>3. When Marx sez that "labor is always social" (Rakesh's words), this is
>true. Early on, we have a division of household labor, a division of tribal
>labor, etc., etc. No Robinson Crusoes, as Rekesh sez (check out Steve
>Hymer's magnificent interpretation of the novel in an old MR).
In the 80s Jim O Connor explored the centrality of the reassertion of the ideology of bourgeois individualism (*Accumulation Crisis*, *The Meaning of Crisis*). I think he was right here as well.
My objection to Jim H and Joe was their starting point: labor privately undertaken socialized ex post facto in and through the market. Marx however meant to critique the juridical or private subject as a reification--we shouldn't jump too quickly to what those subjects do in the market. While the whole system of gift exchange may seem absurd to us ('why don't people just shrug off the obligation to return gifts with other gifts?'), Marx attempted to illuminate as no less absurd the legal right of possession that underlies the substance of solid property that an individual possesses, i.e., the juridical subject.
For example, in Capital I, Marx notes that the owners of commodities "must place themselves in relation to one another as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and alienate his own, except through an act to which both parties consent. The [exchangers] must therefore recognize each other as owners of private property...The content of this juridical relation is itself determined by the economic relation. Here the persons exist for one another merely as representatives, and hence, owners of commodities...[I]t is as bearers of these economic relations that they come into contact with each other." (p.178-9)
Mattick Jr's comment here illuminates not only that juridical subject is not Marx's beginning point (rather it is an absurd social practice that Marx the anthropologist of his own society wanted to investigate to its root) but also that the base-superstructure model breaks down: "Marx's idea is that the modern concept of property, as defining a certain social point of view and rule for behavior, is necessary for capitalist market exchange to take place (since for example collectively owned products cannot be exchanged within the collective). The economic relation is fundametnal in the sense that the exchange relation is involved in the definition of 'property' (since a good's being one's property here implies one's having the right to sell it)...The economic relation depends on the existence of the juridical relation, and the latter clearly involves an element of 'consciousness': at any rate, we are within the 'superstructure' which the 'economic foundation' is supposed to determine. (Social Knowledge, p. 10).
Marx is arguing moreover that the social rules of modern property are so internalized within each individual that people seem to obey it more for its own sake than for anyone else's. What inspired Butler and a host of others was Althusser's typically opaque, yet insightful, formualation of our ideas of individuality implicit in the juridical subject and Society and the Law are twin born: "There are no subjects except by and for their subjection."
See discussion in Richard Harland, Superstructuralism.
Marx was much better served by Lawrence Krader on this matter whom I have quoted previously from his Dialectic of Civil Society:
"In capitalist society, the human individual sells his labor capacity and labor power to the buyer, the worker to the capitalist. Both buyer and seeler stand to each other as persons. Formally speaking, their relation is that of equal and equally free individuals who engage in exchanges on the capitalist marketplace generally. The formality of the transaction calls forth the formal aspect of either side; the individuals who engage in it relate to each other in their formal aspect; that formal aspect has already been invented in society, it is socially useful an dnecessary to the particular transaction. The existence of the juridical persons in this relation is a fiction: the formal equality and formal freedom have no content, yet the form has a function, being necessary for the sale and purchase of the labor power. The quality is no less a fiction, the freedom is a deception. The juridical person who appear in the given relation are the outpward masks of human beings, but that outer form is mere appearance. The formal relations are the juridical reality, a reality which however is but external apparent,; in reality is mere appearance, but in the law there is no other reality.
"Marx further developed this, and in the same language. Labour power can appear as a commodity on the market only so far and because it is offered and sold by its own possessor whose labor power it is. 'In order that hte possessor sell it as a commodity he must be able to dispose of it, thus be the free owner of his labor capacity, of his person. He and the possessor meet on the market, and enter into into a relation to each other, as possessors of commodities who are of equal birth, different only in that one is a buyer, the other seller, hence both are juridically equal persons'... [Marx, Capital I]
"The juridical person is not the human individual, but a part of that individual; again, it is a part played by the individual, the character mask. The outward character is internalized, thereby; the result is nothing but that mask, the hollow husk; the external feature is the content. The materialisation of the relation between human beings is taken as the relations itself, the fiction for the reality. The materialization is then transformed into the humanisation of the relation between between things. At the same tie, the humanisation of the relations between things is transformed into the materialisation between juridical persons, which is what they really are. The labor capacity of the individual human being is made into a commodity, the material relation between persons..."
"The juridical person is the same as the fictional person, or the persona ficta, made by conscious relations between human beings. This person is a pure firgment of the law, in which relations between human beings are reduced and recreated in the formal side, as external relations invented for the purposes of commercial law, penal law, public law. It is the rleation between things that is taken as the relation between human individuals. By this fiction, human beings appear as juridically equal, but their equality, even though it has a useful funnction, has only a formal, apparent validity."
One rather profound, though doubtless flawed, attempt to theorize Marx's critique of the juridical subject was Max Adler's summarized by Kolakowski thusly:
Marx believed "that the content of every individual consciousness was necessarily socialized; language itself, in which that content is expressed, is of course a social inheritance. Kant's theory supplies this idea with an epistemological basis. There is a profound analogy between Kant's refutation of the apparent substantiality of the self, and Marx's critique of commodity fetishism and reject of the 'reified' appearances of social phenomena. The life of a society is nto secondary to that of the individuals composing it, but is a network of relationships comprehending those individuals. Man is a social being in his very essence, and not simply because he associates with others for reasons of instinct or calculation. Just as, in Marx's analysis, the apparent objectivity of commodities resolves itself into social relations, so the appearances of personal consciousness resolve themselves into a general consciousness (das Bewusstein uberhaupt) linking individuals with one another. Whether we know it or not, in communication with others we relate our thought to transcedental consciousness [the slipperiest concept in Adler's conceptual scheme--rb]. A reality which cannot be directly perceived, but is accessible to critical analysis [Mattick, Jr would argue essentially anthropological analysis--rb] is manifested in the relations between human beings, just as value is manifested in exchange value." P. 263-4 of Main Currents of Marxism, vol II.
Well, there is much to think over in past Marxist efforts to think through the ideology of bourgeois individualism, the nature of the juridical subject and the forms of social labor.
Yours, rnb