in his studies in science. First of all, in shamelessly and like a craft practiced by him plagiarism. Secondly, in those full glances, but not recklessly bold, conclusions he draws from scientific premises.

Marx K. Theories of surplus value. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., v. 26, part II, p. one??.

The working population, by accumulating capital, thereby produces on an increasing scale the means that make it a relatively surplus population... This is the law of population inherent in the capitalist mode of production, since in reality each historically particular mode of production has its own special laws that have a historical character. population. The abstract law of population exists only for plants and animals, until this area is historically invaded by man.

Marx K. Capital, vol. I. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 23, p. 645-646.

Capitalist accumulation constantly produces, and, moreover, in proportion to its energy and its size, relatively excessive, i.e. excess in comparison with the average need for capital to increase, and therefore an excess or additional working population.

Marx K. Capital, vol. I. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 23, p. 644.

The abstract possibility of such a numerical growth of mankind, which will make it necessary to put a limit to this growth, of course, exists. But if someday communist society is forced to regulate the production of people, just as it has already regulated the production of things by that time, then it and only it will be able to do this without difficulty ... In any case, people in communist society will decide for themselves whether any measures should be taken to this end, when and how, and which ones. I do not consider myself called to offer them anything or give them appropriate advice. These people, in any case, will be no more stupid than you and me.

The core of the materialistic conception in Capital itself is the theory of material labor as the functioning of material productive forces. K. Marx defines labor as follows: “Labor is first of all a process that takes place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature. This is a fundamental point. Marx emphasizes that man, as a direct element of the productive forces, is himself a concrete force of nature, an animated substance of nature. From this point of view, the social process acts as a direct continuation of the natural process. The process of labor as a process of functioning of the productive forces is the essence of the mode of production. Marx emphasizes that “economic epochs differ not in what is produced, but in how it is produced, by what means of labor” [ibid, p. 191]. Although in different eras in society there are different means of labor and, consequently, a different labor process, nevertheless, it is the labor process that takes place everywhere, while the process of creating value is not universal. At the same time, Marx's presentation of the labor process from a modern point of view cannot be considered completely consistent. He defines labor as “purposive activity” and, speaking of the difference between animal-like instinctive forms of labor and proper human labor, he writes: “But even the worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell of wax, he already built it in my head. At the end of the labor process, a result is obtained that already at the beginning of this process was in the mind of a person, that is, ideally” [ibid, p. 189]. Of course, in the process of material activities, a person acts as a conscious being. However, in the fabric of such activity, at the level of abstraction, one should separate the plan for the ideal construction of the future situation and the plan for the actual material transformation nature. The first is ideal activity, the second is labor itself. Another thing is that in the conditions of an undeveloped division of labor, both plans are merged, and in Marx's "Capital" there are only guesses that in the future society the machine will completely oust man from the sphere of material production proper.

Marx, realizing that the progress of society directly depends on the division of labor, carefully analyzes the technical side of production in Capital. He considers the forms of cooperation, manufactory, machine production proper as an adequate basis for capitalism. Marx emphasizes that “machine production originally arose not on a material basis corresponding to it” [ibid., p. 393]. Machines were originally made in manufactory conditions. It is only when machines begin to be produced by machines that the industrial revolution is completed and bourgeois society begins to develop on its own basis. In passing, we note that this circumstance is extremely important. The new society does not immediately begin to develop on its own basis. This is also characteristic of the early socialist society, which, due to the immaturity of the technical basis, turned out to be capable of its Restoration. However, the latter has become only a painful and ugly form of transition to the adequate foundations of a new society. The machine technical basis, according to Marx, strives for constant change. He wrote: “Modern industry never considers or interprets the existing form of the production process as final. Therefore, its technical basis is revolutionary, while in all previous modes of production the basis was essentially conservative” [ibid., p. 497-498]. Marx approaches the idea of ​​the technical limit of capitalist production in a purely logical and at the same time groping way. Living long before the actual automation of production, he predicted a phase of technical development that excludes actually living physical labor. Thus, he wrote: “It is clear that if the production of a certain machine costs the same amount of labor as is saved by its use, then there is simply a transfer of labor, i.e., the total amount of labor necessary for the production of a commodity does not decrease, or the productive power of labor does not increase. However, the difference between the labor a machine costs and the labor it saves, or the degree of its productivity, obviously does not depend on the difference between its own value and the value of the instrument it replaces. The first difference continues to exist as long as the labor costs of the machine, and therefore also that part of the value that is transferred from it to the product, remain less than the value that the worker with his tool would add to the object of labor” [ibid., p. 402]. Thus, Marx foresees the future technical state, when the costs of manufacturing a product of labor will be entirely reduced to the costs of past labor. Although this idea was expressed by Marx in a complex form, since it was difficult for him to rely on living practice, its significance is great for a materialistic understanding of the prospects for the development of production and the historical limits of the value economy [see. 57.58].

