Carrol Cox wrote:
> P.S. Yoshie & I had a long debate with Catherine
> Driscoll on this,focused on Austen's Mansfield Park.
> We argued that dependence wascrucial to healthy
> human relations, she argued that it was always
> bad.The debate was lengthy and disorganized. I would
> like to have it again some day in a more sedate and
> careful form.
This is getting at the *core* of the fetish character of the commodity.
Modern society is highly interconnected, and the material reproduction of society is comprised of a vast web of mutual dependencies.
But the atomization of individuals and productive units through the process of commodity exchange reinforces the notion that we are complete, unified individuals, interacting with other individuals on a contractual basis.
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