Part 07: Seldon’s Slogans Series. My Views on Slogan 6. GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

 

 

 

 

Part 07:

 

Seldon’s Slogans Series.

 

 

My Views on Slogan 6.

 

 

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Reader,

 

 

 

It is my pleasure, and my honor, as an elected member of the Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.] General Council, and as a voting member of F.E.D., to share, with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release by the F.E.D. General Council, key Encyclopedia Dialectica themes of Seldonian Theory.

 

The 7th text in this new such series is posted below [Some E.D. standard edits have been applied, in the version presented below, by the editors of the F.E.D. Special Council for the Encyclopedia, to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s discourse].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seldon’s Slogans, #6 –

“Human [Pre-]History [Marx] is the Historical Labor of the Self-Production of Humanity.”

 

 

 

M.D.: My view of this Seldonian slogan is as follows: 

It is not just upon external objects that we humans labor.

 

Our labor is bi-directional, outward, upon the external objects which we work up, but also inward – self-ward – self-reflexively, bending back upon ourselves.

 

Marx noted this in Capital, volume I, at the start of Part III, Chap. VII, “The Labour-Process…”: “Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate. … .  He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces… .  By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature.  He develops his slumbering powers… .”.   [emphasis added by M.D.].

 

Marx notes this even earlier, in his Grundrisse manuscript: “…The act of reproduction itself changes not only the objective conditions…but the producers change with it, by the emergence of new qualities, by transforming and developing themselves in production, forming new powers and new conceptions, new modes of intercourse, new needs, and new speech.”

[p. 93, Karl Marx: Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, translated by Jack Cohen; edited and with an Introduction by Eric J. Hobsbawm, Internat’l. Publishers, N.Y., 1969.].

 

Even earlier – as early as his 1844 “Economic-Philosophic” manuscripts – Marx praises Hegel’s vision of humanity: “The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phenomenology…is, first, that Hegel grasps the self-creation of humanity as a process …and that he, therefore, grasps the nature of labour, and conceives of objective humanity…as the result of its own labour.” [emphasis added by M.D.; p. 202, Karl Marx: Early Writings, translated and edited by Eric J. Hobsbawm, Internat’l. Publishers, N.Y., 1969.].

 

In that process, Marx also affirms his own vision: that human labor changes, not only the laboring individual, and not even only entire human-social communities of collective labor, but concretely constructs humanity itself – that humanity as a whole is an ‘essence-ial’ object and product of human labor; of human production: is the historical self-construction of the human species, especially in its aspect as ‘the human phenome’, but possibly also influencing co-kinetic, gradual changes in the human genome as well.

 

At the same time, Marx notes that this historical labor, and its prolonged and agonizing ‘‘‘labor-pains’’’, began its work with, and continues, to this very day, its work upon, the ‘‘‘[psycho]historical material’’’ of a pre-human or proto-human prehistory: “...the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution... .  This social formation [i.e., capitalist society -- M.D.] constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.” [p. 44, in Marx & Engels: Basic Writings on Politics & Philosophy, edited by Lewis S. Feuer, Anchor Books, Garden City, NY, 1959; emphasis added.].

Thus, it is Seldon’s grasp of these four passages from Marx’s writings, and of other passages like them, that directly led him to Slogan #6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, including free-of-charge downloads of F.E.D. books and other texts, please see --

 

www.dialectics.info

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –

 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¡ENJOY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regards,

 

Miguel Detonacciones,

 

Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];

Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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