Economic development -- Social aspects; Social evolution; Social problems; Work
Whatever form the dinner took, wherever the dinner went, there followed
the fluent, ever-changing animal organism, producing tooth or claw,
tongue or proboscis, seven stomachs or a private fish-pole—whatever was
necessary to lure, catch, hold, inclose, and assimilate, this
ever-receding and sometimes actively resisting, but always indispensable
dinner. The evolution of animal organisms is conditioned mainly upon the
food supply.
How does humanity figure in this transformation scene?
Man alone, of the whole animal kingdom, has attained a complete new
stage in this imperative process of nutrition. Where the most primitive
ameboid cell can but receive food; where the whole machinery of later
organisms can but seize food; man, and man alone, produces food. Through
all the ages, through every conceivable modification of structure and
function, the animal has pursued its dinner. Man has caught it.
Man alone has permanently mastered his food supply; instead of an
endless chase it is a closed circle—he makes that which makes him. That
is why physical evolution stops with man—and psychical evolution begins.
No longer at the mercy of thin grass, man makes the fat-grained corn; no
longer endlessly chasing the buffalo, he raises the big steer. His
prairie in the garden, his prey in the barnyard, the animal can rest at
last, and man can grow. By what strange new power is this immense step
taken, which has enabled this one out of all created forms to apply
productive force, instead of mere destructive force, to his food supply?
By the power of organisation. By entering upon that new life, the social
life, which raises us above all lower forms.
The cell groups with others into the organ, the organs group again and
form organisms; the organisms, once more combined, form an organisation.
Society is the fourth power of the cell.
A low and limited form of social life began with the temporary union of
hunters; loose fluctuating hordes, like those of wild dogs or wolves.
When cattle were kept instead of killed, were milked and sheared and
bred with care and forecast, there arose a higher group form, the
family. With an insured food supply at hand man sat quiet, watching his
cattle; and with food to spare and time to spare, he began to grow. The
family, our physical nucleus, grew too; grew as it had never grown
before.
The limits of cattle-fed life were sharp and clear. There was no
permanent home, no village, no extra-familiar intercourse, only warfare
over pasture and water between tribe and tribe. But the hour came when
corn was planted and eaten; and then our human life was indeed
established.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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