LOST CONNECTIONS #5

“The object before us, to begin with, material production….

Individuals producing in society, (hence socially determined individual production), is, of course, the point of departure.

In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds etc. which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate.

The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan.”

– (Karl Marx 1857-8)