|
A
peer-reviewed electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and ISSN
1541-0099 24(2)
– May 2014 |
Transhumanism
and Marxism: Philosophical Connections
James Steinhoff
Department of Information and Media Studies
University of Western Ontario
Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 24 Issue 2 – May 2014 - pgs 1-16
Abstract
There exists a real dearth of literature available to Anglophones
dealing with philosophical connections between transhumanism and Marxism. This
is surprising, given the existence of works on just this relation in the other
major European languages and the fact that 47 per cent of people surveyed in
the 2007 Interests and Beliefs Survey of the Members of the World Transhumanist
Association identified as “left,” though not strictly Marxist (Hughes 2008).
Rather than seeking to explain this dearth here, I aim to contribute to its
being filled in by identifying three fundamental areas of similarity between
transhumanism and Marxism. These are: the importance of material conditions,
and particularly technological advancement, for revolution; conceptions of
human nature; and conceptions of nature in general. While it is true that both
Marxism and (especially) transhumanism are broad fields that encompass diverse
positions, even working with somewhat generalized characterizations of the two
reveals interesting parallels and dissimilarities fruitful for future work.
This comparison also shows that transhumanism and Marxism can learn
important lessons from one another that are complementary to their respective
projects. I suggest that Marxists can learn from transhumanists two lessons:
that some “natural” forces may become reified forces and the extent to which
the productive apparatus is now relevant to revolution. Transhumanists, on the
other hand, can learn from Marxist theory the essentially social nature of the
human being and the ramifications this has for the transformation of the human
condition and for the forms of social organization compatible with
transhumanist aims. Transhumanists can also benefit from considering the
relevance of Marx’s theory of alienation to their goals of technological
advancement.
1. Transhumanism
The term “transhumanism” was
coined by evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley in 1957. In a short paper
bearing the same neologism as its title, he asserts that:
The
human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself – not
just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in
another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new
belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending
himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. (Huxley 1957)
This early formulation
contains the kernel of transhumanism, which is the desirability and feasibility
of the self-directed evolution or transcendence of humanity beyond its current
form or nature. Recently, philosopher Max More has offered this more precise
definition:
Transhumanism is both a reason-based philosophy and a
cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of
fundamentally improving the human condition by means of science and technology.
Transhumanists seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of
intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means
of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values.
(More 2009)
Transhumanism
indicates a transitional state on the road to a posthuman state. This
transition is to be accomplished primarily by technological means in a transfer
of control over the process of evolution from natural selection to conscious
human direction. The possibility of taking control of evolution is not a
specifically transhumanist belief. Diverse non-transhumanist thinkers such as
political scientist Francis Fukuyama and sociobiologist E.O. Wilson acknowledge
the coming reality of “volitional evolution” or “a species deciding what to do
about its own heredity,” as Wilson puts it (1998, 299). What is distinctly
transhumanist is the optimism with which the prospects of volitional evolution
are regarded. Fukuyama calls for “humility” regarding human nature and fears that
transhumanists will “deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and
psychotropic shopping malls” (Fukuyama 2004). Transhumanists, by contrast,
desire to use such new and emerging technologies as genetics, robotics,
artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology to achieve ambitious goals: the
elimination of disease; radical life extension (even immortality);1
the creation of substrate-independent minds (capable of being uploaded to
non-biological systems);2 augmented or virtual realities; and enhanced
intellectual, physical, aesthetic and ethical capabilities. Some transhumanists
even aim at the abolition of all forms of suffering for all sentient life.3
This is not
to say, as many critics have, that transhumanists blithely dismiss the prospects
of technological advancements going horribly wrong. Nick Bostrom, in
particular, has written much about “existential risks” or the possibilities that
new technologies present for the extinction of life on earth (Bostrom 2002). Nonetheless,
many transhumanists prefer a “Proactionary Principle” of rational
risk-assessment, as More (2005) puts it, as opposed to a “Precautionary
Principle” of excessive safeguarding regarding technological developments.
Politically,
transhumanists have covered the spectrum. Proto-transhumanists such as
molecular biologist J.D. Bernal and geneticist/evolutionary biologist J.B.S.
Haldane were Marxists, Bernal being a member of the Communist Party of Great
Britain, while Haldane was an external supporter of the Party. Riccardo Campa,
chair of the Associazione Italiana Transumanisti (AIT), expresses “only conditional
confidence” in the power of markets and asserts
that if “market
mechanisms do not deliver, we should have to consider socializing what are,
from the transhumanist point of view, the key sectors”
(Campa 2008).
On a
different note, Max More and most of those subscribing to his brand of
transhumanism (known as Extropianism) originally espoused anarcho-capitalist
views. However, in the past decade More has tended more toward liberal
democracy. Ray Kurzweil has not written explicitly on his political stance, but
one can safely assume that his views lie somewhere not far from liberal,
capitalistic democracy, given his entrepreneurial career and frequent assertions
of liberal democratic rights. H+ (formerly The World Transhumanist Association),
of which Nick Bostrom is a co-founder, is explicitly a liberal democratic
organization.
In the past
few years, rumors and accusations concerning transhumanist fascists have been
buzzing about the Italian transhumanist community. The “overhumanists” or
“sovrumanists” (from the Italian “sovrumanismo”), a group of members within the
ITA, have been accused of fascist tendencies.4 As I have not been
able to read any of the purportedly fascist texts (Stefano Vaj’s Biopolitica being the most prolifically
accused), I leave this discussion untouched. Suffice to say that the
allegations lend some support to an appearance that transhumanists range widely
across the political spectrum.
