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Title: Cul de Sac
Author: Le Garcon Dupont
Date: 2009
Language: en
Topics: civilization, communist, work
Source: Retrieved on February 3, 2010 from http://salondeverluisant.org/viewtopic.php?pid=4871

Le Garcon Dupont

Cul de Sac

I live now in regrowing rainforest, in hills in the Far North of

Australia, in a land, until very recently, occupied by the people who

called themselves Bulwai. When many of the original people who inhabited

Australia realised that their culture was being wiped out they refused

the entreaties of anthropologists and they took their knowledge with

them when they died. This is hard line heroism. They knew that the world

was being changed, that human things were being snuffed out in favour of

a new, anti-human form of social organisation. To enable the survival of

an empty culture, one with form but no content, would be a clownish

absurdity. The culture would become an academic product, an ideological

or political product, and a product for sale. The heroes who took their

knowledge with them may not have articulated this possibility in the way

I just have, but they knew it. Don’t think they didn’t. Their

intelligence far outstripped the intelligence of those kind

anthropological scientists, who blew in on a blood-soaked breeze. Their

intelligence was greater but, in this battle between two forms of social

organisation, their power was less. They were strong enough to be still

and quiet in the last breaths of their community; when they could have

been remembered and celebrated in the new culture as the last of the

true people — because, you see, they knew that their words and their

knowledge, if spoken out loud, would be put on show, to be derided, and

worse: to be misunderstood. In the face of circumstances that were

consuming them they remained tight-lipped. In the face of the

circumstances which I believe have already consumed me... I squirm and

want to make a point, even though I know that my words will be derided,

and worse: misunderstood. Their intelligence outstrips mine.

When I talk about the original inhabitants of Australia I also mean all

people across the world who genuinely lived in pre-civilisation

societies. But here we have a term that needs explaining: civilisation.

In its most basic definition ‘civilisation’ means ‘living in cities’,

and this simplicity can be retained in an extension of the definition:

civilisation means a society organised by the power residing in cities.

There have been instances of civilisation throughout history, I kid you

not. It has occurred whenever city power has arisen. Sometimes this

civilisation has crumbled and been completely lost, and the people have

returned to a pre-civilisation way of living. Usually, however, the

civilisation does not disappear entirely, it just transforms itself, and

the power continues to emanate from the cities. Such a ‘crisis’ in

civilisation occurred in what has become known as ‘the Dark Ages’ in

Europe.

Civilisation today is qualitatively and quantifiably different from all

previous civilisations. We are all aware of this. You know this; don’t

think that you don’t. The civilisation we live under today is global,

and it was global long before people started to worry about

‘globalisation’. The ‘sameness’ that we are able to witness throughout

the world is due to the fact that all means of living are now provided

for by one economic system. This system is referred to as capitalism. It

is a perfected form of civilisation.

The dictionary says that Capital (the root word of capitalism) is wealth

available for use in the production of further wealth.

Wealth, it says, is all goods and services which have monetary or

productive value.

Productive, it says, means: producing goods and services that have

exchange value.

Exchange, it transpires, is to hand over goods in return for the

equivalent value in kind...

A key phrase here is exchange value... What things in this world have

exchange value, that is, what things in this world are useful to the

economy, what can be exchanged for money, what can be exchanged in order

for us to continue living?

Take a look, take a deep look. Right through the mist, through the

reflection on the cold, still water. Deeper. Right down to the point of

your existence. It is disconcerting when you realise that the only

useful part of you... is that which can somehow be ‘sold’, or made part

of the economy. Truths can cut you in half like a sharp blade. Have I

really exchanged my life for the dubious pleasure of continuing to live?

When did it happen? When did I trade my life or did someone else trade

it for me? Did it happen before I even went to work? And how on earth do

I ever get it back again?

Hang on. Let us just review that last paragraph. On a second reading I

realise that maybe it does not explain itself fully, or emphatically,

enough. Dear reader, I don’t know your personal circumstances, and I

hope that they are as pleasant as they can be. Maybe you are young and

living at home with your parents. If so then I would suggest that the

truths inherent in the paragraph above exist in you only as an inkling.

