Main characteristics of work activity and their phylogenetic background. Joint activity of people and the emergence of consciousness

The essence of the differences between the psyches of animals and humans

There is no doubt that there is a huge difference between the human psyche and the psyche of the highest animal.

Thus, the “language” of animals and human language cannot be compared in any way. While an animal can only give a signal to its fellows about phenomena limited to a given, immediate situation, a person can, with the help of language, inform other people about the past, present and future, and convey to them social experience.

In the history of mankind, thanks to language, a restructuring of reflective capabilities has occurred: the reflection of the world in the human brain is most adequate. Each individual person, thanks to language, uses the experience developed in the centuries-old practice of society; he can gain knowledge about phenomena that he has never personally encountered. In addition, language allows a person to be aware of the content of most sensory impressions.

The difference in the “language” of animals and the language of man determines the difference in thinking. This is explained by the fact that each individual mental function develops in interaction with other functions.

Many experiments by researchers have shown that higher animals are characterized only by practical (“manual”, according to Pavlov) thinking. Only in the process of indicative manipulation is a monkey able to solve one or another situational problem and even create a “tool”. Abstract modes of thinking have not yet been observed in monkeys by any researcher who has ever studied the psyche of animals. An animal can act only within the limits of a clearly perceived situation; it cannot go beyond its limits, abstract from it and assimilate an abstract principle. The animal is a slave to the directly perceived situation.

Human behavior is characterized by the ability to abstract (be distracted) from a given specific situation and anticipate the consequences that may arise in connection with this situation. So, the sailors begin to urgently repair a small hole in the ship, and the pilot looks for the nearest airfield if he has little fuel left. People are by no means slaves to a given situation; they are able to foresee the future.

Thus, the concrete, practical thinking of animals subordinates them to the immediate impression of a given situation, while man's ability for abstract thinking eliminates his direct dependence on a given situation. A person is able to reflect not only the immediate influences of the environment, but also those that await him. A person is able to act in accordance with a recognized need - consciously. This is the first significant difference between the human psyche and the animal psyche.

The second difference between man and animal is his ability to create and maintain tools. An animal creates a tool in a specific visual-effective situation. Outside of a specific situation, an animal never singles out a tool as a tool and does not keep it for future use. As soon as the tool has played its role in a given situation, it immediately ceases to exist for the monkey as a tool. So, if a monkey has just used a stick as a tool for pulling up a fetus, then after a while the animal can chew it or calmly

watch another monkey do it. Thus, animals do not live in a world of permanent things. An object acquires a certain meaning only in a specific situation, in the process of activity1. In addition, the instrumental activity of animals is never performed collectively - at best, monkeys can observe the activity of their fellow, but they will never act together, helping each other.

Unlike an animal, a person creates a tool according to a pre-thought-out plan, uses it for its intended purpose and preserves it. Man lives in a world of relatively permanent things. A person uses a tool together with other people; he borrows the experience of using a tool from some and passes it on to other people.

The third distinctive feature of human mental activity is the transfer of social experience. Both animals and humans have in their arsenal the well-known experience of generations in the form of instinctive actions to a certain type of stimulus. Both of them gain personal experience in all sorts of situations that life offers them. But only man appropriates social experience. Social experience occupies a dominant place in the behavior of an individual. The human psyche is developed to the greatest extent by the social experience transmitted to him. From the moment of birth, the child masters the ways of using tools and methods of communication. The mental functions of a person change qualitatively due to the individual subject’s mastery of the tools of cultural development of mankind. A person develops higher, strictly human, functions (voluntary memory, voluntary attention, abstract thinking).

The development of feelings, as well as the development of abstract thinking, contains a way to most adequately reflect reality. Therefore, the fourth, very significant difference between animals and humans is the difference in feelings. Of course, both man and the higher animal do not remain indifferent to what is happening around them. Objects and phenomena of reality can evoke in animals and humans certain types of attitudes towards what affects them - positive or negative emotions. However, only a person can have a developed ability to empathize with the grief and joy of another person, only a person can enjoy pictures of nature or experience intellectual feelings when realizing any fact of life.

The most important differences between the human psyche and the psyche of animals lie in the conditions of their development. If throughout

Since the development of the animal world, the development of the psyche followed the laws of biological evolution, the development of the human psyche itself, human consciousness, is subject to the laws of socio-historical development. Without assimilating the experience of humanity, without communicating with others like oneself, there will be no developed, strictly human feelings, the ability for voluntary attention and memory, the ability for abstract thinking will not develop, and a human personality will not be formed. This is evidenced by cases of human children being raised among animals. All Mowgli children showed primitive animal reactions, and it was impossible to detect in them those features that distinguish a person from an animal. While a small monkey, left alone by chance, without a herd, will still manifest itself as a monkey, a person will only become a person if his development takes place among people.

The human psyche was prepared by the entire course of the evolution of matter. Analysis of the development of the psyche allows us to talk about the biological prerequisites for the emergence of consciousness. Of course, the human ancestor had the ability to think objectively and could form many associations. Pre-humans, possessing a limb like a hand, could create elementary tools and use them in a specific situation. We find all this in modern apes.

However, consciousness cannot be derived directly from the evolution of animals: man is a product of social relations. The biological prerequisite for social relations was the herd. Human ancestors lived in herds, which allowed all individuals to best protect themselves from enemies and provide mutual assistance to each other.