James Hughes
(2001) suggests that leftist thought and transhumanist ideas parted ways after
the experience of Nazi eugenics and that the two are only beginning to meet up
again indirectly: through Donna Haraway’s cyborgology, speculative fiction,
some radical green movements, and various other dispersed projects. Hughes,
himself a transhumanist sociologist, argues for a “democratic transhumanism.”
He writes: “For transhumanism to achieve its own goals it needs to distance
itself from its anarcho-capitalist roots and its authoritarian mutations,
clarify its commitments to liberal democratic institutions, values and public
policies, and work to reassure skittish publics and inspire them with Big
Projects” (Hughes 2001). Yet as the WTA survey shows, 47 per cent of
transhumanists surveyed identify as “left,” so transhumanism and the left would
seem to have already been reunited. Perhaps the pertinent thing to do now is to
search around “inside” the left for useful political bits and pieces that do
not originate from liberal democracy – particularly, Marxism.
2. Technological advancement and revolution
2.1
Marxism is a
staunchly materialist philosophy. It rejects all notions of higher realms,
“spirit,” and immaterial substance. Marx’s philosophy is an appropriation of
the Hegelian dialectical form, but Marx rejected Hegel’s assertion that the
subject of the dialectical movement is abstract spirit or mind that exists
above humans and achieves its true form as Absolute Knowledge. For Marx,
thought must begin with “real premises from which abstraction can only be made
in imagination … [from] real individuals, their activity and the material
conditions under which they live” (Marx 1978, 149). “Life is not determined by
consciousness,” says Marx, “but consciousness by life” (Marx 1978, 155).
Marxism is concerned with the concrete, material details of the lives of
individuals. The material conditions of the relations and means of production
produce the situations and systems in which individuals live and by which their
conceptions of reality are determined. The social problems of private property
and alienation arise from the material reality of the means of production being
owned by the capitalist class. Thus Marx’s projected socialist revolution has
as a necessary condition a change in the material conditions of society.
We can note
two key aspects of revolution for Marx. First, revolution must be eminently practical
and not merely theoretical. Marx writes: “all forms and products of
consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism … only by the practical
overthrow of the actual social relations ... that not criticism, but revolution
is the driving force of history” (Marx 1973, 164). The socialist revolution
will not occur because scathing critiques of capitalism are written, or even by
widespread understanding of the contradictions of capitalism – the actual
relations of production must be overturned by real people. Workers must seize
the means of production. This, however, can only be achieved, Marx says,
through the advancement of the productive forces.
Thus the
second key aspect: that technological advancement is a necessary precondition
for revolution. Marx holds that to achieve a socialist society one of the first
priorities of the revolutionary proletariat must be to “centralise all
instruments of production in the hands of the State … to increase the total of
productive forces as rapidly as possible” (Marx 1978, 490). Through automation
and new technologies, the productive forces should be enhanced so that less and
less actual human labor is required to produce the goods necessary for
satisfying human needs. The idea is that humans need to have easy access to and
abundant quantities of the necessities of life (including time itself) if they
are to seek a way of life beyond mere survival. Marx holds: “slavery cannot be
abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom
cannot be abolished without improved agriculture … people cannot be liberated
as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in
adequate quality and quantity” (Marx 1978, 169). It is thus only in a society
in which machines perform much of the labor required for human survival that
humans can achieve revolutionarily new ways of living.
2.2
Most transhumanists
are also materialists. The 2007 WTA Survey shows that 64 per cent of those
surveyed identify as secular/atheist, while 31 per cent are spread widely
across several subcategories of “Religious or spiritual” identifications and 5
per cent describe their beliefs as “Other.” Even the non-secular transhumanists
agree that changes to the material conditions of the world are instrumental to the
achievement of transhumanist revolution. Indeed, The Mormon Transhumanist
Association (MTA) proclaims that humanity’s power over the material world is
what will lead to a realization of the objects of traditionally spiritual
yearning. The MTA website lists “affirmations” such as:
We
believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable [the spiritual and physical] exaltation [of individuals and their anatomies, as well as their communities and environments] including
realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and the
discovery and creation of worlds
without end.5
It is therefore
safe to say that all transhumanists agree that technological development is
necessary for revolution, although it is true that for transhumanists what
counts as advanced technology is considerably beyond anything imagined by Marx.
Many transhumanists posit the technological Singularity as a necessary
precondition for their sense of revolution, which is the transition to a
posthuman state. On one popular interpretation, the Singularity is the
projected moment in the future when artificial intelligence (AI) reaches
human-level capabilities. Since technology evolves at an exponential rate far
exceeding biological evolution, the theory is that AI will quickly outstrip
human intelligence by several magnitudes and will continue to evolve at
blinding speed. This explosion of intelligence will produce unimaginable change,
advanced technologies, and ideas that will be essential in the creation of the
posthuman. Ray Kurzweil calls the advent of human-level AI an event of
importance equaling the advent of biology itself (2005, 296).