However, Marx, having no living empirical experience before his eyes, simplified some of the phenomena of production. Thus, his interpretation of the law of the change of labor boiled down to the fact that machine production, making the technical basis extremely dynamic, makes the worker dynamic as well. Losing a job in one place, he is ready to start it in another. Together with negative side There is also a positive aspect here - the possibility of changing activities, which is so necessary for the comprehensive development of the personality. Marx believed in many respects that if machine production was transferred to public ownership, then the law of labor change could be realized in full. However, subsequent practice has shown that even more complex production requires deep specialization, and a change in activity is apparently possible at later stages of production during the transition to the actual automation of technological processes. Thus, Marx partly shared the historical illusions conditioned by the initial stages of machine production. Marx paid special attention to the technical difference between town and country. He emphasized that large-scale industry revolutionizes the countryside, turning the peasant into a wage worker, and at the same time prepares the ground for eliminating the essential differences between city and countryside. Marx's economic analysis appears as an analysis of the class relations of bourgeois society. Classes act as subjects of production relations, between which the widest range of class relations - material and ideological - unfolds. Marx brilliantly shows that there is competition among the proletariat. The proletarians, as owners of the commodity "labor power," strive to sell their commodity more profitably, pushing away their class brethren. However, the logic of capitalist production relations is such that the poles of social polarization - labor and capital - diverge further and further from each other, and the illusions of wage workers are dispelled. Marx writes: “Consequently, the capitalist process of production, considered in general connection, or as a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, it produces and reproduces the capitalist relation itself, the capitalist on the one side, the wage worker on the other.” [ibid., p. 591]. Marx could not foresee the entire historical complexity of capitalist relations in the 20th century, the impact of the victorious socialist revolution in Russia on capital countries, therefore, as it turned out, he simplified the dialectic of class relations, believing that the economic situation of wage workers would constantly worsen. However, the developed countries of capitalism in the 20th century increased their attention to the issues of social protection of the population under the influence of the social gains of the socialist states. However, Marx was and remains right that the gap between capital and labor continues to grow. The rate of surplus value in living labor increases, alienating more and more the capitalist and the worker. And this means that alienation in modern bourgeois society is stronger than it was before.

The objective logic of capitalist relations, revealed by Marx, showed the historical limit of the bourgeois system. The technical socialization of production should become such a limit: “The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell. She explodes. The hour of capitalist private property strikes. The capitalist mode of appropriation, which follows from the capitalist mode of production, and hence also capitalist private property, is the first negation of individual private property based on one's own labor. But capitalist production, with the necessity of a natural process, generates its own negation. This is the negation of the negation. It restores not private property, but individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: on the basis of cooperation and common ownership of land and the means of production produced by labor itself” [ibid., p. 773]. Marx understood that capitalism ends the prehistory of human society.

In the first volume of Capital, Marx, discussing the process of labor and the process of increasing value, defines the specifics of human labor as follows: “Labor is first of all a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature. In order to appropriate the substance of nature in a form suitable for his own life, he sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: arms and legs, head and fingers. Acting through this movement on the external nature and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops the forces dormant in her and subordinates the play of these forces to his own power. .

Marx talks about the process ongoing between man and nature. What does happening mean? Does man do something to nature, or does nature do something to man? Or, perhaps, man does something in relation to nature, and nature in relation to man?

But then how does one relate to the other? What is done by man in relation to nature is more important than what is done by nature in relation to man? Or is it more important what is done by nature? Or is what is done by nature and man equivalent?

Since ancient times, this issue has been discussed by those representatives of the human race who wanted to understand exactly how this same human race relates to its environment, that is, to nature. This was discussed at first, of course, in mythopoetic forms. The discussion participants understood that, by picking fruit from a tree, a person simply takes something from nature, which gives it something to him. That since nature is a giver, and man is a gift recipient, it is necessary to express human gratitude to someone who gives you something free of charge. That it is necessary to justify the receiving of gifts, because otherwise it can give away theft. That the only way to justify receiving gifts is to call yourself a son of nature (why else would she begin to lavish gifts?). That, calling himself the son of nature, one must fulfill a certain filial duty. That in addition to this duty, for the fulfillment of which appropriate rites are needed, it is necessary to return the bestowed in the form of a buried body, which nourishes Mother Earth at the moment of returning to the womb and thereby justifies the fact that the mother fed you before this return.