Maybe you sense that at some point in the future you will have to fend

for yourself, a time when parents or welfare will not be enough. It is

common in these modern times that the days of idle youth come to a

grinding halt when the demands of having to live in a certain manner

become overbearing. Simply, there are two strategies to be taken at this

point, one is to make oneself available for work, and the other is to

suffer the ‘indignity’ of toughing it out as a ‘waster’. I speak from

experience here, I have endured both. Both lead to madness. Eventually,

in my own life, I have made myself available for work, and I have done

it for the romantic partner I have and the child I have. So, once one is

properly in the world, living, not with ones parents, but with people

who rely on you, then the sense of what might have to be done becomes

more real... it is at this point that one realises that the people who

are closest to you value you not only for your humour and kindness, but

for your ability to provide income. And it is now that your humour and

kindness seem to diminish.., and you are left thinking that the money

you bring in is really all there is of importance in your being. Of

course, there is more, how you treat those around you is supremely

important..., but it is all connected, and your frenetic efforts to

provide often crush your once held dream to be kind... This is the

freedom I have had. I no longer really know who the guards are that

stand at the doors of my prison. They have the faces of those I love...

Ah, but, you may say, this current way of doing things, life in the

modern world, gives people more freedom. We are no longer tied to an

endless search for food and shelter, we can rest and relax and dream. We

have our time after work, our weekends, our retirement — it is in these

moments that we can do exactly as we please and pursue our own idle

pleasures; listen to music, play computer games, or watch television.

Life is not so hard now as it once was...? But modern academic research

is now finally beginning to tell us that, for instance, most mediaeval

European serfs only worked for two-thirds of the year and that

pre-civilisation humans generally lived in a state of abundance. Maybe

we always think the past was hard and uncomfortable because we keep

getting told that modern life is fabulous?

Maybe the reason we think this is because there was indeed one period of

human existence that was pretty bad and it was quite recent. Of course,

this period happened in ‘the West’, just as the modern good times are

happening in ‘the West’ too. My mother and father lived through the end

of the period of hardship; they saw the world change from one of genuine

struggle to survive, to one where survival was ensured. This period of

general human misery lasted from the end of mediaeval times to the years

immediately after the Second World War. This is the period that

encompasses The Industrial Revolution and World Colonisation, and was

the time during which the modern economy, capitalism, established itself

and refined its operations. People of my age grew up being told that we

were getting everything on a plate, and we heard the stories of hardship

from our parents. We grew up thinking that the past was hard and

uncomfortable; maybe we just let this notion speak for the whole of the

past? Maybe this is why we think that ‘progress’ is a good thing. Yes,

progression from the Industrial Revolution was/is a good thing... but is

life better now than in Medieval European times? Think hard. Don’t jump

to an answer. Research my question. Properly. Once you have done that,

research what we know of human societies that existed before the

mediaeval mode of production, before the rise or imposition of

civilisation. Where would you rather live? Think hard. Don’t jump to an

answer.

There is a film called Dead Man, by Jim Jarmusch.[1] It is set in the

‘wild west’ days of the USA. The hero of the film comes across an

indigenous man who was seized by Europeans when he was young, paraded in

front of them as a curio and then ‘educated’ and sent to England. This

man is now unable to live either in the culture of his youth or the

invading culture of the Europeans. He relates the story of his capture

and subsequent events. He says that when he was put on show in different

towns and cities across America, it was always the same people who came

to see him. They moved all the people who saw him in one place to the

next place to see him again. Why did he think they were the same people?

It would have been because they dressed the same, had the same language,

behaved in the same way. These people who turned out to see the

primitive savage, no matter which part of the country they lived in, all

had the same reference points, all thought the same things; they were

all the same. Today we get the same phenomenon across the entire globe:

the important fact is not that we see the same shops everywhere, it is

the fact that the same people are everywhere.

Capital has no human qualities, it has no personality; it is beyond good

and evil. But it is clever; it grows with each new venture and

enterprise, it takes over other ventures; it invents; it spreads.

Different capitalist organisations, businesses or corporations, compete

with each other. This competition is what keeps the economy ‘healthy’,

and early proponents of capitalism (such as the Levellers in the English

Revolution of 1648) were aware that this factor in the economy needed

protecting, or regulating, which is why democracy is the political

system used by the wealthiest countries.

Democracy isn’t here to cater for the interests of ‘the people’.

