Hey, Tom - I've read this one! Won't pretend I'm across all of it, but I
certainly felt breathlessly close to something big while I had my beak
buried in it. So what are we talking about? That we should disagree with
Panglosses and those who belabour us with all that a priori difference
stuff? That there is an historical subject, and that it's the mediating
structure by which 'abstract labour' (the category that makes capitalism
capitalism, and has us regulated and driven from 'behind our backs') messes
with every bit of real stuff we do?
I know I'm gonna want to talk about this, Tom. Coz it's the sort of stuff
about which I want to find out what I think. But I'm not exactly sure where
we're starting here ... critiquing shonky ahistorical conceptions of the
'labour' category and their sadly go-nowhere implications, or fashioning a
convincing bit of theoretical room for fundamental social change?
You go first, and I'll try to be useful!
All the best,
Rob.
>Two great quotes from Time, Labor and Social Domination (p. 80). I would
>be more than happy to discuss, if anyone else is interested:
>
>". . . those positions that assert the existence of a totality only to
>affirm it, on the one hand, and those that recognize that the realization
>of a social totality would be inimical to emancipation and therefore deny
>its very existence, on the other are antinomically related. Both sorts of
>positions are one-sided, for both posit, in opposed ways, a
>transhistorical identity between what is and what should be."
>
>"In Hegel, totality unfolds as the realization of the Subject; in
>traditional Marxism, this becomes the realization of the proletariat as
>the concrete Subject. In Marx's critique, totality is grounded as
>historically specific, and unfolds in a manner that points to the
>possibility of its abolition."
>
>
>Tom Walker
>Sandwichman and Deconsultant
>Bowen Island
>(604) 947-2213
>
>