This is the case if a banana grows on a palm tree and the primitive gatherer greedily or reverently picks this banana or picks up a fallen banana from the ground. But if it is not about gathering, but about hunting, then the process taking place between man and nature changes its character. Because the animal being killed belongs to the forest. And you do not accept a gift from the forest, you steal something from the forest. In the hunting rites of many peoples, hunting “by agreement” with nature (one type of process that takes place between nature and man) and hunting without reaching such an agreement are quite clearly opposed to each other. The animal being killed may belong to one god or another, or to nature itself. And then you commit blasphemy by killing, and you will be punished for it.

And there are cases when nature allows you, as they say, to “take” an animal. But even so, you have to thank nature for the animal in a different way than for the banana. And the animal must ask for forgiveness. For it is no worse than you, and you took its life from it. Actually, in doing so, you acted in the same way as a beast hunting an animal. But the beast is not guilty, but you are. And you must make redemptive sacrifices not only to mother nature, but also to the beast.

The process taking place between man and nature changes even more strongly if it is not about gathering and hunting, but about agriculture. In this case, the mythopoetic understanding of the process does not shy away from ancient times comparing agriculture with incest. Man rapes mother nature (the raping organ is the plow with which the earth is plowed), the raped earth gives birth to a child in the form of a crop, the father, harvesting and eating it, actually devours his own children. Anthropologists, who collected the myths of the so-called primitive peoples, collected a lot of material confirming such an understanding by ancient man of the nature of the process taking place between him and nature.

The famous Russian biologist and breeder Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855–1935), in his introduction to the third edition of his works, formulates the Marxian process between man and nature as follows: “Fruit growers will act correctly if they follow my permanent rule: we cannot wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take them from her"[AND. V. Michurin. The results of sixty years of work on the development of new varieties of fruit plants. Ed. 3rd. M., 1934]. This is not a banana picker or a game hunter. But this is not an ancient agrarian with his constant expectations of favors from nature and the repentance of his sin before her.

The process taking place between man and nature in the form in which it is described by Michurin has distinct features of violence. For some time, Michurin was criticized for this approach, opposing him to the ecological concern of man for mother nature. But everything that is happening before our eyes suggests that the process taking place between man and nature is becoming more and more merciless. And that now it is completely pointless to ask about the relationship between the role functions of man and nature in the process that takes place between them.

Meanwhile, Marx speaks of the process taking place between man and nature as a process "in which man, by his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature."

Marx says that man, by his own activity, regulates the process of exchange and everything else. In whose favor he regulates this process - it is clear from its results.

We are convinced that Marx, on the one hand, gives ingeniously capacious definitions of the phenomena under consideration and, on the other hand, refuses to consider these phenomena in detail. It does not in any way characterize the process taking place between man and nature. He simply says that this process is taking place.

It couldn't be otherwise. Marx deals in Capital not with the subtle structure of the processes taking place between man and nature, but with the structure of human labor activity proper and everything that this activity gives rise to. And it generates, among other things, capital.

Marx's opposition between the substance of nature and the forces of nature deserves special attention. Marx argues that man opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature.

Nature is thus regarded as a unity of force and matter. In this case, force opposes matter. But if the force of nature is man, then nature before man is just matter. And how did the substance expel the force from itself? We have many eager to contrast the early Marx with his Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts with the mature Marx who wrote Capital. They say that early Marx's Hegelianism has not yet been completely outlived, and therefore there are arguments about the spirit. Whether business mature Marx. Well, then what do you want to do with this opposition of matter and force, despite the fact that matter is primordial, but force is not? Such a contradiction presupposes the presence of some third generative principle, which, whether you like it or not, will have to be called spirit, uniting and opposing force and substance, generating force from substance, and so on. But Marx only speaks of force and substance, and not of the spirit! Clinging to this, people who invented the mature Marx as an antithesis to the early and immature Marx simply turn a blind eye to Marx's constructions based on the opposition of matter and force! And also to the fact that matter and force are opposed by the mature Marx. And not just anywhere, but even in Capital itself.

However, for all the importance of this opposition, it is first important for us to deal with the process that takes place, according to Marx, between nature and man.

