The 'Psychohistorical Dialectic' of human Nature Overall
-- A Specimen from Marx, in Capital,
volume I.
Dear Reader,
Pasted-in below, for your
information and enjoyment, is an E.D. [Encyclopedia Dialectica]
‘dialectogram’ diagram, representing an example of the overall dialectic of human nature that
was presented by Karl Marx in volume
I of his «Das
Kapital.».
Marx described this diachronic 'Psychohistorical dialectic'
as follows: “The foundation of every
division of labour that is well-developed, and brought about by the exchange of
commodities, is the separation
between town and country. It may be said, that the whole economic history
of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis. We pass over it, however, for the present.”
[Karl
Marx, Capital, vol. I, New World [NY: 1967], p. 352].
Captions for each of the categories in the categories triad forming this dialectic are as
follows --
1. «arché» category -- The
Terran human[oid] «species» began,
to our best present knowledge,
as extended-family-based “bands” of nomadic
co-hunting, co-gathering, co-foraging, &
co-scavenging Appropriators of
products of ‘exo-human’ Nature in their “raw” forms, without even ‘proto-Urban’ settlements, until semi-settled,
multi-band “camps” irrupted.
2. contra-category -- Emergence of human ‘Urbanicity’, from out of the womb of a once
all-pervasive ‘Rurality’, begins with the “camps” social formations, progressing through villages, chiefdoms, & city-states epochs, all the way up to our present, nation-state-subsumed
formations of Urban “metropolises” & “megalopolises”.
3. uni-category -- We see this ‘socio-ontological category’ as not yet fully extant presently, but only fractionally
so. Perhaps suburbanism is its most prominent
present-day fractional «species». In a post-capitalist future, we foresee formations of ‘connected communities’, based, e.g., in
coalitions of ‘Citizen
Stewardship Equity’ socialized producers’ cooperatives, with their cores housing advanced 3D printers’ ‘omni-fact’ factories, & ‘omni-com’ surround-screen tele-conference
rooms, for larger ‘tele-meetings’, &
also supplied by robotized trucks &
airborne drones, helping make for “a
more equable distribution of population over the country.” [Marx and Engels].
Both Marx and Engels, in both
their joint and their separate writings, touched repeatedly upon this 'Psychohistorical dialectic' of city versus countryside. One very early [1845-1846] case of such joint exposition is the
following --
“The greatest division of material and
mental labour is the separation of town and country. The antagonism between town and country
begins with the transition from barbarism to civilization, from tribe [F.E.D.: chiefdom] to [F.E.D.: city-]State,
from locality to nation, and runs through the whole history of civilisation to
the present day . . .”
“The existence of the town implies, at
the same time, the necessity of administration, police, taxes, etc., in short,
of the municipality, and thus of politics in general. Here first became manifest the division of
the population into two great classes, which is directly based on the division
of labour and on the instruments of production.”
“The town already is in actual
fact the concentration of the population, of the instruments of production, of
capital, of pleasures, of needs, while the country demonstrates just the
opposite fact, isolation and separation.”
“The antagonism between town and
country can only exist within the framework of private property. It is the most crass expression of the
subjection of the individuals under the division of labour, under a definite
activity forced upon him -- a subjection which makes one man into a restricted
town-animal, the other into a restricted country-animal, and daily creates anew
the conflict between their interests.” [Karl Marx,
Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Progress Publishers
[Moscow: 1968], p. 65].
Enjoy!
Regards,
Miguel