The factor influencing the transformation of a monkey into a person, a herd into a society, was labor activity, that is, the activity that is performed by people during the joint production and use of tools.

Labor activity is a prerequisite and result of the development of social relations

The emerging labor activity influenced the development of social relations, society, developing social relations influenced the improvement of labor activity. This shift in the development of the human ancestor occurred due to a sharp change in living conditions. The catastrophic change in the environment has caused great difficulties in meeting needs - the possibilities of easily obtaining food have decreased, and the climate has worsened. Human ancestors had to either die out or qualitatively change their behavior. Out of necessity, the ape-like ancestors of humans had to resort to joint pre-labor actions. As F. Engels emphasized, “hundreds of thousands of years have probably passed, which in the history of the Earth have no more significance than a second in life

man - before human society arose from a herd of tree-climbing monkeys."

The instinctive communication of human ancestors within the herd was gradually replaced by communication based on “production” activity. Changing relationships between community members - joint activities, mutual exchange of products of activity - contributes to the transformation of the herd into a society. Thus, the reason for the humanization of human animal-like ancestors is the emergence of labor and the formation of human society.

Human consciousness also developed in labor - the highest form of reflection in the evolutionary series, which is characterized by the identification of objective stable properties of objective activity and the transformation of the surrounding reality carried out on this basis.

Making, using and preserving tools for future use - all these actions lead to greater independence from the direct influence of the environment. From generation to generation, the tools of ancient people become more and more complex - from well-chosen fragments of stones with sharp edges to specialized, collectively made tools. Such tools are assigned constant operations: stabbing, cutting, chopping. It is in this connection that a qualitative difference arises between the human environment and the animal environment. As has already been said, an animal lives in a world of random things, while a person creates for himself a world of permanent objects. The tools created by people are the material carriers of the operations, actions and activities of previous generations. Through tools, one generation passes on its experience to another in the form of operations, actions, and activities.

In work activity, a person’s attention is directed to the tool being created, and, consequently, to his own activity. The activity of an individual person is included in the activity of the whole society, therefore human activity is aimed at satisfying social needs. In the current conditions, the need for a person’s critical attitude to his activities is manifested. Human activity becomes conscious activity.

In the early stages of social development, people's thinking is limited in accordance with the still low level of people's social practice. The higher the level of production of tools, the correspondingly higher the level of reflection. At a high level of tool production, the integral activity of tool making is divided into a number of units, each of which can be performed by different members of society.

The separation of operations pushes the ultimate goal - getting food - even further. Only a person with abstract thinking can realize this pattern. This means that high-level production of tools, developing under the social organization of labor, is the most important condition in the formation of conscious activity.

By influencing nature, changing it, man at the same time changes his own nature. “Labor,” said Marx, “is, first of all, a process that takes place between man and nature, a process in which man, by his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the exchange of substances between himself and nature. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature. in order to appropriate the substance of nature in a form suitable for his own life, he sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: arms and legs, head and fingers.By influencing and changing external nature through this movement, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops the forces dormant in it and subordinates the play of these forces to his own power"3.

Under the influence of labor, new functions of the hand were consolidated: the hand acquired the greatest dexterity of movements, due to the gradually improving anatomical structure, the ratio of the shoulder and forearm changed, and mobility increased in all joints, especially the hand. However, the hand developed not only as a grasping tool, but also as an organ of cognition of objective reality. Labor activity led to the fact that the actively moving hand gradually turned into a specialized organ of active touch. Touch is a specifically human property of cognition of the world. The hand is “a subtle organ of touch,” wrote I.M. Sechenov, “and this organ sits on the hand, like on a rod, capable of not only shortening, lengthening and moving in all sorts of directions, but also feeling in a certain way each such movement”4 . The hand is an organ of touch not only because the sensitivity to touch and pressure on the palm and fingertips is much greater than on other parts of the body (for example, on the back, shoulder, lower leg), but also because, being an organ formed in work and adapted for influencing objects, the hand is capable of active touch. That is why the hand gives us valuable knowledge about the essential properties of objects in the material world.

Thus, the human hand acquired the ability to perform a wide variety of functions that were completely uncharacteristic of the limbs of the human ancestor. That is why F. Engels spoke of the hand not only as an organ of labor, but also as a product of labor.

The development of the hand went in conjunction with the development of the whole organism. The specialization of the hand as an organ of labor contributed to the development of upright walking.

The actions of the working hands were constantly monitored by vision. In the process of learning the world, in the process of work activity, many connections are formed between the organs of vision and touch, as a result of which the effect of the stimulus changes - it is more deeply, more adequately recognized by the person.

The functioning of the hand had a particularly great influence on the development of the brain. The hand, as a developing specialized organ, should also have formed a representation in the brain. This caused not only an increase in the mass of the brain, but also a complication of its structure. The developing sensory and motor areas of the human brain, in turn, influenced the further development of cognitive activity, which contributed to even more adequate reflection.

The emergence and development of labor led to an incomparably more successful satisfaction of human needs for food, shelter, etc. However, social relations of people qualitatively changed biological needs and gave rise to new, strictly human, needs. The development of objects of labor gave rise to the need for objects of labor.

