Like Pius XII, we too (in contrast to the existentialist bourgeois – these hunters after ever new showers on the epidermis[1] of their nascent corpses) see in love a means of producing people. However, as we are not guided by mystical or ethical notions, we can see that, like the child is playing in order to one day be able to follow the predator in the forest or the… trolleybus in the thicket of cities and a motor is “retracted” by millions of revolutions before it releases useful energy on the road, sexuality also has a much broader field of activity than at the moment of the useful meeting of two germ cells.
The institutions corresponding to the generational sequence precede those of the production of factory products, but always “the social institutions, under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live, are determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour on the one hand and of the family on the other”.
At the level of savagery and barbarism, the human species thrives on the products of nature without too much labour effort. At this stage, the kinship and family systems predominate as determining elements – at a later stage of “civilisation”, in which the number of people and the share of human labour in the production of the means of subsistence has increased, production systems have priority. Familial and certain social forms are transitory and disappear when their own inertial force has exhausted itself. Morgan[2] (whose researches Engels used on the basis of Marx’s notes about Morgan’s “Ancient Society” of 1877) found traces of vanished family forms in the “kinship systems” of all peoples and although he did not start from a declaredly materialistic system, Morgan noted that while the reality of life of sexes and reproduction (family) develops, the old kinship systems with their social and legal consequences survive: These systems, he says, are “passive”.
“And,” adds Marx, “the same is true of the political, juridical, religious, and philosophical systems in general.”
And it is precisely since we have known the transience and passivity of all these systems that we have been able to leave behind the bourgeois and reactionary philosophy of Voltaire in his “Candide”[3]. The bourgeoisie, as it was born and will die venally, could not but be born and die sceptical. For it, the following philistine dialogue is definitive:
“Do you think,” said Candide, “that mankind always massacred one another? Were they always guilty of lies, fraud, treachery, ingratitude, inconstancy, envy, ambition, and cruelty? Were they always thieves, fools, cowards, backbiters, gluttons, drunkards, misers, vilifiers, debauchees, fanatics, and hypocrites?”
“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always been accustomed to eat pigeons when they came in their way?”
“Doubtless,” said Candide. “Well then,” replied Martin, “if hawks have always had the same nature, why should you suppose that mankind have changed theirs?”
Candide lays down his arms, muttering that the “free will” makes “a great deal of difference”… We do not believe in free will, like Candide, but know with Engels who set “in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man” unknown to the barbarian age: “civilisation”; and the most advanced one is that which you, Monsieur Arouet de Voltaire, proclaimed.
