Date: Tue, 14 May 96 08:53:20 GMT
Subject: Progress



Lisa writes:
> 
> Well, Otto, competition between over-populated foragers could hardly
> be more nasty and cruel than what we've got going on now!
>

I'm sure you're right about the relative capacity for war.

But the main threat to foragers is that they starve to death,
or become so weakened by malnutrition that they die of diseases.

While we may be more nasty and cruel to each other ( although of
course we can also display more solidarity and compassion ) ,
life was more nasty and cruel to humans then than now. 

>
> And I hope you don't assume that more people is a type of progress
> itself - each one's selfish desire to exist aside.  At least if we
> weren't born, we wouldn't know it or miss it.
> 

If we define progress as increasing life expectancy, higher level
of culture, higher supportable population, etc, then there has been
progress from each class society to the next, in general.

If you define progress as human happiness then I can't really answer.
Probably, there are more very happy people and more very unhappy 
people, if you define happiness in terms of needs satisfied.

> 
> Do you think class society was necessary for technical "progress" to
> occur?  I don't.
>

Of course it was.

Each class society has arisen out of the crisis of the previous one.
There was nothing inevitable about this. Had society not advanced by
revolution, it results in "the mutual ruin of the contending classes".

Why should the transition to class society be different ? Some crisis
or other ( eg drought , change in climate ) leads to a situation where
only new forms of production and new social relations based on them
are the only way forward. I don't believe the question was "technical
progress and no private property vs technical progress with private
property" but "private property or death".

Adam.


Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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