Thus, labor served as the reason for the development of human society, the formation of human needs, the development of human consciousness, which not only reflects, but also transforms the world. All these phenomena in human evolution led to a radical change in the form of communication between people. The need to pass on the experience of previous generations, teach labor actions to fellow tribesmen, and distribute individual actions between them created the need for communication. The language of instincts could not satisfy this need.

Along with labor, higher forms of communication developed through the labor process - through human language.

Along with the development of consciousness and its inherent forms of reflection of reality, the person himself as a person changes.

As K. Marx notes, “people begin with production,” because only this provides a person with the satisfaction of his material needs. Labor, as is known, is a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls metabolism. On the basis of material activities human consciousness grows. The formation of consciousness is primarily associated with the emergence during work of a specifically human attitude to the outside world, which is mediated by new motives and incentives for activity.

All animal behavior makes sense for him only insofar as it is in one way or another aimed at satisfying biological needs - food, sexual, defensive. True, in some animals, especially in apes, one can notice developed orientation-exploratory activity. If the monkey has nothing to do, then it begins to feel the objects around it. It would seem that there is behavior that is not motivated by a biological need. However, this is not so: under natural conditions, such actions contribute to the detection of biologically important signs for the organism; they, therefore, are opportunistic in nature. With this trait in mind, Marx emphasized that the animal also produces. It builds a nest or home for itself, just as a bee, beaver, ant, etc. do. But the animal produces only what it itself or its young directly needs.

Of course, man is also a biological being. In order to live, he must eat, drink, procreate, etc. But his biological needs have lost their purely animal nature. Thus, the food consumed by a person must not only be high in calories, but also be specially prepared. In the course of social life, qualitatively new needs arise and develop in a person. These include, first of all, the need for labor activity, changing objects, and therefore the tools themselves. All this leads to the formation of fundamentally new relationships between man and the world around him. Not only those phenomena that are directly related to the satisfaction of immediate material or biological needs become significant for a person, but also those that serve these needs indirectly. The production of instruments of labor in itself is the creation of objects that are not directly included in the system of satisfying immediate needs.

Based on the development of specifically social material needs, a person develops a system of, so to speak, non-utilitarian needs. This is the need for communication, knowledge of the truth, an aesthetic need, etc. In connection with this, a specific theoretical, aesthetic, etc. relationship of a person to his object arises. Since human labor is feasible only in the presence of social relations and a person’s awareness of his function in an integral system, his relationship with other people, the person himself becomes an object of knowledge. Getting to know the outside world, people are forced to move to awareness of themselves, their practical and spiritual activities. Consciousness also becomes self-consciousness.

Social needs not only determine the range of objects to be learned, but act as determinants of the significance of objects and their role for humans. The whole point is that objects of knowledge and activity, being included in the sphere of human activity, appear for him not only from the side of natural properties, but also as socially significant, possessing value. Value (practical-utilitarian, aesthetic, etc.) is a certain function that an object acquires in the course of human activity, serving the satisfaction of some needs. As you can see, although value is a feature of objects associated with their natural characteristics, it cannot be reduced to them; it is, as it were, the second, already social existence of a thing. Therefore, in the process of cognition, an object is revealed by the subject both as a natural phenomenon and as significant for his activity. This means that evaluative activity becomes a factor in cognition of an object. An evaluative attitude, during which the meaning of an object for the subject is revealed, its internal connection with certain human needs is revealed, and constitutes a specific side of the human relationship to the outside world. A person, in other words, carries out knowledge by applying certain socially developed standards to them - practical, theoretical, aesthetic, moral, etc.

The restructuring of the sphere of cognitive activity and the system of social relations is carried out under the influence of human labor activity and is associated with the formation of the ability to set goals. Setting goals is a specific trait of a person, born in the process of work, based on needs and characterizing a feature of consciousness. This follows from the fact that the satisfaction of a person’s needs is carried out in the course of changes in the phenomena of the external world. Presentation of the results of activity in the form of an image to be created of an object is the main content of the goal. A goal is a reflection of reality in a person’s consciousness in the form it should become in the process of practice. Setting a goal means not only the formation of an ideal result of activity, but also certain conditions, means and forms of activity. Emphasizing the connection of all these components, K. Marx noted that the result of labor had to be present in a person’s head “ideally, as an internal image, as a need, as an incentive and as a goal” *.

* K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch., t, 12, p. 718.

In the formation of a plan of activity, the creative nature of consciousness is revealed. If a subject creates a certain product, a thing, an object, then first of all, in the process of ideal activity, the subject forms an image of what is being created in the form of a visual representation, which is objectified by him in diagrams, drawings, plans, images, and sign systems. The created models or images of the future go far beyond the boundaries of the present, the past, and, consequently, beyond the boundaries of reproducing ideas.

The creative activity of consciousness makes it possible to reproduce the dynamics of an object. In the case of goal setting, we are talking about reproducing the dynamics of an object in the course of practical activity; By placing objects in connection with tools of labor, the subject causes changes in them that make it possible to more fully understand their nature.

In goal-setting, the result of an activity is defined in its relation to the objective properties of the objects being changed, as well as to the change itself, since here it is always given in unity with certain means and forms of activity. If, as a result of the activity, the objective laws to which the subject of the activity is subject are correctly taken into account, the necessary means are selected and adequate forms of activity are determined, then the created plan will be adequate to the future result. In this case, the mental transformation of the object in the process of creating a plan that expresses the final result of people’s actions will also be adequate.

