>joanna bujes:
> > > "My body," he replied, "My body is my capital."
> > >
> > > So, there you go. What untold fortune he was going to squeeze out of his
> > > body, I do not know.
I think it was an extraordinary answer. Here's how the story began:
>A real incident to illustrate. Fifteen years ago, I was selling a
>socialist newpaper in the poorer districts of San Jose. I knocked on the
>door of a run-down basement apartment, a Miller-guzzling male dressed in
>dirty jeans and an undershirt opened the door and allowed me to enter. The
>apartment was of the black-velvet paintings and apple crates variety: it
>bespoke of various kinds of impovrishement. I announced that I was selling
>a socialist paper and asked him if he was interested in buying a copy.
Down and out though he is, he feels he is worth something. But it is not his brain that is worth something (perhaps he's tried marketing that, already, and found it wanting), it's the thing he walks around in that has value. The thing that holds up the dirty blue jeans, the thing that guzzles bad beer. It's quite wonderful, really. I'm in awe of this character.
Whether or not his claim was misplaced, I don't think it is supported by the society he lives in. Sports professionals and prostitutes are allowed and encouraged to think of their bodies as capital, I suppose. But this guy? Considering that he respects capital, thinks it's what has value, it's a bloody triumph! Did you ask him what he meant?
I like very much what you say, below, Gordon. I wish you'd elaborate on Humpty Dumpty.
cheers, Joanna S.
>ya:
> > This is standard-issue libertarian (fundamentalist liberal)
> > dogma on the Net.
>
>LeoCasey at aol.com:
> > May be. But it is also classic John Locke. The only question is why
> those of
> > us running around with our bodies as our only capital accept such tripe.
>
>Locke-thought is popular with many of the lower orders. My
>guess is that they perceive the collectivities to which they
>are assigned as stealing from them and imprisoning them, and
>long for a totally atomized society in which they can at least
>breathe free -- indeed, a desert island -- just as the nascent
>bourgeoisie for whom Locke wrote did a few centuries ago.
>Are they wrong? With families, clans, and the orders of Moose,
>Elk and Odd Fellows pretty much departed, our collectivities
>are corporations, unions, religious organizations, political
>parties and governments, who mostly take as much as they can
>get and give as little as they can get away with. Everyone's
>in business; one can hardly blame the less well-off for trying
>to get with the program.
>
>Of course I would like to convert them all to revolutionary
>anarcho-communism, but that's a bit of a jump. Mostly they
>will be advised, even by "leftists", to _work_within_the_
>_system_, and the more sensitive will naturally become
>nauseated. We should be glad they're not turning to
>fascism (yet).
>
>I mean, what are you all offering that guy in San Jose with
>his dirty jeans, apple crates, and black velvet paintings?
>
>joanna bujes:
> > ...
> > Finally, I'd like to say that anyone who thinks that their body is their
> > capital has absolutely no understanding about what the word capital means.
>
>Well, they may know what it means to them, which could be
>something different from what it means to some other people.
>You probably know what Humpty Dumpty said about that sort of
>thing.
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