Defining man as an ensemble of social relations blocks comparison across eras

Evidence

The question is still the same: what is man? what is human nature? If man is defined as an individual, psychologically and speculatively, these problems of progress and becoming are insoluble or remain purely verbal. But if man is conceived as the ensemble of social relations, it then appears that every comparison between men, over time, is impossible, because one is dealing with different, if not heterogenous, objects. Moreover, since man is also the ensemble of his conditions of life, one can provide a quantitative measurement of the difference between past and present, since one can measure the extent to which man dominates nature and chance. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1284

But if man is conceived as the ensemble of social relations, it then appears that every comparison between men, over time, is impossible, because one is dealing with different, if not heterogenous, objects. Moreover, since man is also the ensemble of his conditions of life, one can provide a quantitative measurement of the difference between past and present, since one can measure the extent to which man dominates nature and chance. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1284

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional move: man as ‘ensemble of social relations’ — a cornerstone of Gramsci’s vocabulary the reader needs for the theory toolkit.
• XREF: ‘Ensemble of social relations’ is the pivot toward historicist, socially-constituted selfhood that later colonial-psychology and racialized-selfhood readings build on.
• QUESTION: The paragraph cuts off mid-thought about quantitative measurement of man as ensemble of conditions — worth tracing where this leads.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1284