Like Carrol, I don't have a klew as to what Kelley is saying, that I suspect it is a response to my last post.
At any rate, Marx did not eliminate the human subject from history, but considered that it is transformed, embodied in capital in the form of the capitalist, who is capital personified. This invented person enters into history and *really* does reduce the natural limits of human capacity to the point of least resistance for the purpose of increased profit.
The person thus manufactured is a class-person, a human being as though.
The capitalist as an individual is robbed of his humanity. In what way is
he different from a corporation? The corp. does not know human sentiments
of mercy or charity. If he makes a charitable contribution, it is in order
to gain tax relief, or because it will sit with well with the public, it is
good publicity. The corp. is not imperisonal, it is ap erson, but an inhuan
person. All capitalists, human or not, cause their behavior and their
rlatins to conform to that of the vorporation, which is the ideal type of
capitalist: it is that person toward which the capitalist tends. Thereby
the subjectivity is entirely eliminated from the picture, as Kelley would
have it. After all the human individual is liable to hman weakness of
mercy, charity and pity; it is deposited in the corp, where it is endowed
with will and consciousness. The corporation is inhuman and eliminates the
individual. The form absorbs the content and makes of it something else.
The formal side of the individual is all that is left. If the capitalist
shows that he has human qualities, these are called weakness, and he will
go under. It is best to leave affairs to inhuman corporate persons.
>From Lawrence Krader, The Dialectic of Anthropology, p. 238
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