> > Would you specify the positive content of the
> > subjectivity you
> > seemingly want to "recover" against its
> > subordination to an
> > objectivity the meaning of which is also unclear to
> > me?
>
> I am not so sure about whether there is some
> pre-existing subjectivity to recover. For all I know,
> there might never have been a case of human beings
> relating to objective reality in a way unmediated by
> fetish relationships. This is why I want to do more
> reading on anthropology and natural history.
I think the problem here is an assumption that the commodity is necessarily a fetish unrelated to objective reality. Humans, as social animals, will always produce much that is driven by social, rather than material, concerns. Art is the ultimate expression of this, but while artworks are clearly fetishes, they have real value. We know this, if for no other reason than that even the earliest societies produced art.
In fact, value is the means by which we can compare incomparables - goods and services that serve material needs versus goods and services that serve social needs. The best society will produce the most value - social and material.
> > For example,
> > the subjectivity for which Alain Badiou militates
> > may well be very
> > different in form and content than the subjectivity
> > you have in mind?
>
> I don't know, having not read Badiou. And as I wrote
> above, I'm not sure if there is some pre-existing,
> untainted subjectivity that exists to be reclaimed.
> Robert Kurz, in his anti-Enlightenment turn of the
> past four years, suggests that even the "form" subject
> is specific, or at least simultaneous, to the rise of
> capitalism. That is suggestive, but it might also be
> an overstatement, and until I make the time to read
> Kant and Hegel, not one I would want to offer an
> authoritative statement about one way or the other.
The underlying *capitalist* propoganda is that wage-slavery is simply an inevitable consequence of free and fair trade. Clearly this is nonsense. Don't we have to be suspiciouf of any argument which fundamentally recapitulates this construct?
boddi