Although one of its functions is to disguise where the real power in

society lies, it mainly exists to regulate the market and keep a limited

amount of competition alive. The most advanced capitalist countries,

that is, the wealthiest and most powerful, also have the most

well-established democratic political systems. This is not a

coincidence; and it shows us that this is the way the capitalist economy

works most efficiently. Those countries which are ‘on the rise’, such as

China, currently have a growing democracy, or competition, or struggle,

between differing business interests in the top echelons of their

societies. We will know when these countries have reached a stable

capitalist structure when the political system becomes fully democratic;

when ‘the workers’ accept the ‘fact’ that they have an influence on

government by being able to vote.

All societies are determined by the way the people ‘make a living’. In

pre-civilisation societies that living was directly connected to the

land. In modern society we all make a living by serving some function in

the economy, for which we are paid money; once we have this money we are

able to buy what we need to live. This process occurs even for those who

make their living from the land. Even if we think we don’t directly sell

our brains, bodies and time for money, we still contribute to industries

such as the welfare industry and the education industry. The economic

imperatives that underpin capitalism give it a life beyond that of the

mere individuals (the big bosses, entrepreneurs, etc) who appear to

represent it.

And worse: capitalism is an economic system that has reached so deeply

into the heart of humankind that it is able to recreate itself

automatically within the mind, brain and creative impulse of human

beings. We must not forget that our economic system is based on the

large-scale brutalism which resulted in the success of the Industrial

Revolution, combined with the large-scale brutalism which has resulted

in the successful spread of the one economic system to all parts of the

world. In this massive process of revolutionising the way the world

works we have also changed as human beings. It would be absurd to think

otherwise.

When rural workers were drawn from the land to work in factories in

Europe they were physically shocked at the new work routines they had to

cope with. They fought these new regimes by not coming to work. They

would claim Holy Days as justifications for a sleep in and a party. They

would have Monday off because it was St Monday’s Day, and sometimes they

even had St Tuesday and St Wednesday too![2] Of course, such obstruction

could not be allowed to continue, so life in the factories became more

authoritarian and was backed up by increasing amounts of brute force.

People actually died because of the increase in the amount of work and

the decrease in freedom. This new regime for living spread beyond the

workplace. Towards the end of the 19^(th) Century the British

authorities had to shorten the school day for the new mass school

population because children were dying from overwork and stress. When

pre-civilisation people were used in factory situations in new empires

across the world, they simply died from the trauma of it. In Medieval

Europe ordinary people worked far less than we do now. They would be

aghast at how little we know of the land, and how much of our time we

spend working for faceless others. They would understand, however, why

we are consumed by stress and mental illness. We are not the same people

that our distant ancestors were.

“The World Health Organisation says depression is the fourth biggest

disease in the world. One in five people will suffer from clinical

depression at some stage in their life.” The Cairns Post, August 29^(th)

2009.

“Neuroses are unknown there and no one has ever seen a person who was

mentally disturbed.”[3]

To understand the real difference between pre-civilisation humanity and

present-day humanity we have to comprehend the underlying difference in

their modes of existence, the way they ‘make a living’.

This difference can be simply put and easily understood — I beg you to

understand this. The original people of the world lived in societies

that exulted the human being. Present-day people live in a society where

the economy and wealth is exulted.

In pre-civilisation times the occupants of the land travelled and

exchanged tools and artefacts across the continents and beyond. This was

a kind of economy, but it in no way resembles the economy under which

the world lives today. The whole point of anything done in a

pre-civilisation society was to reproduce the human community in which

the people lived. The ‘capital’ of this society (and any

‘pre-civilisation’ society) is the human being. It is the human being

that is recreated and reproduced. In modern society we live under an

economy which only reproduces humans as a bi-product. What is recreated

and reproduced now is wealth, or capital (which is why our economy is

described as capitalist). Modern society is geared to recreate the

wealth of individuals, business and corporations; and most other humans

play only a part in this process. Their part is equal to the materials

or land used. Just like oil or land, most humans are now a commodity to

be used in the re-creation of profit and wealth. Even those individuals

who seem to benefit from great wealth are only part of a process in

which they have also sold themselves. Like the rest of us, they are

commodities too.

