Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 08:01:31 +0100 (MET)
From: bwanika <h961138-AT-stud.hoe.se>
Subject: Re: BHA: reply to bwanika's post


At 12:13 16/11/96 -0800, you wrote:
>Bwanika
>
>I think we can speak of the domains of the real, the actual and the
>empirical in regards to social life, although this is complicated
>by the fact that social life, in so far as it exists in virtue of
>human agency, always has its source in someone's experience.  But
>it cannot be reduced to experience.  In my paper on the legal
>doctrine of "consideration" recently posted to the archives I try
>to identify a mechanism of legal relations underlying legal events
>which are experienced differently by different participants in the
>legal system.  I think the domains of mechanism, event and
>experience obtain generally for social relations.
>Think of the dynamic within a family, for example.
>
>You say everything in contemporary society depends on a monetary
>base, but I think money itself must be explained, as marx explains
>it, as a consequence of underlying social relations.  Is your
>meaning different here?
>

I thought back into the long history of use of money. Money has been used in
so many different ways for so long a time to date. It is only in our modern
world, everything even law is quasily determined by money, since our own
experiences and actuality is basically monetary driven.
In the legal systems today, as we know, always the starting point to
understand a case will be to seek for a " motive ". Is motive equivalent to
mechanism  ?

 As I said in my posting here, and once again drawing from the help of the
domains, the identification of mechanisms in the legal circles, will depend
on  one or some of the domains :  Let us say a court of law has an
experience of repeated observation of 30 years of burglary or vandalism by a
certain gang of youth.
What makes this kind of procedure, very difficult to link to society=92s way
of being, is the fact that social relations in a society we live in today,
are basically determined by social classes. Which classes are causative/
determined by the monetary object, independent of the social object. Yet,
society as  we know it, is transient.
For instance, if rap music can result into criminality, that does not imply
that poetry does and that children coming from monetary well disposed
families will never listen to rap music and poetry.  That is how an
experience and the nature of actuality, in our social realities, make legal
mechanism elude the domain of the real, in preference for the domain of the
empirical.  

Now, if we think of contracts, should we conclude that contracts are made
depending on reality or depending on the domain of the actual, the empirical
and who set the rules in this regard ? I do believe, the domain of the event
is a better starting point. Once again, I think we should considered such
facts by help of overlapping, legal mechanisms(state machinery), society
(passive onlookers), not only as autonomous objects, in order to precipitate
the underlying social structures. For example,  social experiences are very
important, while the actual and the empirical can help in discovering the
social event and other related patterns.

Imagine, a boy from a ghetto stealing sweets from a nearby shop and another
boy from a well off family doing the same thing ! Remember even if we apply
the domain of the empirical, let us say, we have observed several children
>from these two groups, it is does not always imply that a boy from a well
off family will never steal sweets. Sweets are sweets, for children might
never get enough of sweets. From medical empirical observations and
experience: might suggest sweets are not good for children. How do we
explain, the other boy from a well off family  stealing sweets ? Assuming
sweets stealing is rampant among ghetto children ?
What will be the legal mechanism of establishing the facts here ? The domain
of the actual, in relation to the parents experience, or that of the state
machinery (empirical) of the lawyers and prosecutor , who in fact are merely
doing a job for survival ? 

 

>I'm also not clear on your distinction between the state machinery
>and society.  Legal relations, I think, play a particular role in
>social reproduction and call into being (more emergence) the
>machinery of state power. 

State machinery from mere observations are far different from society even
if state machinery are said to =94 act " for society. This can be seen in
urban American , the conflict between the state machinery (administrative)
and the communities.
Legal relationships, emerge out of repeated social behaviours, and social
reproduction /production is basically correlated to social problematicities.
Therefore, I think you have it wrong to allow, legal relations produce
social realities. That is like methodology producing the ontology, i.e.
economics producing  social acts instead of social acts producing economic acts.
( This is my struggle with the whole idea of capitalism.)

In that way, if we invert the above assertion, society is not only a mere
onlooker but a participant.  Just imagine, that there is a problem within a
given community who do you think the individuals within that society will
first blame , is it the inefficient police, communal administration,
themselves or worsening economic relations ? And who will the police, the
communal administration blame?
I have read some papers about cost benefit analysis written by students in
economics . The majority of these papers covered things like; prisons and
prisoners, violence, immigrants  and related cost to society.
I thought I could read about things like communal fish ponds, flower
gardens, and shared communal responsibility to smooth out and reduce social
cost. But that was only my experiences and perceptions, which is far to
different of the social realities of these economics students.

With the help of the above arguments, I have observed communities in
advanced society, are more dependant on the legal mechanism  i.e. who clean
the flower garden within a residential area. Even if there is a social
structure to do exactly that, cleaning of the flower garden , let us garden
cleaning can be done by vandalising youth, who bye the way buy  flowers
every Friday evening for their girlfriends: those flower garden will never
be their responsibility. 
Now, in that regard there is a distinctiveness among society, state, and the
economic objects. Whereby as in the above example of flowers, boys and their
girlfriends, the state machinery the legal mechanism inclusive, reproduces,
these boys activities through the economic object  instead of society doing
the same. This is a reversed social pattern and a categorical mistake in
legal mechanism. I hope you have experinces of society doing such activities
but only to be prosecuted in the courts of laws.
Now imagine if one of the boys is to charged with a criminal offence i.e.
vandalising in the city centre to steal a flowers for his girlfriend ? Where
do we start ? 
So, linking this example to the subject of study,  I can as well show that
the state machinery act as if, it is the ontological social base, stating
the rules and regulation, and functionary * imposing *, these rules and
regulation on society.  That is where terrible mistakes in the legal
mechanism starts, since what is real and actual should be mediated to
society through that very legal mechanism and by help of the economic
object. Statisation  That=92s pacifying human ability to perceive and act. I
think those domains have much to help in this very regard. The sole reason
why some social problems don=92t go away, despite the fact that the legal
establishment is well elaborated. Have you thought about English football
hooliganism and the Kenyan Masai ?

bwanika. =D6rebro.
 
look at BR reclaiming reality pg. 15- 18 part 4

>
>Nor is it plain that capitalist society only compromises the sense
>of agency and responsibility.  I think the capital relation tends
>to do that, but this exists in tension with the commodity relation,
>which is necessarily one of its forms, and the commodity relation
>depends on, and generates for its reproduction, a sense of
>individual agency and responsibility.  There is much that is
>positive in this aspect of market society.  What is not positive is
>on the one hand the atomisation that necessarily goes with it and
>on the other hand the obliteration of any sense of communal or
>shared agency and responsibility as in the example you imagine of
>a self-sufficient community living harmoniously.
>

>Howard
>
>
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