The first thread I tried to unravel or Spun with consistency in my mind was that came from Engels's insistence, that the processes were gradual and ancient, that there was a qualitative leap, the product of a steady accumulation. Engels, in the same way that Marx, has favored the description and analysis of labor, instruments, means of production. Both have said things about the language, but did not systematically or in such detail as in work and the instruments.
By studying the arbitrariness of the sign (I posted on this blog a few articles on the subject), that time I noticed a phrase university of Ferdinand de Saussure, commenting on a persistent idea until today, the random nature of human language voice option and Whitney first exposed. I will not recopy the whole paragraph. Go directly to the evocative phrase Saussure: "Whitney is going too far to say that our choice fell by chance on the vocal organs, they somehow were imposed on us by nature." ("Whitney is il dit trop loin quand it est tombé par notre choix sur les organes vocaux hasard, ils étaient nous imposer well quelque sorte par la nature", Cours de linguistique générale, Ed Payot, Paris, 1984, p. 26).
Engels devoted to the subject a few paragraphs in your brochure, speaks of the necessary morphological changes in the anatomy of the monkeys to reach the production of articulate sounds. Before he referred to the changing posture and hands. These changes are simultaneous, overlapping with other changes of skeletal and muscular changes. But changes in the brain, to the extent and weight. Gradual changes in the functions of different bodies that allow us to contact the outside world, with nature. But these changes will not take us out of nature, we belong to the animal world. There are within these mutations as a stay. I note in passing that now we know that our ancestors are not exactly the monkeys.
We remain mammals, we share with them many organs, including not only bodies but also their position in the body. The "related bodies" as called André Leroi-Gourhan, focus on the face in the front. I go to what nature has imposed on us, the sound production and reception, have their own bodies and their own location, a site in the body and its functioning is very probable governed from the same brain areas. Nature has freed the hands of his functions of locomotion, has changed its form and function has refined his grasp. So the function Hand life is irreplaceable, being busy in their actions can not address the transmission of information. The eyes are also busy looking at and lead hands. These simple things I'm pointing out, are precisely those that did not say the Swiss scholar, only if suggested. Although as to reflect on this evidence, it is once said, but remain unknown if not expressed, met a Marxist text, I read said that after a number of ways in Marxist literature or texts marxeólogos.
In my first reading of Capital, found a passage that interested me much, but this text is read in Russian during my studies in Moscow. I regret now that my knowledge of German is zero. I've searched in Castilian, is apparently very easy to find, it comes from the greatest work of Marx. Now with the global network, some limitations may be overcome easily. But Marx's texts not always quite so simple. Indeed the text exists in Castilian in the network, the site of the Universidad Complutense (Library of social authority ), but reading it again, some details seemed to mean something else. I checked with other translations and tried to collate with the original. The issue of terminology is more important than looks. In the previous article I showed how to change a tense can remove the author's intention or suggest something quite different.
took in my linguistic studies clearly aware of this. Also in my practice I sometimes translator that lexical and semantic undertake research for my betrayal was not total, and I mean by that that translation is betrayal.
work in human form
To refresh I remind you that Engels in his pamphlet does work precede the emergence of language. For him, the manual activity, the manufacture of instruments, is prior to language, it comes only with the need to exchange information in the course of work. This is where I speak the text of Marx that comes in Capital:
"Work is first, a process between man and nature, a process in which the average man, regulates and controls your metabolism with nature. The man faces a natural material itself as a natural power. Sets in motion natural forces that belong to his corporeal, arms and legs, head and hands, to seize the materials of nature in a way useful for their own life. To operate through the movement of the nature outside it and change it, both his own nature. Develops the powers that slumber in it and under its dominion the game itself forces. We need not refer here to the first forms instinctive animal nature, which has the job. The situation in the labor market is presented as the seller of its own workforce, has left behind in the distant background of earlier times, the situation in which human labor was not even stripped of its original form instinctive. See the work under way in which belongs exclusively man. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee ashamed, for the construction of its honeycomb cells, more of a master mason. advantageously But what distinguishes the worst of the master mason bee is better than the first cell was modeled on his head before the wax build . To consummate the work process a result that emerges before the start of that already existed in the imagination of the worker, or ideally. The worker not only made a change of form of the natural in nature, while effective by its own target goal he know determines, as a law, the mode and manner of his actions and he has to subordinate his will. And this subordination is not an isolated act. In addition to straining the organs that work, the worker is required throughout the course work, will goal-oriented, which is manifested as attention. And the more it requires that care the less attractive it is for the workers that work for their own content and the form and manner of their implementation, at least, then, enjoy the labor of this work as a game of their own physical strength and spiritual. "
I quoted the entire paragraph, because it acostrumbra mutilate, either in the foregoing sentence I underline or final. Before going to the reasons that led me to set my mind in this passage and how they bind to the problem that concerns me, I want to comment on the translation into Castilian.
