You want a certain kind of conversation, but Jeffrey and I were working something through. I wasn't interested in (yet) offering a Marxist critique of the idea of civil society. I'd been discussing how values and meaning are made, recreated, criticized, and changed --according to some kinds of social theory. There's a k-wattage limit on posts here. I was discussing how civil society was discovered, among other things.
Furthermore, as I continue this, I will explain how civil society was killed by Hume, then Kant, and how Hegel and MArx went on to try to resuscitate it in order to kill it in a different way, Hegel by collapsing it in to the state, MArx by claiming that we'd transcend both state and civil society with socialism/communism.
In turn, I'll note that since Kant relegated ethics and morality to the private sphere, many of the so-called problems we're dealing with today are so, in part, due to Kant's formulation. This is not so simple as the claim: because we have no public shared meaning, people turn to religion (or anything else for that matter). Rather, it helps explain, among other things, why no socialism in the u.s. and why, as we do try to pursue it, it's a matter of social movements and not political parties, as it is in Europe. Not just because of Kant, mind you, but... more on that later.
Have other things to do at the moment, so I'll leave you with the, where Marx show that the relations between civil society and the polity:
"Family and civil society are the premises of the state; they are the genuinely active elements, but in speculative philosophy things are inverted. When the idea is made the subject, however, the real subjects, namely, civil society, family, 'circumstance, caprice, etc.,' become unreal objective elements of the idea with a changed significance." 1
and
"Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his EVERYDAY LIFE (emphasis added), in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his 'forces propres' as social forces, and consequently no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished." 2
1 Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law" in _Collected Works_, p 8. 2 On the Jewish Question in _Collected Works_ p, 153.
At 05:34 PM 6/20/2005, Carrol Cox wrote:
>snitsnat wrote:
> >
> > At 06:45 PM 6/17/2005, Carrol Cox wrote:
> > > Values are not inherent
> > >in the nature of things, i.e., no metaphysical status _and_ no physical
> > >status (as do atoms). They are social relations. But that does not make
> > >them any less binding.
> >
> > do you honestly think that sociologists think they are anything but social
> > relations. do you think a woman who has repeatedly talked about how
> > property is a set of set relations that define for us how to act and treat
> > people, things, and ideas is someone who holds a theory that values exist
> > "out there" free of society.
> >
> > fuckmedead dead dead dead!
> >
> > now, where you'll get pissed is how the social interaction rituals which
> > shape this social relation we call property is _thoroughly_ fucking laden
> > with values.
>
>We seem to need a distinction that had never occurred to me before:
>between social relations as they are conceived in my post and PERSONAL
>relations, labelled "social relations," in your post. Property is indeed
>a social relation, but you don't even touch on what that relation is;
>you merely describe the culture which legitimizes that relation. In
>fact, I think the habits and reactions you go on to describe would
>probably exist even in a social order in which property (by which, of
>course, I mean means of production) had been abolished.
>
>Carrol
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