The core of the materialist concept in Capital itself is the theory of material labor as the functioning of material productive forces. K. Marx defines labor as follows: “Labor is, first of all, a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the exchange of substances between himself and nature. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature.” This is a fundamental point. Marx emphasizes that man, as a direct element of the productive forces, is himself a concrete force of nature, the animate substance of nature. From this side, the social process acts as a direct continuation of the natural process. The labor process as a process of functioning of productive forces is the essence of the mode of production. Marx emphasizes that “economic eras differ not in what is produced, but in how it is produced, with what means of labor” [ibid., p. 191]. Although in different eras in society there are different means of labor and, therefore, different labor processes, nevertheless, it is the labor process that takes place everywhere, while the process of creating value is not universal. At the same time, Marx’s presentation of the labor process from a modern point of view cannot be considered completely consistent. He defines labor as “purposeful activity” and, speaking about the difference between animal-like instinctive forms of labor from human labor itself, writes: “But even the worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell of wax, he already built it in my head. At the end of the labor process, a result is obtained that was already in a person’s mind at the beginning of this process, that is, ideally” [ibid., p. 189]. Of course, in the process of material activity a person acts as a conscious being. However, in the fabric of such activity it is necessary to separate at the level of abstraction the plan for the ideal construction of the future situation and the plan for the actual material transformation of nature. The first is ideal activity, the second is labor itself. Another thing is that in conditions of an undeveloped division of labor, both plans are merged and in Marx’s “Capital” there are only guesses that in the future society the machine will completely displace man from the sphere of material production itself.

Marx, realizing that the progress of society directly depends on the division of labor, carefully analyzes the technical side of production in Capital. He considers forms of cooperation, manufacture, and machine production itself as an adequate basis for capitalism. Marx emphasizes that “machine production did not initially arise on a material basis corresponding to it” [ibid., p. 393]. Machines were initially made in a factory environment. It is only when machines begin to be produced by machines that the industrial revolution is completed and bourgeois society begins to develop on its own basis. Let us note in passing that this circumstance is extremely important. The new society does not immediately begin to develop on its own basis. The same is typical for the early socialist society, which, due to the immaturity of the technical basis, turned out to be capable of its own Restoration. However, the latter became only a painful and ugly form of transition to the adequate foundations of a new society. The machine technical basis, according to Marx, tends to constantly change. He wrote: “Modern industry never considers or treats the existing form of the production process as final. Therefore, its technical basis is revolutionary, whereas all previous methods of production had an essentially conservative basis” [ibid., p. 497-498]. Marx approaches the idea of ​​a technical limit to capitalist production purely logically and at the same time gropingly. Living long before the actual automation of production, he predicted a phase of technical development that would exclude actual physical labor. Thus, he wrote: “It is clear that if the production of a certain machine costs the same amount of labor as is saved by its use, then a simple transfer of labor occurs, i.e., the total amount of labor necessary for the production of a commodity does not decrease, or the productive power of labor does not increase. But the difference between the labor which a machine costs and the labor which it saves, or the degree of its productivity, obviously does not depend on the difference between its own value and the value of the implement which it replaces. The first difference continues to exist as long as the labor costs of the machine, and therefore that part of the value that is transferred from it to the product, remain less than the value that the worker with his tool would add to the object of labor" [ibid., p. 402]. Thus, Marx predicts a future technical state, when the costs of producing a product of labor will be entirely reduced to the costs of past labor. Although this idea was expressed by Marx in a complex form, since it was difficult for him to rely on living practice, its significance is great for the materialist understanding of the prospects for the development of production and the historical limits of the value economy [see. 57,58].

However, Marx, without living empirical experience before his eyes, simplified some phenomena of production. Thus, his interpretation of the law of labor change boiled down to the fact that machine production, making the technical basis extremely dynamic, also makes the worker dynamic. Having lost work in one place, he is ready to start it in another. Along with the negative side of the matter, there is also a positive aspect here - the opportunity to change activities, which is so necessary for the comprehensive development of the individual. Marx largely believed that if machine production was transferred to public ownership, then the law of labor change could be realized in full. However, subsequent practice has shown that more complex production requires deep specialization, and a change in activity is apparently possible at later stages of production during the transition to the actual automation of technological processes. Thus, Marx partly shared the historical illusions caused by the initial stages of machine production. Marx paid particular attention to the technical difference between city and countryside. He emphasized that large-scale industry revolutionizes the countryside, turning the peasant into a wage worker, and at the same time prepares the way for the elimination of significant differences between city and countryside. Marx's economic analysis appears to be an analysis of class relations in bourgeois society. Classes act as subjects of production relations, between which a wide range of class relations unfolds - material and ideological. Marx brilliantly shows that the proletariat has its own competition. Proletarians, as owners of the commodity “labor power,” strive to sell their goods more profitably, alienating their fellow class members. However, the logic of capitalist production relations is such that the poles of social polarization - labor and capital - are increasingly diverging from each other, and the illusions of wage workers are dispelled. Marx writes: “Consequently, the capitalist process of production, considered in general connection, or as a process of reproduction, produces not only goods, not only surplus value, it produces and reproduces the capitalist relation itself - the capitalist on one side, the wage worker on the other.” [ibid., p. 591]. Marx could not foresee the entire historical complexity of capitalist relations in the 20th century, the influence of the victorious socialist revolution in Russia on the capitalist countries, therefore, as it turned out, he simplified the dialectics of class relations, believing that the economic situation of wage workers would constantly worsen. However, developed capitalist countries in the 20th century increased attention to issues of social protection of the population under the influence of the social gains of socialist states. At the same time, Marx was and remains right that the gap between capital and labor continues to grow. The rate of surplus value in living labor increases, further alienating the capitalist and the worker. This means that alienation in modern bourgeois society is stronger than it was before.