While not
all transhumanists are Singularitarians, it is always the prospects of advanced
technology that make a transhumanist revolution feasible. Goals such as radical
life extension, increased cognitive capacity, and increased well-being are
generally not sought through spiritual or mystical means such as transcendental
meditation, revelation, or divine communion, but through the increasing
sophistication of technology. Thus transhumanists support research programs
and/or business ventures they believe will advance the human ability to revolutionarily
modify the material world. Nick Bostrom emphasizes the narrow locus of transhumanist
change:
As
you advance, the horizon will recede. The transformation is profound, but it
can be as gradual as the growth that made the baby you were into the adult you
think you are. You will not achieve this through any magic trick or hokum, nor
by the power of wishful thinking, nor by semantic acrobatics, meditation,
affirmation, or incantation. And I do not presume to advise you on matters
theological. I urge on you nothing more, nothing less, than reconfigured
physical situation. (Bostrom 2010, 4)
Also evident
here is a call for practical, rather than merely theoretical, revolution in the
transhumanist openness to synthetic augmentation of the biological body and
brain. Nanotechnology, for example, is a commonly cited way of augmenting the
material condition of the body: it has been suggested that digestion, healing,
and synaptic processes will be augmented or taken over by nanobots that will
perform these functions better. Says Bostrom: “The roots of suffering are planted deep in your brain.
Weeding them out and replacing them with nutritious crops of well-being will
require advanced skills and instruments for the cultivation of your neuronal
soil”
(2010, 6). The idea is that practical
modification of the human condition at the bodily level is needed to produce
social change – theorizing is not enough. We may have to download our
consciousnesses to synthetic systems to conquer death. In Bostrom’s words:
“Your body is a deathtrap … You
are lucky to get seven decades of mobility; eight if you be Fortuna’s darling.
That is not sufficient to get started in a serious way, much less to complete
the journey. Maturity of the soul takes longer” (2010, 4).
Ignoring the poeticism of “the soul” here, the notion is that augmented bodies
that are less susceptible to disease, hunger, and decay could give people more
time to concern themselves with their freely chosen life-activities instead of
the vagaries of quotidian existence and the demands imposed by capitalism.
Nanotechnology
also presents the theoretical possibility of assemblers that can manipulate
matter at the molecular and atomic levels to construct anything conceivable by
the laws of physics.6 Such machines would need only a supply of raw
materials to work with, coupled with a power supply and instructions, to
produce all kinds of human needs and wants, ranging from computers to tools to
the very Star Trek-esque possibility of food and
drink. Echoing Marx, transhumanists might say that the abolition of (paid)
slavery is impossible without a superabundance provided by molecular assemblers
or that liberation from the bodily death trap is impossible without strong AI.
2.3
Here is the
first point that Marxists should take note of: the extent of technological
development required for a revolutionary shift in human existence might be much
higher than merely the massive automation of labor. Advanced or theoretical
technologies such as molecular assemblers might be required to wrest production
from the hands of the capitalists. Molecular assemblers present the possibility
of very cheap production of almost any product. It is surely too optimistic to
say that molecular assemblers might lead to the total destruction of the
commodity form, but it seems likely that even a moderately wide spread of such
technology would seriously undermine the capitalist system.7 There
would simply be no need for the industrial production of most products if
families or communities were able to produce those products themselves.
Advanced
technological development not only presents the possibility of the elimination
of dehumanizing labor. It presents more fundamental changes in the material
basis of production – the potential elimination of the feasibility of
large-scale centralized production and potentially the destruction of
exchange-value. Marx understands exchange-value as an abstraction, determined
solely by market forces, tacked onto an object that obscures its actual
qualities or use-value (Marx 1978, 307). With widespread molecular assembling
technology available, the cost of a product would be reduced almost to the cost
of information – the instructions required for the assembler to build that
product – since raw materials would be of minimal cost and the machine would
perform the labor of assembling. Of course, if information remains commodified
then a capitalist system could continue to thrive. However, we are currently
witnessing the difficulties with commodifying information in the Global North’s
“war on piracy.” It seems unlikely that anything short of an openly
totalitarian regime could effectively stamp out information piracy. In short,
transhumanism contains an exhortation to Marxists to keep abreast of the
particulars of new technologies and to engage with them critically, looking for
the unique revolutionary (and counter-revolutionary) potentials they hold.
Transhumanists
should here consider that Marx argues that the centralization of the productive
apparatus by the revolutionary proletariat is of fundamental importance to the
acceleration of productive capacity. This is because, for Marx, capitalist
production divorces or alienates the worker from the activity she engages in,
subjecting her instead to “alien” powers – her employer’s need for profit. Marx
elaborates:
the division of
labour offers us the first example of how … as long as a cleavage exists between the particular
and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily … divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed
to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as
the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular,
exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot
escape. (Marx 1845)
Her labor, which is all the
worker owns, is divorced by capitalism from her interests and goals – she is
alienated from herself and her essential ability of self-determination. Transhumanists,
by leaving technological advancement in the hands of profit-driven capitalist
enterprise, are analogously alienating the human that is to be transcended from
itself. Capitalism enslaves humans to economically profitable, but, in terms of
transhumanist goals, conservative or regressive endeavors. Think of the production
of cheap, disposable dollar-store toys or the infinite cycle of the military-industrial
complex. Centralization of production offers the prospect of stripping away those
endeavors that do not serve to advance the technological apparatus necessary
for transhumanist goals. In short, I suggest that the advance of technology, if
divorced from human self-determination, may not present revolutionary
opportunities, but rather the opposite.
3 Human nature
3.1
For Marx,
humans have a dual nature: both active and passive. He offers this description:
Man is directly a natural being.
