| This question <36|36> overall <35|37> Republican: <758|114>. |
| Question 695: Why does Marx call capitalism the last social formation of the pre-history of mankind? |
| [36] Republican: capitalism as the pre-history of mankind. Marx calls capitalism the last social function of the pre-history of mankind because the end of capitalism brings an end to the antagonisms embedded in its capitalistic structure and ushers in the true beginning of society for humans--one created out of the incipience of self-realization. |
| People of the capitalist society create the world through their labors but then become constrained by the very things they themselves have created. They create an economic system by the labor of their own hands and then find they are compelled to sell themselves on the very market they have created. The very structure they create is “riddled with antagonisms blindly emanating from the structure of the social production process (Econ 5080 555).” People are hence cut off, or alienated, from their essential selves in capitalism. It is only through self-realization that humankind will at last reach its absolute fulfillment, writing history from a clean slate in which society is marked by a time when it is without alienation, where people no longer are controlled by the system they had created but instead control it for their own benefit. |
| Pre-history ends when the fulfillment of the self is realized. Humans create their world by the act of perceiving it. This does not occur all at once, however; it takes all of prehistory to fully comprehend, act on, and truly obtain the concept of self-self-fulfillment. In effect, the higher forms of truth do not appear until humans arrive to see the world through humanistic spectacles. The world is an ever-changing structure that unfolds itself more and more throughout time until the core concepts of life are fully visible. The end revelation is the notion that eventually humans become aware that they are the agent of something greater than themselves--that they are the controller of their own life and self-fulfillment; that no structure is too great to harness the ultimate and undying passion contained within every human being--the lust for life. Humans will conceive that the self is the ultimate power capable of conquering any structure that is stifling the human essence. It is with this end realization that the old way of life is dismissed and ultimately forgotten. The true chaste way of life if enacted and the beginnings of a true society and a new history are contrived. |
| Hans: Beautiful essay, and this is basically the right answer. Your statement |
| Humans create their world by the act of perceiving it. |
| has Hegelian overtones. Marx would say that they create their world by production. |
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