The objective logic of capitalist relations, revealed by Marx, showed the historical limit of the bourgeois system. Such a limit should be the technical socialization of production: “The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell. She explodes. The hour of capitalist private property is striking. The capitalist mode of appropriation, resulting from the capitalist mode of production, and, consequently, capitalist private property, is the first negation of individual private property based on one’s own labor. But capitalist production, with the necessity of a natural process, generates its own negation. This is the negation of the negation. It restores not private property, but individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: on the basis of cooperation and common ownership of land and means of production produced by labor itself” [ibid., p. 773]. Marx understood that capitalism ends the prehistory of human society.

In the first volume of Capital, Marx, discussing the labor process and the process of increasing value, defines the specifics of human labor itself: “Labor is, first of all, a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the exchange of substances between himself and nature. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature. In order to appropriate the substance of nature in a form suitable for his own life, he sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: arms and legs, head and fingers. By influencing and changing external nature through this movement, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops the forces dormant in her and subordinates the play of these forces to his own power.” .

Marx talks about the process taking place between man and nature. What does happening mean? Does man do something in relation to nature, or does nature do something in relation to man? Or maybe man does something in relation to nature, and nature does something in relation to man?

But then how does one relate to the other? Is what man does to nature more important than what nature does to man? Or is it more important what nature does? Or what is done by nature and by man is equivalent?

Since ancient times, this issue has been discussed by those representatives of the human race who wanted to understand how exactly this very human race relates to its habitat, that is, to nature. This was discussed at first, of course, in mythopoetic forms. Those discussing it understood that by picking fruits from a tree, a person simply takes something from nature, which gives it something to him. That since nature is a giver, and man is a gift recipient, then it is necessary to express human gratitude to the one who gives you something free of charge. That it is necessary to justify the receipt of gifts, because otherwise it may taste like theft. That the only way to justify receiving a gift is to call yourself a son of nature (why else would she start lavishing gifts?). That, having called oneself a son of nature, one must fulfill a certain filial duty. That in addition to this duty, the fulfillment of which requires appropriate rituals, it is necessary to return what was given in the form of a buried body, nourishing Mother Earth with itself at the moment of returning to the womb and thereby justifying the fact that the mother nourished you before this return.

This is how it is if a banana grows on a palm tree and a primitive gatherer greedily or reverently plucks this banana or picks up a fallen banana from the ground. But if we are talking not about gathering, but about hunting, then the process taking place between man and nature changes its character. Because the animal being killed belongs to the forest. And you don’t accept a gift from the forest, you steal something from the forest. In the hunting rituals of many peoples, hunting “by agreement” with nature (one type of process taking place between nature and man) and hunting without reaching such an agreement are contrasted quite clearly with each other. The animal being killed may belong to one or another god or nature itself. And then, by killing, you commit blasphemy and will be punished for it.

And there may be cases when nature allows you, as they say, to “take” an animal. But even so, you have to thank nature for an animal differently than for a banana. And the animal must ask for forgiveness. For it is no worse than you, and you took its life. Actually, you acted in the same way as an animal hunting an animal. But the beast has no guilt, but you do. And you must make atonement sacrifices not only to mother nature, but also to the beast.

The process taking place between man and nature changes even more strongly if we are talking not about gathering and hunting, but about agriculture. In this case, the mythopoetic understanding of the process was not avoided in ancient times by comparing agriculture with incest. Man rapes mother nature (the raping organ is the plow with which the earth is plowed), the raped earth gives birth to a child in the form of a crop, the father, by harvesting the crop and eating it, actually devours his own children. Anthropologists who collected the myths of the so-called primitive peoples collected quite a lot of material confirming this understanding by ancient man of the nature of the process taking place between him and nature.

The famous Russian biologist and breeder Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855–1935), in the introduction written to the third edition of his works, formulates the Marxian process between man and nature: “Fruit growers will act correctly if they follow my constant rule: we cannot wait for favors from nature; it is our task to take them from her.”[AND. V. Michurin. Results of sixty years of work on breeding new varieties of fruit plants. Ed. 3rd. M., 1934]. This is not a banana gatherer or a game hunter. But this is not the ancient agrarian with his constant expectations of favors from nature and atonement for his sin before her.

The process taking place between man and nature in the form in which it is described by Michurin has distinct features of violence. For some time, Michurin was criticized for this approach, contrasting him with man’s ecological concern for Mother Nature. But everything that is happening before our eyes suggests that the process taking place between man and nature is becoming increasingly merciless. And that now it is completely pointless to ask about the relationship between the role functions of man and nature in the process taking place between them.

Meanwhile, Marx speaks of the process taking place between man and nature as a process “in which man, through his own activities, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.”