Problems of translation
The first observation is a detail, it does not change the meaning. The Castilian translator has preferred to leave the literal translation of "master builder", while the translation into Italian and French have chosen to interpret and put "architect." This is not very important, but where you change and can be given as to interpretation is the word "imagination", which in Italian is like "idea" and in French as "representation." Idea and imagination, we can say that they belong to the same semantic field, but not the same philosophical tradition. The French translator has not so innocent word "Representation" here lies a philological work that connects this word to an entire paradigm concerning the thought and knowledge. This is because sometimes we pointed out, reading foreign authors, we're talking about the same, but actually this shade, this small, it can drive deep forking paths.
not understand the reasons for changing Castilian translator "constructed" by "modeling." This election just hides the identity of the action mental and physical action. Marx has chosen not to model build and verb: "Was aber von den schlechtesten vornherein vor der besten Biene Baumeister auszeichnet, ist, daß er die Zelle in seinem Kopf gebaut hat, bevor er siein Wachs baut."
Now I will refer to two other words, in which clear the roads actually go in different directions. The Castilian translator has chosen to use a neologism and type " effective by its own goal." The other two translators have preferred to write "done." Do not believe I'm exaggerating, here the paradigm is important, I mean the philosophical paradigm. In the sixth thesis on Feuerbach appears a phrase that reveals the conceptual difference between the two following: "effective reality." On the other hand I do not see the need to "innovate" by entering a word that does not exist in our vocabulary. This introduction can not be free, to give it the value that you may have, we need a theoretical justification, philological.
The other word that leads to a certain branch is the ending paragraph: "spiritual." This option does not seem very innocent. In the Marxian vocabulary striking him say "spiritual forces" instead preferring "intellectual forces." Is the option that translators have preferred the French and Italian. I think they are right, because "spiritual forces" gives an idealism not know what the text, totally alien to the thinking of Karl Marx.
I will excuse this linguistic loophole. Although I think it was necessary to do so, because I do not think that these lapses are rare, they may instead be recurrent. Which should lead to much in doubt whether what we are reading is absolutely secure, if he is worthy of our trust him. In any case it is necessary that those involved in interpreting Marx, those who study in Castilian, keep in mind the possibility of being, not their fault, misunderstanding. In any case, Marxist studies must also carry out a strict reading of the text.
Now back to the idea that I had stored in my memory this long passage Marx. Marx makes a distinction between purely instinctive way of working, and working animal in human form. Marx describes the case of the worker, a different activity, giving paramount importance to the fact that man has a previous project in your head, in your imagination, is represented in the mind steps in the future that will manufacture abroad. Let us note that here is a movement from inside to outside. While it must also take into account that from the beginning Marx paragraph indicates another movement from outside to inside: " By operating through the movement of the nature outside it and change it, both his own nature."
This internal mental activity upon prior to its realization, this projection leads us necessarily to presuppose language as a component substance of this same activity.
Engels tells us, in his pamphlet, that instinctive activities, natural, not "work in the true sense of the word. The work begins with the development of instruments. " And the anthropologist and above, André Leroi-Gourhan adds almost a century later "can be cleared an essential point: there is the possibility of language from the time when the prehistory gives us the tools (outils) as a tool and language are neurológicamante related and since both the one and the other is indispensable in the social structure of humanity "(" Le geste et la parole , Albin Michel, Paris, 1978, p. 163).
But the same, with the knowledge of his era, F. Engels has said it clearly: "First work, then and with it the spoken word, were the two major stimuli under whose influence the monkey's brain was gradually transformed in the human brain, which, despite all their similarities, it exceeds considerably in size and perfection. "
may be necessary to revisit the issue. But it seems necessary to conclude that one can not reduce instructional booklet Engels almost theological phrase "labor created man." False even by the very development of the thinking of Engels, data and gives us his great insights. Modern anthropological science shows us with more precise details and more complete outline of the physiological changes that we describe Engels. Many points are systematically taken up by modern science, as their upright posture, the position of the thumb, cranial cavity, development and extension of brain areas, etc. The difference is that now we can say that the development of the hand and its capabilities are parallel to language development.
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