On 5/12/2002 5:25 PM, "lbo-talk-digest" <owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com> wrote:
> This emphasis on paying attention to particular subjectivities is
> to me an ideological precipitate of social relations in a
> capitalist society that glorifies individualism and freedom.
...or is it that scientificist sociology is a precipitate of capitalist/statist social organisation?
You and Carl have attributed to me a whole theoretical outlook which I suspect must go hand in hand with the view I expressed, but which I don't share. I don't believe that social relations don't exist (?!?). I don't think that all social relations are voluntaristic in character (!). I don't think behaviour is determined by 'subjectivity' (this makes no sense to me, to tell you the truth.) I don't think that there are no norms. I don't think generalisations are impossible (merely dangerous and often telling us more about the generaliser than about that which is generalised). I have no idea why, other than the existence of postmodernist reactionaries, you would think that I believe any of these things. Oh yes, and you can add a stupid reading of the SPE to the list of accusations...
Anyway, returning to the original problem. Carl had written:
> When we (i.e., most marxists, plus many anarchists, radical democrats,
> probably some other categories) -- when we speak of X being a "social
> relation" we are _NOT_ ordinarily speaking of direct personal relations
> (e.g., between lovers).
And I said this was a very serious shortcoming, ie. because human beings don't usually interact except by means of direct personal relations and structures composed of direct personal relations. (In my view, the greatest forces in the world - class conflict for instance - would be worthless without people to carry them.) It is also extremely hard to talk about social relations without positing classes of persons over whom the relations exert force. You'd hope these classes were the outcome of empirical study, rather than theoretical convenience or laziness. And if relations between people aren't social relations, what on earth are they? To be honest I now suspect this statement of Carl's is actually a much cruder economism than I thought at first.
I could go on and on about this, but I think I will just leave it there as it is fairly trivial and is just soaking up Doug's bandwith.
Thiago
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