(i) The Nature of Men as Social Producers

All theories of society and history must operate with some conception of “human nature for they are theories which seek to explain what happens in all societies and what determines the way people behave. It is sometimes said that Marxists do not believe in human nature but this is only true in the sense that we reject any conception of a static or unchanging “human nature," for we know that people's ideas, behavior and institutions are continually changing — that human nature can be found in many different forms. But the question still needs to be posed: what is it about men and their society which makes this change both possible and necessary?

It is the fact that human beings have to produce all the things which they need in order to survive: they cannot simply “live off nature in the way animals do. The animal, as Engels notes,

merely uses his environment and brings about changes in it simply by his presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals[1]

and it is only in terms of such a distinction that we can understand man's historical “nature” as a being who produces.

But do not some animals, particularly the higher primates like apes and chimpanzees, use their hands to build nests, grasp sticks and even hurl stones at their enemies? The truth is that human beings, even at the most primitive technical stage of their development, can accomplish something which no ape has ever been seen to do and that is to make tools with which to produce and to use their tools to alter the world around them in a conscious and deliberate way. Mankind, Engels was to say,

must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.;[2]

and this need to produce is described by Marx and Engels as

a fundamental condition of all history, which, today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life. [3]

But why should this approach to history be called “materialist” in character? It is materialist

(a) because the activity of production itself brings people into direct and continuing contact with the forces of nature (or the world of matter); and

(b) because production is necessary to human survival whether people are aware of this fact or not. Hence Marx often refers to production as a “material” process which people enter into “independent of their will."[4] With the development of classes in society so that a privileged few do the “thinking” and an exploited majority have to create the wealth, the materialist basis to human existence is obscured by the philosophers and priests, etc. rather in the way that many white people in South Africa don't think very much about the importance of production and what it involves because they have black servants and employees who do the real work for them! Nevertheless material production is the most important fact of human life and it explains why

(c) men can only be understood as individuals who survive in a society. Production is essentially a collective activity in which people have to work together so that when we speak about social production, we necessarily refer to the relationships which people enter into when they produce. Even the “Robinson Crusoes” and the hermits of the world can only live in isolation because they have first acquired the ability to think, speak and produce by working in society.

But in order to explain how the nature of men as social producers alters the way they act in society, we need to look more closely at the two aspects which constitute the production process: