Shane Mage: The contradiction--and it is a humungous one--is between Thatcher's statement that "society does not exist" and her vicious upholding of laws condemning victimless crimes (crimes incapable of giving rise to a tort action in civil law) such as incest, pornography, drug use, prostitution, blasphemy, and so on as "crimes against society." Such laws are all expressions of the totalitarian view of "society" (identified with the political institutions of the ruling class) as a super-individual endowed with absolute sovereign power over its "members." Thatcher was disingenuously portraying that notion of "society" as being held by the "Left" whereas in practice she was among its most eager proponents.
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This is quite good. The "dot-like existence of the mere free worker" gets its ultimate emphasis in the totalitarian state. In a way Thatcher was consistent: If you see each person as an isolated -- abstract -- atom, then 'society' has to be created by force. This is what Marine boot camp is designed to do. Each recruit comes from nowhere as it were, no history, no social relations, and these "individuals" are then molded into parts of a machine. That isn't quite rightBut certainly each recruit has to reject "self-interest" -- as does each worker in a factory during work hours. All the clichés, the slogans, the moral injunctions & children's tales of capitalist society start with this isolated entity coming from nowhere and by act of will subordinating him/herself to a greater 'being,' the firm or the nation. "Ask not what America can do for you; ask what you can do for America." This presumes the abstract equality of citizenship.
Who are you? I am Mary. What are you? I am an American.
This is all wonderfully caught up in the Uriel-Cherub meeting in PL. (Milton emphasizes that the Cherub is a Cherub, not Satan, for Uriel by asserting that hypocrisy is visible to God alone, not detectable by man or angel. So here we have two beings, coming from nowhere as it were, having no relations, no history to unite them, forming a unity by appeal to abstract principle (Uriel's judgment that the cherub's curiosity is a proper one), forming a unity, a relationship, by act of will or choice. And this is all the more shocking if one compares it to the gods of Homer or the angels of Dante. It is impossible to conceive of the one of the latter wandering about the cosmos as a solitary tourist to visit the wonders of god's creation, asking another angel (a stranger to him, as he is to Uriel) for some tourist information.
Mike is right about some kind of "individuality" being achieved (we hope) in communist society, but that is a different matter and it cannot be based on the isolated dot of bourgeois ideology, which is what Thatcher has in mind when she asserts the existence of individuals -- and what is the common sense of bourgeois society. We are 'individuals' (social atoms) who must choose to join society.
Guthrie is attempting to get a grip on this in his manipulation of pronouns in "Deportee."
Carrol
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