Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 10:45:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Essentialism, Morality & Communism


If you are seriously interested in the development of individual identities
and differences, perhaps you would be better off analyzing what you see
going on around you than just considering these issues in the abstract, as
if we knew nothing about human behavior except hypothetically.  Take a look
at both the instances in which individual characteristics seem to have
flowered and at those who have been over-molded by the commonality imposed
upon them by oppressive structures (as well as the genuine human content
persisting even under such circumstances), and then you maybe will have
something more specific to talk about.  I'll try to think of some good
examples myself.  This is actually an issue I think about a lot, as I find
criminal the actual limitations effectively placed upon individual
development.  Oscar Wilde was right about socialism.  If only socialism
existed and it could progress to the point of dissolving collectivity
entirely....



At 01:35 PM 2/8/98 +1100, Rob Schaap wrote:
>G'day Yoshie,
>
>>Well, there will be many things that human beings under communism can
>>strive for. Beauty. Love. Friendship. Knowledge. Happiness....
>> ...
>>Lots to do!
>
>I guess I was saying there will always be lots to do.  Boddhi's heuristic
>reduction of people to their neurons (excuse innocent misrepresentation,
>Boddhi) makes the point (among others) that we'll never long be at one (and
>perhaps communism is a social world where this difference is given due
>expression?), either with others or within ourselves.
>
>I hope I do not infuriate Mark when I put Stalinism and Howardism
>(Clintonism, Shipleyism or Blairism to you lot) in the same category
>according to the quote with which Saul finishes his *The Unconscious
>Civilisation*: 'The virtue of uncertainty is not a comfortable idea, but
>then a citizen-based democracy is built upon participation, which is the
>very expression of permanent discomfort.  The corporatist system depends
>upon the citizen's desire for inner comfort.  Equilibrium is dependent upon
>our recognition of reality, which is the acceptance of permanent psychic
>discomfort.  And the acceptance of psychic discomfort is the acceptance of
>consciousness.'
>
>People unite as one in a revolutionary moment (as Hitler noted, you can
>unite people against something a lot more easily than for something), but
>remove that against which we are uniting, and we are differently
>constituted and constituting subjects again.  Yeah, there'll be lots to do
>...
>
>>>And that essential human is pretty damned close to Kant's picture of
>>>him/her - a being in need of freedom right up to the logical limit imposed
>>>by the essential fact that s/he is *a social being*.  Such freedom need
>>>only observe the law that all others are equally subjects, to be treated as
>>>ends in themselves.
>>
>>What does it mean to treat others as ends in themselves? I can see what it
>>would *not* mean, but as a positive prescription, the statement seems
>>empty. One of the problem of ethics (or what ethics has been up to the
>>present), as I see it, is its emptiness and impotence.
>
>>From where I sit (ie. a position of fascination with, and almost complete
>ignorance of, moral philosophy, combined with a decisive affection for the
>young Marx's writings), I feel it is important *not* to give too much
>positive content.  Given a Marxian ontology (something like reality is
>human experience is relations), I gotta go along with your post to Justin
>re 'social relations and what we do with 'em'.
>
>'Others as ends in themselves' is something one applies in, and according
>to the scope available in, the material/social moment or it is nothing at
>all.
>
>It's amazing how potent a social critique one can, and indeed must,
>construct out of just this one Kantian sentence, isn't it?  And that's what
>Marx is, isn't it?  More than anything else, a critic of contemporary
>society - a moral philosopher only so far as he needs to be to point to
>what's hiding our nature from us (and he need not, and probably should not,
>say much about what that essential nature might be for this purpose -
>although I posted to M-I last year a set of assumptions I thought Marx had
>to be making).
>
>Morals are at once what drives the critique (we are not free to be whoever
>we are because our social organisation does not privilege intersubjectivity
>as our way of being [the 1844 manuscripts as I, a Habermas fan, read 'em])
>and what stops us being free (contemporary moral culture is imposed to hide
>and perpetuate our failure to extend the status of subject to each other
>and even to ourselves [CM and GI read through the same eyes]).
>
>I have none of the canon with me just now, so this may be the
>unsubstantiated bollocks it seems ...
>
>>About the essential human, I would rather keep this category relatively
>>open. I think what is human can only be elaborated and illuminated through
>>praxis, in that it is profoundly social and keeps changing.
>
>We're essentially social beings and praxis is essentially social.  I think
>you're right here.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.
>
>
>************************************************************************
>
>Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.
>
>Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
>Fax:    02-6201 5119
>
>************************************************************************
>
>'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
>lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)
>
>"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
>into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
>the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
>the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)
>
>************************************************************************
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>



     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---