Humanity has lost its animal status, and this is not a good thing. All

animals need to adapt to their environment in order to keep that

environment healthy. Non-adaptation results in strange phenomena. It can

result in massive population explosions, for example amongst rabbits

introduced into Australia many years ago, or amongst humans who have

been divorced from the land and turned into the slaves of wages. These

population explosions are signs of non-suitability; they will be

accompanied by massive, periodic epidemics, or constant battle. They

show that the animal that is undergoing a population explosion has lost

its connectedness to the land, as it rides roughshod over it. The

introduced rabbit has changed the nature of the flora in the areas it

has conquered in Australia, just as the new human converts the landscape

into a product that serves the economy and the generation of money and

wealth.

The human species is ‘out of control’ because the economic system has

taken human beings away from the land; because capitalism has put a

barrier between human beings and the natural world. This barrier is

created daily in even the most dirt poor rural places, and here the

misery is even more extreme; the outskirts of the city is the only

option for survival. We skid and slide inside this bubble that has been

created inside the bubble of the world’s tiny atmosphere. We do not know

what we are doing anymore. This life no longer retains any animal

content.

Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution a lot of thought has been

given over to the question of what the essence of being human really is.

“It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I

ever beheld: I could not have believed how wide was the difference

between savage and civilised man: it is greater than between a wild and

domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of

improvement.”

Charles Darwin

“But these [Tierra del] Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even

one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the

fresh water, together with the spray, trickled down her body. In another

harbour not far distant, a woman, who was suckling a recently-born

child, came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there out of mere

curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom, and on

the skin of her naked baby! These poor wretches were stunted in their

growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins

filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and

their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make one’s self

believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same

world. It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some

of the lower animals can enjoy: how much more reasonably the same

question may be asked with respect to these barbarians! At night, five

or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain

of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like

animals. Whenever it is low water, winter or summer, night or day, they

must rise to pick shellfish from the rocks; and the women either dive to

collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited

hair-line without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal is killed,

or the floating carcass of a putrid whale is discovered, it is a feast;

and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and

fungi.”

Charles Darwin[4]

It is the establishment of civilisation and the advance of the

capitalist economy that has created the parameters of thought on the

question of what human beings are. It is not that the events of the last

few hundred years have given us something to think about, it is that

those events have made us think in certain ways. Many of us do, in all

innocence and honesty, regard these events as ‘progress’. Even those of

us who are suspicious of the rise of the all-conquering civilised man

tend to view the world through the same lens: it is only through the

material and psychological process that we have undergone, say the

‘revolutionaries’, that we can establish a free, human, communistic

society. Capitalism is necessary prior to Communism. For the

‘revolutionaries’ this is the trajectory of progress. Progress, in their

book, is still, even after all the war, misery and killing, a good or

necessary thing, without it how can we achieve a world communist

society? These ‘revolutionaries’ may nit-pick with those they see as the

supporters of Capitalism, but they do not see where they agree with each

other, they do not see how their ideas about the march of progress are

fully in line with the support for existing conditions: for civilisation

and capitalism.

The differences between humans and other living animals are always

interesting to explore. Benjamin Franklin famously defined humans as

‘the tool-making animal,’ however, this has been proved to need some

elaboration. Karl Marx wrote:

“It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwellings,

like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own

immediate needs or those of their young; they produce only when

immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even

when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom

from such need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the

whole of nature; their products belong immediately to their physical

bodies, while man freely confronts his own product. Animals produce only

according to the standards and needs of the species to which they

belong, while man is capable of producing according to the standards of

every species and of applying to each object its inherent standard;

hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty.”[5]

He continues:

“The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not

distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life

activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has

conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he

directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from

animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or,

rather, he is a conscious being — i.e., his own life is an object for

him, only because he is a species-being. Only because of that is his

activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses the relationship so

that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity,

his essential being, a mere means for his existence.” [6]

Later, in Capital, he writes:

“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of the weaver, and a

bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its

honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the

best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he

constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour-process, a result

emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning,

hence already existed ideally. Man not only effects a change of form in

the materials of nature; he also realises his own purpose in those

materials. And this is a purpose he is conscious of, it determines the

mode of his activity with the rigidity of a law, and he must subordinate

his will to it. This subordination is no mere momentary act. Apart from

the exertion of the working organs, a purposeful will is required for

the entire duration of the work.” [7]

Humans are conscious beings, they are able to treat their own lives as

an object, something they can consciously change and affect; they are

therefore able to imagine possible futures and strive to achieve them.