As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand
furnished with natural powers of life
– he is an active natural being. These forces exist
in him as tendencies and abilities – as impulses.
On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous, objective being he is a suffering,
conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the
objects of his impulses exist outside him, as objects
independent of him; yet these objects are objects
of his need – essential objects,
indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers.
(Marx 1978, 115)
We can note
three important points in this passage: that humans are “natural,” that humans
are active or determining – that we can change ourselves and the world, and
that humans are also passive or determined by a particular biological nature.
The passive
aspect of human nature refers to the fact that humans do not exist purely of
themselves like omnipotent deities. To exist, humans must fulfill certain needs
that are external to their bodies and are not aspects of their selves. Obvious
examples are food and drink, but as Herbert Marcuse notes: “‘need’ is not be
understood only in the sense of physical neediness: man needs ‘a totality of
human manifestations of life’” (1973, 23). For example, having all one’s
physical needs met, but being completely isolated from all contact with other
humans is not a situation in which human needs are being met. That humans are
needy means that they are in a large sense passive beings. One is necessarily
dependent on the water’s being there before one can drink it – and without it,
death is certain. Thus, Marcuse holds that for Marx: “Distress and neediness
here do not describe individual modes of man’s behavior at all: they are
features of his whole existence” (Marcuse 1973, 21). Marx holds that since
external objects are essential to life, they are actually parts of human life.
The passivity of humans means that their lives are determined to the extent
that they must meet certain needs to continue existing – there are certain
constraints on human life. These limits constitute a fundamental connection to
the natural. But as Marcuse noted above, human needs are not only physical
needs. There are also what might be called social needs which constitute a
fundamental connection between the individual and other individuals in society.
Humans need other humans for non-material needs such as education, friendship,
and culture. Uniquely human (as far as we can tell) qualities, such as culture,
require human beings to be social beings; thus sociality is part of human
nature.
But humans
are also active, self- and world-determining beings. Humans have the ability to
relate to objects “universally,” through labor. Human labor produces objects:
buildings, computers, medicines. All of these creations we regard as created by
“us” – as humans – out of the raw materials found in nature. In producing such
objects we constitute a world in which we see ourselves everywhere. Says Marx:
“Man is a species being, not only because in practice and theory he adopts the
species as his object (his own as well as those of other things), but – also
because he treats himself as the actual, living species: because he treats
himself as a universal and
therefore a free being” (Marx 1978, 75). While animals produce nests and dams
these are only for “immediate physical needs,” while “man produces universally
… man produces even when he is free from immediate need and truly produces in
freedom therefrom” (1978, 76). The endless creation of new objects and
technologies supports Marx’s claim: we do not produce technologies solely for
survival – we produce in an aesthetic mode, as well as a profiteering mode.
Indeed, and this is Marx’s most important claim about human nature, we actually
produce ourselves in other objects. Marx’s proclamation that “man produces man”
does not refer solely to biological reproduction (Marcuse 1973, 25). Humans
produce a world in which every object has some amount of human involvement in
it – the human species becomes universally present.
But what is
the distinctive stamp of humanity, the “essence” that it imparts to objects?
Marx’s sense of essence must be recognized as wholly material. He holds that
what philosophers have called the substance or essence of the human is a
“material result” ... [a] sum of productive forces, capital funds and social
forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence
as something given” (Marx 1973, 165). At any moment how humans conceive of
themselves is a product of the social and material conditions that previous
generations of humans set up. Human “essence” is a historical phenomenon. But
this does not mean that humans lack a true nature. Marx writes: “The animal is immediately identical with its
life-activity. It is its life-activity. Man makes
his life-activity the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has
conscious life-activity … his own life is an object for him” (Marx 1978, 76).
The “essence” of the human shifts over time because it is not a static form. It
is, rather, a self-transformative function or an evolving process. The human is
the animal whose nature is to change its own nature.
We are thus
led to another relevant aspect of Marxian human nature – its open-endedness. Marx
describes the new kind of “wealth” that socialist society will produce as the
“absolute working-out of [human] creative potentialities, with no
presupposition other than the previous historic development, which makes this
totality of development, i.e. the development of all human powers as such, the
end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined yardstick” because he is not
committed to a particular form of human life or metric by which to judge it
(Marx 1973, 488). István Mészáros elaborates, asserting that
never “can there be a point in history at which we could say: ‘now the human
substance has been fully realized.’ For such a fixing would deprive the human
being of his essential attribute: his power of ‘self-mediation’ and ‘self-development’”
(Mészáros 1970, 119). It is impossible to posit an ideal ending to
the saga of human history as that would constrain the freedom of the human by
not allowing her very nature of self-determination to be expressed.
3.2
Transhumanists
generally agree with the natural being of the human but they tend to differ
from Marx on the significance of humanity’s active and passive aspects, emphasizing
the active nature of humans and downplaying the significance of the passive and
needy aspect.8 Most transhumanists agree that humans are natural
beings and are products of natural processes like natural selection. Humans are
distinguished from other animals primarily by their level of complexity
(biological and social) and ability to modify their own ways of living. It is
material aspects that make humans different: our particular brains, bodies and
technological capabilities.
