Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 09:56:28 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Privacy and Marxism


In message <v03102803b0f98de63cc0-AT-[128.146.43.57]>, Yoshie Furuhashi
<Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu> writes
>James wrote:
>>Individual people
>>can be subjects, or not (if somebody is certified insane for eg, as L
>>Althusser found to his cost).
>
>Sometimes individuals can be unevenly recognized as subjects, as is the
>case with minors.

Depite moves in the direction of children's rights most legislation is
careful not to recognise minors as subjects who can articulate their own
interests, but occasionally interjects the courts as a better judge of
the child's interests than the parents. In sum the law imposes a duty of
protection on adults in regard of children, interprets children's
interests, but does not recognise children as viable advocates of their
own interests.

The demarcation between children and adults is tending to break down in
the law, but for wholly reactionary reasons in my view - what I mean is
that as there is greater ambiguity about whether it is a good thing for
adults to have rights and be independent, the differences between adults
do not seem so great in the eyes of the courts.
 

> Contmporary scholarship tends to reverse the procedure, arguing
>>that the formalisation of right in law is prior to the exitence of the
>>subject and constitutive of it.
>
>You mean the Foucauldian scholarship?

Yes.
>
>What about the case of the fetus in particular? It seems that it is given
>legal protection--if not "rights" per se--even if it is not a subject
>according to your or my definition of subjecthood, and the fetus sometimes
>trumps the rights of an actually existing legal subject.

In the rhetorical language of anti-abortion campaigners, yes, but the
law is more cautious in the extension of legal personhood to the fetus.
In fact it generally will not even recognise a fetus as having
interests. Rather what it does is impose an obligation upon the mother,
as in Britain's Infant Life Preservation Act. (The law is cautious,
because recognising rights or even interests in the fetus opens the way
for all kinds of litigation on behalf of fetuses)

>What would a serious treatment of subjectivity from a marxist point of view
>look like? I am very interested in this question, but I want to hear from
>you (and others) first.

That's a big question. I think the difficulty with it is that the
bourgeois attitude to subjectivity is flawed in that it rests on the
mutual alienation of the subjects. However, the Marxist and sociological
tradition (I'm thinking of Althusserians, but also more broadly of
Stalinists and Social Democrats) tends to react by chucking out the
subject altogether, or by treating the subject as mere effect of the
discourse/ideology/market. On the other hand, I read Marx in his
discussion of the intervention of working class political economy in
Capital, or on the Paris Commune, as defending a new principle of
subjectivity that is _greater_ that the bourgeois one.

>
>Yes, women are oppressed, but it seems that not all of our democratic
>rights are as stridently attacked as our right to reproductive choices.
>
Agreed. But the isolation of reproductive choices is the mechanism
through which women as a distinct group are withheld wider rights. So
equal employment rights could be withheld on the basis of the likelihood
of falling pregnant and raising a family - etc.

>Moreover, one might ask if capital ever "promised" gender equality in the
>sphere of social reproduction.

No. But it did promise equality at the political level, and in so far as
gender indequality is the barrier to equality then it is contradictory
to equality. The Saint-Simonian feminist Clair Demar derived the demand
for state-funded child care entirely from the prospect of political
equality. 

>Extension, yes, but I think reconceptualization through theory and practice
>would be necessary as well. (I hasten to add that extension can't be always
>a good thing, as both of us oppose the extension of rights to the fetus.)
>

My argument though is that the extension of the 'rights of the fetus' is
entirely fictitious and unsustainable, even from a classically liberal
position (because liberal theory never identified the person with the
natural being, despite the legend - see TH Green, Priniples of POlitical
Obligation, or Hegel, Philosophy of Right).

>I don't know much about the British debate. Would you care to analyze it in
>more detail?
>
I don't know about analyse it, but the issue in the proposal of a
privacy law is this, after several examples of press intrusion into the
lives of the rich and famous, support for a privacy law is growing inthe
UK. The general view amongst the British press is that this is an
intrusion into the scrutiny of public figures. However, some have broken
from this consensus, notably the Guardian newspaper that has proposed a
deal with the govt over the country's onerous libel laws, saying that if
these were curbed, the Guardian might support a privacy bill.

In essence the demand for privacy is specific to the rich and powerful,
who are most often the target of press coverage. Lord Spencer, brother
of the late Princess Diana, is a proponent of privacy law, and recently
appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that the
Britihs govt should have drafeted one to prevent the press from
reporting his marital difficulties. Spencer went on to trick his wife
into divoircing in South Africa, where he knew he would get a more
favourable settlement.


>Another question. Could you show me evidence that the idea of autonomy came
>earlier than that of privacy, legally or philosophically?

In the name of 'Sovereignty' yes. The idea of sovereignty has its
origins in feudal lordship, but by extension became the principle of the
rights-bearing subject. The first extension of sovereignty was in the
sphere of international relations. To put it more clearly, the entire
idea of right, as enshrined in the French or US constituions is premised
on the idea of autonomy (on the understanding that domination is
transferred from the political to the economic sphere). Privacy, by
contrast is a more modern coinage.

Fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield


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