Understanding that it would be necessary to say something about this process other than that it is taking place, Marx writes: “We will not consider here the first animal-like instinctive forms of labor. The state of society, when the worker appears on the commodity market as a seller of his own labor power, and that state that goes back into the depths of primitive times, when human labor has not yet freed itself from its primitive, instinctive form, is separated by a huge interval. We presuppose labor in a form in which it constitutes the exclusive property of man. The spider performs operations reminiscent of those of a weaver, and the bee puts some human architects to shame by building her wax cells. But even the worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell out of wax, he has already built it in his head. At the end of the labor process, a result is obtained that already at the beginning of this process was in the mind of a person, i.e. ideally ".

The Soviet writer Boris Polevoy (1908–1981) has a story about Alexei Meresyev, a pilot who performed the miracle of self-overcoming: Meresyev had both legs amputated, but he learned to fly a combat aircraft with prostheses, fought successfully, shot down German planes.

Meresyev's prototype was Alexei Maresyev, Hero Soviet Union, who really did one to one everything that is written in the story of Boris Polevoy. Alexei Maresiev was able to perform this miracle because he had a fiery ideal in which the dream of returning to service was combined with what is now called the technology that ensures such a return. An ideal is a combination of an idea, that is, a dream, with the technology of its implementation, its implementation.

Marx, like Maresyev, had his own ideal. For Marx, this ideal was the real building of a communist society. People with ambitious ideals perform miracles because they are capable of making sacrifices on the altar of their dreams. These sacrifices must be willing and able to be made. But in addition to the desire and ability to make sacrifices on this altar of his ideal, a person must also have what can be brought to this altar in the form of a sacrifice.

What is brought to the altar is usually a rejection of other options for one's fate. These options are a must. Not everyone has them. Marx had alternative versions of his fate. He could become a new Hegel by devoting himself to philosophy. And he wanted it. But in the name of his ideal, he abandoned this, creating a not very powerful and rather quarrelsome organization that went down in history under the name of the Communist International. And Marx could become an adviser to Bismarck and influence the fate of Europe very cool. And he also wanted this - not the material gifts offered by Bismarck, but this influence on destinies. Marx also sacrificed this alternative version of his own destiny. Again - in the name of building some kind of quarrelsome organization, which did not promise anything special at that stage of its existence, but in the end made it possible for the victory of the communist ideal, first in Russia, and then in other countries, changing the course of world history, defeating fascism and much more .

If Marx had decided to choose for himself the fate of the new Hegel, then we would have learned more about how a prehuman being, who is at the stage "the first animal-like instinctive forms of labor", became a real person. But then there would not have been those changes in the course of world history that greatly advanced the dream of a real person.

Marx decided to become Marx. Therefore, we are deprived of the opportunity to read works not written by him, in which it would be said in detail what is the difference between instinctive animal-like forms of labor and real human labor based on an ideal. But we know that a man became a man only when his work began to be guided by this very ideal. At least in the form of an image of the desired result.

When and why did this image itself begin to form, as well as the ability to build in consciousness, and not in reality, that sequence of actions that leads to the achievement of that goal, the image of which was formed, again, not in the reality that appeared to you, but in your consciousness? How, in the course of biological evolution, on which it is customary to blame everything even now, without understanding the essence of the matter, did the ability arise to manipulate (operate) the internal images of the desired, while operating with some images can give rise to the emergence of new images?

How freed, speaking modern scientific language, the urge to take action from the need for its automatic implementation in practice? How was he torn off from the motor act and placed in an unknown how created cognitive system, where spatial-figurative models of the desired are stored, formed and developed?

Marx did not answer these questions. And those who answered them, studying both prehuman thinking and the thinking of the so-called primitive people, which in fact are not the first people, but already quite developed creatures, different from the first people, as we are from the Neanderthals, carried away by particulars and forgot about the main thing. As a result, we are regaled with information about the ability of animals to think acts that are informationally equivalent to acts of judgment, about how these information-equivalent acts are implemented on a non-verbal basis (“based on operating non-verbal internal representations using various perceptual codes”), and so on. What are we to state?

That, unfortunately, certain schools that are looking for an answer to the question of where the beginning that turned animal protolabor into proper human labor, alas, were exchanged for particulars.

That Marx would never trade in particulars, but due to his chosen fate, he left his very capacious and promising intellectual schemes without development.