Their consciousness of the possibilities of their own existence gives

them a practical freedom. Humans are able to decide to live differently.

They are able to decide to live alone. They have a capacity for

individualism. A human being could decide to live alone in a cave on a

mountain top, thereby going against the tendency for humans to live in a

social organization. A human could decide to live with another animal

group and endeavour to be accepted by them.

This freedom, however, is determined and restricted by material

circumstances. In the present day the activity of humans is bound within

the parameters set by the way the economy is organized and the way that

humans must secure a means of living. The activity of humans in the

present day is, therefore, not free activity. Karl Marx suggested that

it would only be in a society organized communistically, where

technology was Industrial or post-Industrial, that humans would be able

to create freely. In order to get to this possibility, however, history

had to go through capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.

In pre-civilisation societies humans were also restricted in their

ability to pursue free activity. They made their own history, their own

lives, but within a certain framework.

Karl Marx said:

“People make their own history, but they do not make it as they please;

they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under

circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

[8]

Ernest Mandel elaborated on this idea. He devised the term ‘parametric

determinism’ to describe how history was made by humans, not some

inevitable force, and how their actions are contained within particular

parameters.[9] So, humans do have free will, but their will is

constrained by their material circumstances and the ideology that grows

from that. They are constrained by their perceptions, their experiences

and their emotions. We can understand the truth of this if we look at

any society of humans; we can see that certain things are likely to

happen and certain things are not.

The human mind is a victim of the material circumstances it finds itself

in.

Since humans are conscious of their activity and life (even if they are

often misguided about what is really happening) they are able to stand

apart from it. Unlike animals, which are defined largely by their

activities, human activity is not what defines them. It is the

consciousness of their activity which defines them. This is a useful and

useable definition of what it is to be human.

In the last few paragraphs we have left my intuitive search for the ends

of my logic and almost lapsed into a something akin to academic

discourse. I now wish to return to rough-hewn assertions and

provocations; unravelings of logics that lead to who knows where?

Previously in this piece I said:

“To understand the real difference between pre-civilisation humanity and

present-day humanity we have to comprehend the underlying difference in

their modes of existence, the way they ‘make a living’.

This difference can be simply put and easily understood — I beg you to

understand this. The original people of the world lived in societies

that exulted the human being. Present-day people live in a society where

the economy and wealth is exulted.”

But more recently I have agreed with descriptions that define humanness

thus:

“The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not

distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life

activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has

conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he

directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from

animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or,

rather, he is a conscious being — i.e., his own life is an object for

him.”

Humans are constrained in so many ways by their material circumstances.

The chances they have to change their way of living are not to be found

in their ideas because their ideas are always bound by the parameters

determined by material circumstance. Thus, workers struggles tend to

produce democracy, or a welfare state; revolt generally helps expand

markets or create new ones; thus religious adventures will reflect the

current mode of living; thus plans for the new world, as drawn up by the

‘revolutionaries’, will reflect current economic modes. The ‘revolution’

is more likely to be a self-managed counter-revolution than anything

else.[10] If the central hero and victim in the romance of revolutionary

thought is the working class and the first aim of the revolution should

be to destroy the working class then there are a host of dilemmas to be

faced right at the outset for revolutionaries. We have seen self-managed

counter revolutions and the re-subjugation of the working class in the

name of the working class in so many instances of interesting or

calamitous times.

At every point in human history and existence the possibilities we think

we are faced with are conditioned by our material circumstances. What

many of us have now, in this era of capitalist civilisation, are

possibilities based on our recent history, our experiences, our

ideologies, our emotions — all shaped by our existence, our material

circumstance. This existence is dominated by the way in which each of us

needs to live in order to survive. We have to do things in order to be

paid money so that we can buy our survival.

What people had in pre-civilisation societies was, on this level, no

different. The possibilities they thought they were faced with were

conditioned by their material circumstance. The possibilities open to

them were based on their recent history, their experiences, their

ideologies, their emotions.