Marx says that man, by his own activity, regulates the process of exchange and everything else. In whose favor he regulates this process is clear from its results.

We are convinced that Marx, on the one hand, gives brilliantly comprehensive definitions of the phenomena under consideration and, on the other hand, refuses a detailed consideration of these phenomena. It in no way characterizes the process taking place between man and nature. He simply says that this process is taking place.

It couldn't have been any other way. Marx deals in Capital not with the fine structure of the processes taking place between man and nature, but with the structure of human labor activity itself and everything that this activity gives rise to. And it generates, among other things, capital.

Marx's opposition between the substance of nature and the forces of nature deserves special attention. Marx argues that man opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature.

Nature is thus seen as a unity of force and matter. In this case, force opposes matter. But if the force of nature is man, then nature before man is just matter. And how did the substance release its power? We have many who are eager to contrast the early Marx with his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts with the mature Marx who wrote Capital. They say that in the early Marx Hegelianism had not yet been completely eliminated, and therefore there are discussions about the spirit. Whether it's a matter of mature Marx. Well, then what do you want to do with this opposition of matter and force, given that matter is primordial, but force is not? Such a contradiction presupposes the presence of a certain third generating principle, which, like it or not, will have to be called spirit, uniting and opposing force and matter, generating force from matter, and so on. But Marx is only talking about force and matter, and not about spirit! Clinging to this, people who invented the mature Marx as the antithesis of the early and immature Marx, simply turn a blind eye to Marx’s constructions, based on the opposition of matter and force! And also to the fact that matter and force are contrasted by mature Marx. And not just anywhere, but even in Capital itself.

However, despite the importance of this opposition, it is first important for us to understand the process that, according to Marx, takes place between nature and man.

Realizing that it would be necessary to say something about this process other than that it is taking place, Marx writes: “We will not consider here the first animal-like instinctive forms of labor. The state of society when the worker acts on the commodity market as a seller of his own labor power, and its state going back to the depths of primitive times, when human labor has not yet freed itself from its primitive, instinctive form, are separated by a huge interval. We assume labor in a form in which it constitutes the exclusive property of man. The spider performs operations reminiscent of those of a weaver, and the bee, with the construction of its wax cells, puts some human architects to shame. But even the worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell of wax, he has already built it in his head. At the end of the labor process, a result is obtained that was already in a person’s mind at the beginning of this process, i.e. ideal.”.

The Soviet writer Boris Polevoy (1908–1981) has a story about Alexei Meresyev, a pilot who accomplished a miracle of self-overcoming: Meresyev had both legs amputated, but he learned to fly a combat aircraft with prosthetics, fought successfully, and shot down German planes.

The prototype of Meresyev was Alexey Maresyev, Hero of the Soviet Union, who truly accomplished everything that is written in the story by Boris Polevoy. Alexey Maresyev was able to accomplish this miracle because he had a red-hot ideal in which the dream of returning to duty was combined with what is now called technology that ensures such a return. An ideal is a combination of an idea, that is, a dream, with the technology for its implementation, its implementation.

Marx, like Maresyev, had his own ideal. For Marx, this ideal was the actual construction of a communist society. People with big ideals perform miracles because they are capable of making sacrifices on the altar of their dreams. A person must be willing and able to make these sacrifices. But in addition to the desire and ability to make sacrifices on this altar of his ideal, a person must also have what can be brought to this altar in the form of a sacrifice.

What is usually brought to the altar is a renunciation of other options for one’s destiny. You need to have these options. Not everyone has them. Marx had alternative options for his fate. He could become a new Hegel by devoting himself to philosophy. And he wanted it. But in the name of his ideal, he abandoned this, creating a not very powerful and rather quarrelsome organization, which went down in history under the name of the Communist International. Marx could also become Bismarck’s adviser and greatly influence the fate of Europe. And he also wanted this - not the material gifts offered by Bismarck, but this influence on destinies. Marx also sacrificed this alternative version of his fate. Again - in the name of building a certain quarrelsome organization that did not promise anything special at that stage of its existence, but ultimately made it possible for the victory of the communist ideal first in Russia and then in other countries, changing the course of world history, victory over fascism and much more. .

If Marx had decided to choose for himself the fate of the new Hegel, then we would have learned more about how the pre-human being, who is at the stage “the first animal-like instinctive forms of labor”, became a real person. But then there would not have been those changes in the course of world history that greatly advanced the dream of a real person.

Marx decided to become Marx. Therefore, we are deprived of the opportunity to read works not written by him, in which it would be said in detail about the difference between instinctive animal forms of labor and real human labor based on an ideal. But we know that a person became a person only when his work began to be guided by this very ideal. At least in the form of an image of the desired result.

When and why did this image itself begin to form, as well as the ability to construct in consciousness, and not in reality, that sequence of actions that leads to the achievement of that goal, the image of which was formed, again, not in the reality revealed to you, but in your consciousness? How, in the course of biological evolution, on which it is customary to blame everything even now, without understanding the essence of the matter, did the ability to manipulate (operate) with internal images of the sought-after arise, despite the fact that operating with the same images can give rise to the emergence of new images?

How, in modern scientific language, did the urge to carry out an action become freed from the need for its automatic implementation in practice? How was it torn away from the motor act and placed in an unknown how created cognitive system, where spatial-figurative models of the sought-after are stored, formed and developed?