Transhumanists
do not deny the passive and needy aspects of human nature, although they do
question the permanence and desirability of human needs. Nick Bostrom argues
that: “not just any aspect of
present human nature ... is worth preserving. Rather
it is especially those features which contribute to self-development and
self-expression, to certain kinds of relationships, and to the development of
our consciousness and understanding” that
should be preserved (Bostrom 2005). Some human needs may be eliminated entirely
through technology. The nutritive aspect of eating might, for example, be separated
from the gustatory, just as the pleasurable aspect of sex has largely been
separated from its reproductive function through contraceptive technologies.
Nutrients and calories could be supplied through smart drugs, supplements, and
nanotech delivery systems, and nanobots might filter out unwanted aspects of
digested food, making eating a wholly aesthetic experience.
The need for
human social interaction is already being partially met through technological
alternate-realities such as the online worlds Second Life and World of Warcraft
and myriad social networking sites. Such virtual worlds, while currently
primitive, are being increasingly seamlessly integrated with “real reality.”
Courtship, funerals, marriages, and complex economies already occur in virtual
worlds. Kurzweil suggests that we might find living in virtual worlds
preferable once they reach a high level of sophistication (1995, 29). The idea
is that human needs are subject to change and even disappearance as the human
being develops.
It is clear
then that transhumanists generally give precedence to the active aspect of
human nature. More invokes “Perpetual Progress” as a transhumanist tenet that
“captures the way transhumanists challenge traditional assertions that we
should leave human nature fundamentally unchanged in order to conform to ‘God’s
will’ or to what is considered ‘natural’” (More 2009). Neither social
institutions nor moral intuitions should be taken as reasons for not modifying
human nature. Currently alien and even unimaginable forms of existence can all
be stamped with the mark of humanity, or whatever it is that humanity will call
itself in the transhuman and posthuman stages of its existence.
The
important point is that transhumanists consider some aspects of human nature to
be of negative value and seek their elimination. Some transhumanists even cite
an ethical duty to future generations of the species and hold that it is
morally irresponsible not to alleviate suffering and death as much as possible
for these future beings.
But
transhumanists do not seek only the alleviation of perceived lacks. They also
aim for the expansion of human qualities and abilities and new levels of
existence that are currently unavailable to humans. Bostrom (2001) speaks of
new “modes of being” that cannot be imagined by current humans. Kurzweil holds
that technology will allow us to map, extract and upload the patterns of energy
that constitute our consciousnesses. Through this technique we will ultimately
“transcend” the material nature of humanity: “We can ‘go beyond’ the ‘ordinary’
powers of the material world through the power of patterns ... It’s through the
emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend. Since the material stuff of
which we are made turns over quickly, it is the transcendent power of our
patterns that persists” (Kurzweil 2005, 388). Despite this rather mystical
language we can discern a concept of human nature not unlike the Marxian one.
Human nature is not any set of limits, conditions or needs; rather, it is an
evolving process that constantly breaks through perceived limits. Humans can
perceive themselves in all kinds of alien objects and forms – humanity is
“universal” in Marx’s sense.
Kurzweil
describes a transhumanist sense of human essence: “the essence of being human is
not our limitations – although we do have many – it’s our ability to reach
beyond our limitations” (Kurzweil 2005, 311). Mészáros echoes these
sentiments in his reading of Marx: “Nothing is therefore ‘implanted in human
nature.’ Human nature is not something fixed by nature, but, on the contrary, a
‘nature’ which is made by man in his acts of ‘self-transcendence’ as a natural
being” (Mészáros 1970, 170). Humans are nature “coming out of
itself” and transforming itself – a process.
The
transhumanist conception of human nature is also, like the Marxian conception,
an open-ended one. Whether due to the unforeseeable ruptures with the past that
the Singularity will produce, or more modestly, due to human beings’ abysmal
track record at predicting the future, most transhumanists do not commit to
hard and fast images of the future. Speaking as a hypothetical future self,
Bostrom explains: “I can pass you no
blueprint for Utopia, no timetable, no roadmap. All I can give you is my
assurance that there is something here, the potential for a better life” (Bostrom 2010,
7). All that can be done is to fix what we know now is broken (e.g. short life
spans, genetic disease) and envision, rationally, future possibilities.
Despite
frequent (and often understandable) accusations of utopianism, most transhumanists
do not, in fact, aim for a technological heaven of perfection. While Kurzweil’s
far-future projections do sometimes sound something like this, the practical
import of the transhumanist project is about making human life better in ways
that are possible and comprehensible to us now or in the near future. Thus Riccardo
Campa holds that “only when a technology
exists and is experimentally proved should it become part of immediate
transhumanist policies and action programs aimed at obtaining their
implementation and broad accessibility. Until then, it can only be a working
hypothesis for scientists in their laboratories or of science fiction writers
in their literary works” (Campa 2008). Projections should be recognized as being defeasible,
though useful, ways for informing our current actions, which will undoubtedly
lead to at least some unforeseeable consequences.
The
open-ended nature of human development means that qualitatively different forms
of life lie in the future of our species. While the “meaning” of such a
radically different life will no doubt be unlike that of our current lives,
this is no call for alarm, transhumanists argue. It may not be possible to judge
the “meaning” of transhuman or posthuman lives by the values we currently live
by. As Bostrom holds: “Our
own current mode of being … spans but a minute subspace of what is possible or permitted by
the physical constraints of the universe … It is not farfetched to suppose that there
are parts of this larger space that represent extremely valuable ways of
living, relating, feeling, and thinking” (2001, 2).
