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>No need to apologize, I am a self asserted communist. >Honestly, and as well intentioned as that particular view of >capitalism is, I don't believe in the existence of two types >of capitalism. Sure capitalism goes through stages of growth >and accumulation but the realization of monopoly capital is a >logical point of progression that the system has arrived at. >Its all a product of competition and ceaseless growth as a >result of the latter. Now we all know that in a finite world >ceaseless growth is not possible and sooner or later, whether >one likes capitalism or not, it must collapse. I will stop >here because this could be a several hundred page doctoral >thesis if I really went into depth with it.
It probably will collapse, but are the signs yet present? I don’t subscribe to Marx’s notion that it will or should ultimately be replaced with communism. In general quotations are trite but I do like this one from Animal Farm;
‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’
>I have one simple question. >Can you imagine language developed outside of material >existence? In other words, without a physical world for our >senses to experience, is there any possibility of language? >Marx used a useful example to convey this. He stated that the >word "fruit" is an abstract concept to describe the world of >oranges, apples, bananas, etc. There is nothing physical about >the word "fruit" itself. One cannot touch, smell, or taste >"fruit" in the abstract sense, on can only perform these >actions on the particular things that the word "fruit" >describes. Thus without, first, the existence of things we >call apples, oranges, and bananas, there is no need for the >linguistic invention of the word "fruit". Thus, we first >experience the material world and then invent language to >describe what our senses have experienced. The same goes for >your example of a diamond. Without the existence of a shiny >stone (which themselves are words used to describe something >that exists materially before we even have the language to >describe it) we cannot have the word, the concept, "diamond" >in the first place.
I anticipated that somebody might present this argument, which is why I was careful to write ‘CONNOTED meaning’ (in Barthes’s sense of the word).
Allow me to present a simple rebuttal to your question. I agree that in its primary form language cannot predate the physical world that it denotes, as per Marx’s elaboration of fruit. Similarly, language is not the sole determinant on the development of a child’s understanding of its environment. Babies conduct physical reality tests. A baby will touch a hot radiator, get burnt and will subsequently not touch it again. There is no need for language to determine this sense of the reality of radiators. However, this is a definition of reality in a primitive and crude sense. Language does not define our full sense of reality (the process of identifying ourselves with the outside world) on the primary (denoted) level but it does on the secondary (connoted) level. As with the diamond, a rapper (for example) does not want it because it is a shiny stone. He wants it because of the status of the diamond, which is imported by its secondary level of signification. All of the secondary meanings are myths (I’m sorry if I keep re-inventing the wheel Nettrice) that we internalise in our understanding of and identification with the physical world.
This will develop this argument but it will post it under Tohunga's comment.
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