Marx did not answer these questions. And those who answered them, studying both prehuman thinking and the thinking of so-called primitive people, who in fact are not first humans at all, but already quite developed creatures, different from early humans, just as we are from Neanderthals, got carried away by the details and forgot about the main thing. As a result, we are treated to information about the ability of animals to perform mental acts, informationally equivalent acts of judgment, about how these informationally equivalent acts are implemented on a nonverbal basis (“based on operating with nonverbal internal representations using various perceptual codes”), and so on. What should we state?

That, unfortunately, certain schools that are looking for an answer to the question of where the beginning that turned animal proto-labor into actual human labor originated, alas, are being exchanged for particulars.

That Marx would never waste his time on particulars, but due to his chosen fate, he left his very capacious and promising intellectual schemes without development.

That all schools, exchanging particulars and polemicizing with each other (cognitive, behavioristic, anthropological, linguistic, activity, and so on), recognize the need for a ritual principle as the soil on which thinking grows, that is, the ability to form an ideal, and therefore , and the ability to transition from animal proto-labor to actual human labor.

In his speech delivered at the grave of Karl Marx on March 17, 1883, Friedrich Engels said: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of the organic world, Marx discovered the law of development of human history: that, until recently hidden under ideological layers, the simple fact that people first of all must eat, drink, have a home and dress before being able to engage in politics, science, art, religion".

Unfortunately, Engels did a lot to simplify Marx in an unacceptable way. Many believe that this was necessary from a political point of view. I do not agree with such justifications for simplification. However, what does the justice or wrongness of the simplification of that time change for us today?

Even if the simplistic people were right then, what does being right mean for us today? It means that the simplifiers first connected Marxism with the masses with the help of simplifications and achieved a historical result. And then - due to the same simplification - they nullified this result, leading to the collapse of the USSR and communism.

And there is no need to say that this did not happen due to simplification. Any collapse has as one of its main sources one or another imperfection of the collapsing system. Marxism and communism are a worldview system. The imperfection of such a system cannot but be generated by the imperfection of the worldview. And here one of two things: either the Marxist worldview itself is imperfect - or this Marxist worldview has been deformed by various kinds of simplifications.

The first of the simplifiers, of course, was Engels. He was the smartest man, a brilliant organizer, a truly loyal friend of Marx. But between him and Marx there is an intellectual and spiritual abyss. Engels himself was well aware of this abyss. It is always realized by those who formulate great spiritual prophecies into ideological systems with political claims. And here is Engels, Christian apostles and religious teachers.

At first, the brilliant intellectual Engels simplified the brilliant Marx. Then ordinary intellectuals (Lukács, Lifshitz, Deborin and others) simplified and at the same time sterilized Engels, who, in the same speech at Marx’s grave, nevertheless said that “Marx was first of all a revolutionary,” and added to this most important “first of all”: “To take part in one way or another in the overthrow of capitalist society and the state institutions created by it, to participate in the liberation of the modern proletariat, to whom he first gave consciousness of its own situation and its needs, consciousness of the conditions for its liberation - this was in fact his life’s calling. His element was fight. And he fought with such passion, with such tenacity, with such success, as few fight.".

This “first of all” is all Engels. The most brilliant intellectual still always wants something to be “first of all,” and therefore above all. But in Marx this “first of all” did not exist. Marx, being a genius, fantastically combined the theoretical and practical, ideological and organizational, spiritual intellectualism and applied revolutionism. Marx, no matter how much he wanted, could not separate one from the other, because it was all merged into one in him. And therefore Marx does not say that first of all people should eat, drink, and then ritualize their activities. Marx does not deny primary needs. But he understands that human labor, which for him lies at the basis of his endlessly beloved history (revolutionism and love of history are one and the same), arose in connection with the acquisition by some force of nature of the ability to form the ideal. And that only then did this force of nature, having separated from the substance of nature, become a man and create all of human history.

What if ritualization underlies the emergence and development of the ability to form an ideal? Then it is primary insofar as it concerns humanity, and therefore human labor and human history!

Marx refers to the great American scientist and politician Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), who argued that man is a toolmaking animal. But Marx merely refers to a source that is very authoritative for him, just as he refers to other sources when discussing class theory or other issues. Franklin is one of the greatest intellectuals and politicians of his time. But that time is in the past. Since then, many far from meaningless definitions of what a person is have been given. They are all flawed and they are all essential. And then there’s Franklin and others. We see several definitions on intellectual tablets at once. And without identifying ourselves with any of them, we must relate to each one somehow. At the same time, I realized that it was not Marx who called man a tool-making animal, but Franklin, who, by the way, is by no means a materialist, but a deist, who did not create communism, but the United States, and so on. And what, in essence, is worse than the idea of ​​man developed by the great existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the essence of whose thoughts boils down to the fact that man is a being capable of making choices? Or the definition given by the German philosopher and cultural scientist Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), for which a person is an animal symbolicum, that is, a symbolic animal.

There are a lot of these definitions. For me, the richest of them is the definition implicitly given by Marx in Capital, according to which a person is a being capable of real work, that is, of forming an ideal idea of ​​​​the desired result and the ways to achieve it.