3.3
We have seen
that for both transhumanism and Marxism openness to redefinitions of the human
are called for by human nature itself. The similarities are significant, but
there is a striking difference between the two: sociality. Most transhumanist
thought tends to place little emphasis on the social nature of the human – and
this is where transhumanists should take a point from Marx. The transformation
of the human seems to be regarded by most transhumanists as a process undergone
by atomistic individuals who each exist in no more than a loose aggregate with
others. Transformation is of the self, by the self, with social considerations tacked
on afterwards – “technological self-transformation” (More 1993). While material
conditions in the form of technological apparatuses are certainly an essential
aspect of transhumanist revolution, the material aspects of social structures
are not usually taken into account beyond assertions that the “freedom” of
liberal democracy and/or capitalism provides optimal productivity. While
Bostrom advocates equal or wide access to the trans and posthuman realm, he
does not touch on the social hierarchy that underlies the current capitalist
system and how it will impinge on such egalitarian access (Bostrom 2001, 7).
Marx pointed out that in a capitalist society (and this applies now more than
ever) individuals can be bestowed with formally equal rights while
simultaneously being differentiated and stratified by the underlying economic
structure (Marx 1978, 34). An impoverished fisherman in Newfoundland and a CEO
of a multinational corporation formally have the same rights as citizens of
Canada, yet it is practically true that the millionaire CEO is able to perform
actions that the fisherman cannot, through the hierarchical powers inherent in
the possession of the means of production.9 Now imagine that the
fisherman and the CEO are both given, through an equal distribution of rights,
radically extended lives. Would this in any way change the social asymmetry
between them? It seems unlikely. The fisherman will still be dependent on
dwindling fisheries for his livelihood while the CEO thrives on the extraction
of surplus value.
Technological
developments occur in a society that has the power to determine to what end
those technologies are used and to what extent their equal distribution
benefits the transhumanist project. While some proposed technologies, such as
molecular assemblers, do present possibilities of undermining or upsetting
social structures, it is also possible that oppressive social structures will
inhibit or corrupt the optimal utilization of new technologies. A recent (and
depressing example) is the internet; the democratic potential of which is
currently under sustained assault by governments and multinational corporations
worldwide.10 There is also the
suppression of the General Motors EV1 electric vehicle by a combination of
corporate and governmental forces.11
Transhumanists
should take note of Marx’s insistence on what is often recognized as the
fundamental contradiction of capitalism, the contradiction between the forces
of production and the social relations of production. Marx writes:
At a certain stage of their development, the material
productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of
production … with the property relations within which they have been at work
hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations
turn into their fetters. (Marx 1978, 4)
The
capitalist system of production’s sole aim is to extract ever greater surplus
value from labor through the increasingly intense exploitation of workers,
sophistication of machinery and lay-offs, but at a certain point, Marx holds,
these techniques begin to turn back against production and inhibit it. A
simple, abstract example: increasing productive efficiency through the use of
the above-mentioned techniques means that more product is produced by less
workers who receive less wages. Therefore there are less and/or poorer
consumers to consume ever more product. With no one to buy up all of the
product and thus produce a profit, the capitalist must develop his extraction
of surplus value through the same techniques that further shrink the pool of
potential consumers, producing a stagnant economy that is cured only when a new
market is found or demand for the product resurfaces. The property relations of
capitalism – the capitalist owns the means of production, while the worker owns
only his labor power – become anti-productive once the productive forces are sufficiently
developed.
This
ponderous method pays little heed to needs of the people in the society it
exists within, operating solely by the capitalist directive of “maximizing
shareholder profit,” to use contemporary terms. We are now well aware of
stratagems such as planned obsolescence (automobiles) and novelty-mongering
(Apple excels at this) that capitalist organizations deploy to keep consumption
going. The question for transhumanists is whether they want revolutionarily
life-changing technologies to be produced and distributed by the clumsy and
brutal hand of capitalist production.
Surely, we
can only expect molecular assembling technology to come to the public, if it
does, from the non-profit sector, because from a capitalist perspective,
selling assemblers would be identical to selling off ownership of the means of
production.
In summary,
transhumanists need to take into account the fact that, while technology does
restructure society, the structures of society – which are social relations
between humans – also influence the deployment of technologies. If the ultimate
goal of transhumanism is the flourishing of the evolving being that is
currently called “human,” current social relations between humans cannot be
bracketed out. The “freedom” to compete and accumulate wealth under capitalism
is not equivalent to the freedom to reach beyond limits for all individuals. From a Marxian angle: “What is to be avoided above all
else is the re-establishing of ‘Society’ as an abstraction vis-à-vis
the individual. The individual is the social being
… Man’s individual life and social life are not different” (Marx 1978, 86).
Society is an association of individuals, not just a neutral space in which technological
development will bring about changes in the human condition. The transformation
of the individual and the transformation of society are inseparable.
4. Nature
4.1
In the
previous section we saw how, for Marx, humans are inseparable from nature due
to their passive and needy nature. We saw also how the human is linked to
nature through the action of human labor, which imparts a stamp of humanity on
natural objects. However, humanity’s active relation to nature is deeper than
this. In the stamping of objects with human essence, humans refashion nature
into a “humanized” nature. For Marx, nature is produced just as the human is. He
proclaims that “trade and industry … this unceasing sensuous labor and creation
... is the basis of the whole sensuous world as it now exists” (Marx 1978,
171). The sensuous world is:
not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining
ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and,
indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the
activity of a whole succession of generations … Even the objects of the
simplest “sensuous certainty” are only given [to man] through social
development, industry and commercial intercourse. (Marx 1978, 170)
Nature is
socially constructed all the way down, Marx argues. All human ways of knowing
and relating to the world are mediated by the relations of production and resultant
social structures. Even sense perceptions do not perceive reality immediately.
