Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 09:50:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Privacy and Marxism



Privacy is discussed variously; Barrington Moore, a left but not Marxist
social theorist and hisrorian has a good book on it. But it's a large
concept with a lot in it. It's not restricted to the notion that
celebrities have a right not to be photogrpahed in their initimate
moments, as James seems to suggest. 

I was amused to see James wax Foucauldian:

> The autonomous individual of bourgeois political and economic theory is
> indeed an historical product. Earlier epochs had a far less defined
> sense of the individual (The point made by Vico, when he suggests that
> 'Homer' was not one individuls, but the generic name of the blind
> singer, embracing scores of human individuals, also subject of the film
> Return of Martin Guerre).

But this may be partly true.

The following also seems right:

> However, all that being said, I would say that moral autonomy, however
> circumscribed, is a tremendous gain in human civilisation, that should
> not be tossed away lightly. In particular I think it is a mistake to say
> that because moral autonomy doed not transcend the relations of
> capitalism, that it should be taken lightly: My point would be that
> people who are not prepared to fight for their rights are not likely to
> make a revolution.

Although I would say that moral autonomy is not wholly circumstribed by
capitalism, at least to the extent that we can act from alternative values.

> This, I think, is why the question of rights is so important to
> Marxists. Rights are the legal-political form of the moral subject.

That's just legal rights. We can speak of moral rights as well.

 You
> cannot be for rights without being for the autonomous subject. (It
> shoudl be said that subjects are not always individual, in the 'Right of
> self-determination' the subject is a people).
> 
> Privacy is a more contemporary coinage (it features for example in the
> ECHR). At the moment in Britain the Right to Privacy is claimed by the
> rich and famous (Like Earl Spencer) to prevent public scrutiny of their
> lives. I take it to be a vulgarisation of the more classical concpt of
> autonomy.




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