Both types of society, therefore, lack that individualist freedom that

is so highly valued in modern civilized society. This individualism that

is put on such a pedestal by all sections of modern society is such a

lie; it never amounts to anything more interesting than the winning of a

large amount of money on the lottery. This society creates the scenario

where there is indeed no difference between David Bowie and the winner

of a lottery.

What pre-civilisation societies had, though, was a connection to the

land that made their existence closer to that of animals. This

connection to the land has been described as one of being owned by the

land rather than owning it.[11] The parameters of thought and idea were

constrained by an intimate knowledge of the land. Humans existed as part

of something, whereas today humans exist in isolation from any reference

points apart from those given by the economic system. We can no longer

feel and know the earth, even as it falls through our fingers. We do no

longer look around us and know the trees and the hills as our real home,

our real parents.

“... Charles Darwin, who met both Aborigines and Feugians in the 1830’s,

classed the ‘shivering tribes’ of Fuegians as ‘ the most abject and

miserable creatures I anywhere beheld... The Australian, in the

simplicity of the arts of life, comes nearest the Fuegian’. From these

views came the concept that these societies in ‘the uttermost parts of

the earth’ were living representatives of the oldest phase of human

development.”[12]

Being human is a risky business and we are now less animal than is

desirable. We have divorced ourselves from the animal state by becoming

aware of our lives and by having the ability to use our lives in any way

we wish, under the parameters set by our imaginations, that is, the

parameters set by our material circumstance. We have totally killed the

animal inside us by leaving the land and letting it, and ourselves, be

sold.

And, because our ideas are governed by the material circumstances of our

existence, every opposition that we throw against the social and

economic organization of our lives only feeds into that structure and

makes it stronger.

Le Garcon Dupont

September 2009

[1] Dead Man, Jarmusch, Jim, Twelve Gauge Inc, 1994, USA.

[2] The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson, 1963,

London.

[3] Dix-Sept Ans Chez Les Sauvages. Les Adventures de Narcisse Pelletier

Constant Merland, 1876. Translated by Stephanie Anderson in her book,

“Pelletier, The Forgotten Castaway of Cape York,” 2009, Melbourne Books,

Melbourne, Australia.

After being shipwrecked in 1857 fourteen year old cabin boy, Narcisse

Pelletier was taken in by the Uutaalnganu people of Cape York, Australia

and spent the next seventeen years living with them. The area these

people lived in had not yet been colonised by Europeans. He was

eventually ‘taken back’, against his will, by the captain of an English

pearling vessel and returned to France; where Constant Merland

interviewed him and wrote up his story. Pelletier never seemed to

re-adjust successfully to life in France, and died of ‘nervous

exhaustion’ at the age of fifty.

[4] Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the

Countries Visited during the Voyage of HMS Beagle Round the World (first

published 1839), Charles Darwin, T Nelson and Sons, London 1890, p

259–280

[5] Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (also referred to as

The Paris Manuscripts), a series of notes written between April and

August 1844 by Karl Marx. Found on www.marxists.org. Also to be found

at: “Marx’s theory of human nature.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 1

Mar 2009.

[6] As above

[7] Capital Volume 1, Karl Marx, London 1867, Penguin Books, London

1976, page 284.

[8] The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852, found at

www.marxists.org

[9] How To Make No Sense of Marx, Ernest Mandel, 1989, found at

www.marxists.org

[10] See, for example, the remarkable text: Lip and the self-managed

counter-revolution, Negation, translated and reprinted by Black and Red,

Detroit, 1975

[11] See, for example, the work of Bob Randall, a descendent of the

Yankunytjatjara people of Uluru

[12] The Original Australians, Josephine Flood, 2006, Allen and Unwin,

NSW, Australia, p 15. The development of Darwin’s ideas, and how they

have been interpreted, is very interesting. Darwin is now often accused,

by leftists and those who wish to discredit the issue of evolution, as a

racist because of the ways he described those people across the world

with whom he came into contact. However, this is unfair; he was trying

to evaluate his experiences of other groups of people in terms of the

dominant views of historical progression and in the terms he had devised

regarding biology, where living things evolve progressively from simple

to complex organisms. This led to problems when he attempted to address

what it is to be human in political and social terms. Basically

speaking, Natural Selection cannot explain society.