Thus György Lukács claims that, for Marx, “nature is a social category” (Lukács
1971, 130). This assertion has garnered much criticism and is often dismissed
as a return to the idealism that Marx repudiated. While there is not space here
to engage in a defense of Lukács’ reading, there are good reasons not to side
with Alfred Schmidt in dismissing it entirely because it absurdly posits
humanity as the “creator of nature” (Schmidt 1971, 70). Nature can be socially
constructed all the way down while not actually being brought into being for
the first time by humans.
For Marx,
nature does have an existence independent of human thought and will. There
exists a “material substratum … which is furnished by Nature without the help
of man” (Marx 1978, 309). Humans, however, never have immediate access to it.
Humanity does not bring nature into existence, but it does create nature as far
as humans can be concerned with it. By depicting nature in this way, Lukács
emphasizes the extent to which we are confronted by false immediacies – not
just in the social realm (the phenomenon of reification under capitalism) – but
in our basic epistemological relations with the world. As one commentator puts
it, Lukács’ radical move is:
to criticize the category of immediacy as such, to
reject (that is) the idea that mediations must always be mediations of some
pre-existing immediacy, and to insist instead that every supposed immediacy can
be shown to be the result of previous constructions, thus dynamizing and
dissolving all static givens into the social processes that make them possible.
(Vogel 1996, 34)
Nature, as
far as we can know it, consists of social mediations that mutate and are
replaced by new mediations over time. “Facts” are one-sided abstractions that
fail to fully capture reality. Lukács calls facts: “nothing but parts, the
aspects of the total process that have been broken off, artificially isolated
and ossified” (Lukács 1971, 184). The total process consists of the “developing
tendencies of history” which “constitute a higher reality than the empirical ‘facts’”
(1971, 181).12 Relying on facts leads to one being “trapped in the
frozen forms of the various stages [of past forms of thought]” (1971, 181).
Nature is inadequately represented in the form of static facts because it is an
evolving heterogeneity of processes, of which humans are an integrated and
contributing part. Thus we can see from another perspective why it is for Marx
that human nature cannot be static: to be static it would have to somehow stand
outside of nature. In other words: “without making man himself dialectical ...
man himself is made into an absolute and he simply puts himself in the place of
those transcendental forces he was supposed to explain, dissolve and
systematically replace” (1971, 187).
Only by
recognizing that nature and the human are developing processes and by taking
control of those processes can humans attain a free existence, Marx argues.
“Freedom,” he holds, “can only consist in socialized man, the associated
producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it
under common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of
Nature” (Marx 1978, 441). In order to achieve revolution, the forces of nature
must not, as with the reified forces of capitalism, be allowed to direct the
course of human life-activities. While the human is part of nature, she is
nature become conscious or “turned back on itself” and is able to manipulate
and control the forces of nature that she is subject to.
4.2
Transhumanists
generally do not deny that there exists a material “substrate” independent of
human mind, but this substrate is taken to act as an ultimate constraint on
future possibilities rather than a true or ideal form that must be preserved or
recovered. Kurzweil, for example, recognizes the substrate as representing the
only real limits on the conversion of the matter of the universe into computing
power for a posthuman super-intelligence (Kurzweil 2005, 139). The material
substrate consists of building blocks out of which objects and theories might
be constructed, but it does not contain natural laws in the Aquinian sense, and
nor does it consist of Edenic ideals.
There is, therefore,
warrant to attribute a socially-mediated conception of nature to most
transhumanists. As discussed above, most transhumanists reject any kind of hard
nature/human dichotomy, and instead regard nature as a complex, reflexive process
from which the human emerges as one reflexive circuit among many others. As a
result, even the most fantastically outlandish modifications to the human or
the world (if feasible) must be regarded as wholly natural. Campa elaborates:
The
advocates of self-directed evolution, more than challenging “nature,”
intend to favor the deployment of its possibilities. The sense and the
direction we refer to are ultimately those at the origin of our species, our
emergence as more sophisticated organisms in comparison with our immediate
predecessors. This is the reason why, if we reason in evolutionary rather than
static terms, transhumanism cannot be considered as “unnatural” …
“Human nature” has always been a product of a self-domestication, combining the
“human” with the “living” and the “technological”, and human nature was
therefore already, to some extent, a self-directed evolution, albeit at an
unconscious level. (Campa 2008)
In this view,
nature is a product of human efforts, and humans are a product of natural
efforts, having evolved from simpler forms of life. The developmental
trajectory of volitional evolution is understood as a continuation of
undirected or blind evolution, or perhaps as an “evolution of evolution.” There
is simply no way to construct the human/nature dichotomy because the human has
been inextricably involved in all human relations to the natural.
Nature, like
the human being, is a process, not a fact. And also like the human, nature is
seen by transhumanists as necessarily an imperfect process that control must be
wrested from. Max More expresses this in “A Letter to Mother Nature”:
Mother Nature, truly we are grateful for what you have made us. No doubt
you did the best you could. However, with all due respect, we must say that you
have in many ways done a poor job with the human constitution … You held out on
us by giving the sharpest senses to other animals. You made us functional only
under narrow environmental conditions … What you have made us is glorious, yet
deeply flawed … We have decided that it is time to amend the human constitution.
