--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Lionel Mandrake wrote:
>
> > Our culture isn't hyperindividualist. It's
> atomized.
> > There's a difference. Modern capitalism is
> largely
> > fueled by individuals' sense of inadequacy in
> relation
> > to others and faith in work and consumption as
> means
> > to resolving this inadequacy. People with a
> strong,
> > independent sense of self and a coherent,
> relatively
> > infle
xible set of ethics, predicated for the most
> part
> > on empathy, are less easily manipulated into
> jumping
> > through capitalism's hoops.
> >
>
> No, capitalism needs and helps generate people with
> an "independent sense of self"! How could
> businesses
> survive if no one took initiative, engaged in
> creative thinking, had personal motivation to
> develop
> skills and knowledge, and so on?
You're not talking about individualism here. You're talking about enterprise. Complete conformists are capable of creative thinking, motivation and skills development.
And second, modern capitalism requires very little of this. In the average workplace, it seems to me most workers do a little tiny piece of the whole without invention, initiative or even a tremendous amount of skill. Attempts to do things better or more creatively are generally thwarted in deference to getting product out the door.
> to draw a clear distinction between the "atomized"
> individual of capitalism and a person with a truly
> "independent sense of self", but it's just not
> there:
> capitalism needs individuals in the sense you
> celebrate.
>
> This is a common theme--capitalism is an imposition
> upon
> the solitary individual, and solitary individuals
> with
> "inflexible" morals obstruct the capitalist social
> order.
> I like Foucault on this: social relations produce
> the
> types of people who are needed by a given social
> order.
> This includes the modern concept of the individual
> that is often valorized in our society. Thus our
> Emersonian odes to self-reliance and personal ethics
> are themselves social products.
Is the implication here that if a concept emerges it's because capitalism requires it and, if so, it must be entirely free of any subversive contradictions?
That would also apply to Foucault's conception of humans as "the product of a constellation of social relations" which to the arguable extent that trends among leftist intellectuals impact/impede social progress, has probably been pretty useful to capitalism in its own right.
I love the paradox
> here:
> people celebrate individuality because they live in
> a society that requires it, and then they treat
> their
> own beliefs and values as the result of individual
> reflection!
just as earnestly
This doesn't look like a paradox to me.
> The individual--even an independent person with
> empathy!--
> is a product of a constellation of social relations.
Agreed, but I don't see the relevance. I will say that I am not among those who think that humans and society can be just anything.
>
> Miles
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