That all schools that exchange for particulars and argue with each other (cognitive, behavioral, anthropological, linguistic, activity, and so on) recognize the need for a ritual principle as the soil on which thinking grows, that is, the ability to form the ideal, and therefore , and the ability to move from animal proto-labor to actually human labor.

In his speech delivered at the grave of Karl Marx on March 17, 1883, Friedrich Engels said: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of the development of the organic world, Marx discovered the law of the development of human history: the one, until recently hidden under ideological overlays, the simple fact that people must first of all eat, drink, have a home and dress before being able to engage in politics, science, art, religion".

Unfortunately, Engels did a lot to simplify Marx in an unacceptable way. Many believe that this was necessary from a political point of view. I don't agree with these oversimplifications. However, what does the justice or fallacy of the then simplification change for us today?

If even the simplistic people were right then, what does this rightness mean for us today? It means that the simplifiers first, with the help of simplifications, combined Marxism with the masses and achieved a historical result. And then - by virtue of the same simplification - they reset this result, leading to the collapse of the USSR and communism.

And it is not necessary to say that this did not happen due to simplification. Any collapse has as one of its main sources one or another imperfection of the collapsing system. Marxism and communism is a worldview system. The imperfection of such a system cannot but be generated by the imperfection of the worldview. And here is one of two things: either the Marxist worldview itself is imperfect - or this Marxist worldview has been deformed by all sorts of simplifications.

Engels was, of course, the first of the simplifiers. He was a most intelligent person, a brilliant organizer, a true and true friend of Marx. But between him and Marx there is an intellectual and spiritual abyss. Engels himself was well aware of this abyss. It is always realized by those who formulate great spiritual prophecies into worldview systems with political pretensions. And here that Engels, that the Christian apostles and teachers of the faith.

First, the brilliant intellectual Engels simplified the brilliant Marx. Then ordinary intellectuals (Lukács, Lifshitz, Deborin and others) simplified and at the same time sterilized Engels, who in the same speech at Marx's grave nevertheless said that "Marx was first of all a revolutionary", and added to this all-important "first of all": “To take part in one way or another in the overthrow of capitalist society and the public institutions To participate in the cause of the emancipation of the modern proletariat, to whom he gave for the first time an awareness of his own situation and of his needs, an awareness of the conditions for his emancipation - that was, in fact, his life's vocation. Fight was his element. And he fought with such passion, with such perseverance, with such success, as few struggle.".

This "above all" is the whole of Engels. The most brilliant intellectual still always wants something to be “above all”, and therefore above all. But in Marx this "above all" was not. Marx, being a genius, fantastically combined theoretical and practical, ideological and organizational, spiritual intellectualism and applied revolutionism. Marx, with all his desire, could not tear one from the other, because all this was merged in him together. And therefore Marx does not say that first of all people should eat, drink, and then ritualize their activity. Marx does not deny primary needs. But he understands that human labor, which for him underlies his infinitely beloved history (revolutionary and love of history are one and the same), arose in connection with the acquisition by some force of nature of the ability to form the ideal. And that only then this force of nature, separated from the substance of nature, became a man and created the whole of human history.

What if ritualization underlies the origin and development of the ability to form the ideal? Then it is primary in what concerns humanity, and hence human labor and human history!

Marx refers to the great American scientist and politician Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), who argued that man is a toolmaking animal. But Marx only refers to a very authoritative source for him, just as he refers to other sources when discussing class theory or other issues. Franklin is one of the greatest intellectuals and politicians of his time. But that time is in the past. Since then, many far from meaningless definitions of what a person has been given. All of them are defective and all of them are essential. And here that Franklin, that others. We see several definitions on the intellectual tablets at once. And without identifying yourself with any of them, you must somehow relate to each. At the same time, he realized that it was not Marx who called man a tool-making animal, but Franklin, who, by the way, is by no means a materialist, but a deist, who created not communism, but the United States, and so on. And what, in essence, is worse than the idea of ​​a person developed by the great existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the essence of whose reflections boils down to the fact that a person is a being capable of making a choice? Or the definition given by the German philosopher and culturologist Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), for which a person is an animal symbolicum, that is, a symbolic animal.

There are a lot of these definitions. For me, the richest of them is the definition implicitly given by Marx in Capital, according to which a person is a being capable of real work, that is, of forming an ideal idea of ​​the desired result and ways to achieve it.

What follows from this definition in general and what is essential for us, reflecting on the reasons for the collapse of Soviet communism and the role of communism in the 21st century?

(To be continued.)