(More 1999)
He goes on
to criticize “the tyranny of aging and death” and our enslavement to our genes
(More 1999). The notion is that transhumanist revolution can occur only if the
blind forces of nature are supplanted by consciously-directed human forces.
This implies
a sort of disrespect for what have traditionally been considered facts of
nature. Since transhumanists “reason in evolutionary rather than static terms,” as Campa said above, we can see how the Lukácsian
rejection of static facts of nature is actually a staple of most transhumanist
thought. This is most evident in the derision of death as natural fact.
Kurzweil asks not whether death is necessary, but rather if it is desirable. If
the abolition of death becomes available as a genuine possibility, “we will no
longer need to rationalize death as a primary means of giving meaning to life”
(Kurzweil 2005, 326). The future of the human and the natural realm itself are
currently unknowable, but since our current “facts” are only stages in an
on-going process transhumanists remain open to revisions to (and dismissals of)
the “facts.”
4.3
Transhumanist
thought thus sheds new light on something that Lukács emphasized – the social
mediation of nature – but expresses its continued development. Marxists should
realize that the distinction between natural and reified forces is growing
consistently fuzzier. Marx rails against the reified social forces of
capitalism because they strip away the human’s unique ability to consciously
direct his life-activity. While human action may indeed be constrained by the
laws of “the substratum” it seems increasingly likely that many natural forces
(e.g. death, blind genetic variation) will be revealed to be “reified” forces
in that once they are shown not to be necessary, they will continue to exist
only if humans decide they should. Technological means to overcome such forces
present a materially grounded, non-idealist form of radical social mediation of
nature. Death, regardless of what sort of meaning it imparts to life, will be
revealed as a blind force that impinges upon human nature. Yes, human life will
take on a different “meaning” if death is eliminated, and such an existence is
currently unimaginable, but these are not sufficient grounds for remaining
subject to death’s inevitability. The human is but one stage in a process that potentially
extends to the heat death of the universe.
Transhumanists
can also learn something here. It pertains again to the social nature of the
human, but with respect to the control of natural forces. Marx emphasizes that
it is only in society that humans gain the means to take control of the blind forces
of nature. In a simple sense, this means that a lone human cannot formulate new
technologies and build factories to produce them on her own. But the same idea
should also be understood in a deeper sense. The social mediation of natural
forces needs to be exactly that: social.
Transhumanist
neglect of this principle is evident in Bostrom’s assertion that: “Since technological development is
necessary to realize the transhumanist vision, entrepreneurship, science, and
the engineering spirit are to be promoted” (Bostrom 2001).
The social structure in which these values are to be promoted goes unmentioned.
The history
of Marxist thought suggests that perhaps the whole of society should be
incorporated in the use of advanced technologies to mediate the natural, if that
mediation is to reflect the interests of the society as a whole. Stalin’s
vanguard party is an example of a small group trying to direct the complex
dynamics of a society down to the minute details. The case against vanguardism
for transhumanists is even stronger in light of the threat of existential risks
posed by advanced technologies. Transhumanists should take note and be wary of
leaving the reshaping of the natural realm to a tiny corporate elite. If the
Soviet party found centralized administration of one country’s economy
impossible, and if that endeavor produced some horrific results, it does not
take much speculation to envision the potential for horrors if the control of
nature at a fundamental level is left to an elite motivated primarily by
turning a profit.
Conclusion
It is clear
that transhumanism and Marxism have some fundamental philosophical similarities.
This comparison is admittedly composed of broad strokes and the extent to which
the two fields differ is not here emphasized. I hope, however, to have contributed
generally to the furtherance of a dialogue between the two fields, and
particularly, to the socializing of transhumanism.
Notes
1. See “The Immortality Institute”: http://www.longecity.org/forum/page/index.html.
2. See “Carbon Copies”: http://www.carboncopies.org/.
3. See “The Hedonistic Imperative”: http://www.hedweb.com/.
4. See “The Complicated Politics of Italian Transhumanism: Part 2”: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/print/3733/.
5. See Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation: http://transfigurism.org/pages/about/quick-facts-handout/.
6. See Eric Drexler’s Engines
of Creation (1986) and Nanosystems
(1992).
7.
Of course, nanotechnologies present all kinds of novel dangers (e.g. “grey goo”
scenarios) and I’m not trying to gloss over those here. The dangers are,
however, beyond the scope of this discussion.
8. Not all Marxists emphasize the passive aspect of the
human as much as Marcuse, whom I have cited,
does. György Lukács, for example, places much more emphasize on the active
aspect, as we will see in the section regarding nature.
9. Avoiding punishment for law-breaking and the
restructuring of the legal realm itself through lobbying, for example.
10. In Canada, Bill C-11 is
the government’s most recent step toward
exhaustive internet surveillance, under the guise of policing piracy and child
pornography. The conviction of Peter Sunde, of The Pirate Bay, is another horrifying example of the capitalist system’s intolerance for the free sharing of information:http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/06/aftermath-of-the-pirate-bay-trial-peter-sundes-plea-in-his-own-words/. Edward Snowden’s
case also comes to mind.
11. See Paine, Chris, et. al. Who Killed the Electric Car? Culver City, California: Sony Pictures
Home Entertainment, 2006.
12. What constitutes a tendency for Lukács must go
unexplored here. May it suffice to say that
tendencies are processes of development.
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