What follows from this definition in general and what is essential here for us, reflecting on the causes of the collapse of Soviet communism and the role of communism in the 21st century?

(To be continued.)

Ambivalence, frustration, rigidity - if you want to express your thoughts not at the level of a fifth grader, then you will have to understand the meaning of these words. Katya Shpachuk explains everything in an accessible and understandable way, and visual gifs help her with this.
1. Frustration

Almost everyone experienced a feeling of unfulfillment, encountered obstacles on the way to achieving goals, which became an unbearable burden and a reason for reluctance. So this is frustration. When everything is boring and nothing works.

But you shouldn’t take this condition with hostility. The main way to overcome frustration is to recognize the moment, accept it, and be tolerant of it. A state of dissatisfaction and mental tension mobilize a person’s strength to deal with a new challenge.

2. Procrastination

- So, starting tomorrow I’m going on a diet! No, better from Monday.

I'll finish it later when I'm in the mood. There's still time.

Ah..., I’ll write tomorrow. It's not going anywhere.

Sound familiar? This is procrastination, that is, putting things off until later.

A painful state when you need it and don’t want it.

Accompanied by tormenting oneself for not completing the assigned task. This is the main difference from laziness. Laziness is an indifferent state, procrastination is an emotional state. At the same time, a person finds excuses and activities that are much more interesting than doing specific work.

In fact, the process is normal and inherent to most people. But don't overuse it. The main way to avoid this is motivation and proper prioritization. This is where time management comes to the rescue.

3. Introspection


In other words, introspection. A method by which a person examines his own psychological tendencies or processes. Descartes was the first to use introspection when studying his own mental nature.

Despite the popularity of the method in the 19th century, introspection is considered a subjective, idealistic, even unscientific form of psychology.

4. Behaviorism


Behaviorism is a direction in psychology that is based not on consciousness, but on behavior. Human reaction to an external stimulus. Movements, facial expressions, gestures - in short, all external signs have become the subject of study by behaviorists.

The founder of the method, American John Watson, assumed that through careful observation, one could predict, change or shape appropriate behavior.

Many experiments have been conducted to study human behavior. But the most famous was the following.

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo conducted an unprecedented psychological experiment called the Stanford Prison Experiment. Absolutely healthy, mentally stable young people were placed in a suspended prison. The students were divided into two groups and assigned tasks: some had to play the role of guards, others prisoners. The student guards began to show sadistic tendencies, while the prisoners were morally depressed and resigned to their fate. After 6 days the experiment was stopped (instead of two weeks). During the course, it was proved that the situation influences a person’s behavior more than his internal characteristics.

5. Ambivalence


Many psychological thriller writers are familiar with this concept. So, “ambivalence” is a dual attitude towards something. Moreover, this relationship is absolutely polar. For example, love and hatred, sympathy and antipathy, pleasure and displeasure that a person experiences simultaneously and in relation to something (someone) alone. The term was introduced by E. Bleuler, who considered ambivalence one of the signs of schizophrenia.

According to Freud, “ambivalence” takes on a slightly different meaning. This is the presence of opposing deep motivations, which are based on the attraction to life and death.

6. Insight


Translated from English, “insight” is insight, the ability to gain insight, insight, suddenly finding a solution, etc.

There is a task, the task requires a solution, sometimes it is simple, sometimes complex, sometimes it is solved quickly, sometimes it takes time. Usually, in complex, labor-intensive, seemingly impossible tasks, insight comes. Something non-standard, unexpected, new. Along with insight, the previously established nature of action or thinking changes.

7. Rigidity


In psychology, “rigidity” is understood as a person’s unwillingness to act not according to plan, fear of unforeseen circumstances. Also referred to as “rigidity” is the unwillingness to give up habits and attitudes, from the old, in favor of the new, etc.

A rigid person is a hostage to stereotypes, ideas that are not created independently, but taken from reliable sources.
They are specific, pedantic, and are irritated by uncertainty and carelessness. Rigid thinking is banal, cliched, uninteresting.

8. Conformism and non-conformism


“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to stop and think,” wrote Mark Twain. Conformity is a key concept in social psychology. Expressed as a change in behavior under the real or imagined influence of others.

Why is this happening? Because people are afraid when they are not like everyone else. This is a way out of your comfort zone. This is the fear of not being liked, of looking stupid, of being outside the masses.

A conformist is a person who changes his opinion, beliefs, attitudes, in favor of the society in which he is located.

Nonconformist is the opposite concept to the previous one, that is, a person who defends an opinion that differs from the majority.

9. Catharsis

From ancient Greek, the word “katharsis” means “purification,” most often from feelings of guilt. A process of long experience, excitement, which at the peak of development turns into liberation, something maximally positive. It is common for a person to worry for various reasons, from the thought of the iron not being turned off, etc. Here we can talk about everyday catharsis. There is a problem that reaches its peak, a person suffers, but he cannot suffer forever. The problem begins to go away, the anger goes away (for some), the moment of forgiveness or awareness comes.

10. Empathy


Do you experience together with the person who tells you his story? Do you live with him? Do you emotionally support the person you are listening to? Then you are an empath.

Empathy – understanding people’s feelings, willingness to provide support.

This is when a person puts himself in the place of another, understands and lives his story, but, nevertheless, remaining with his reason. Empathy is a feeling and responsive process, somewhere emotional.