Changing the Subject

Enough about me. This long digression into one thread in my life history was meant to locate the “subject” in the subjective responses that I hope to supply to current events through writing this blog. I am aware that Zizek labels the “subject” a “fiction” and in saying that he supports a consensus that twentieth century French philosophy also reached. My readers, if I have any, may be surprised to find that I agree with Zizek and the French, but I do not follow their tortuous path to that conclusion from the neo-Freudianism of Lacan. I feel that Engels takes us down that route in his insight that in the division of labor human individuals are themselves divided.

The division of labor means that we are denied the use of the wide-ranging creativity that we possess. The free development of each is not possible under capitalism. Instead, we suffer alienation from ourselves and from our labor. In this state, we reason from a false consciousness and produce ideology rather than science. The hegemonic forces in our culture, shaped to defend capitalism, further block us from knowledge of our own humanity. We occupy an “identity” that can fairly be called a fiction.

Marx saw that humans differed from other species in their ability consciously to change the world. They perform conscious labor upon the world to provide sustenance for themselves and their offspring. The alienation endured under capitalism divorces us from this fundamental transformative power, from the full humanity found in free conscious labor. The individual in the species fears the extinction of his own identity through death even though that identity is, as all seem to agree, a “fiction,” and there is no comforting that fear. An identity that is not a fiction is to be found only as the individual resumes the potentialities of species being. In creating socialism, we initiate the return to the humanity of species being. To not be a socialist is to be less than human.

While I have pursued my navel-gazing here--what better metaphor for exploring one’s subjectivity?--the European working-class has again been on the move. You have to love the French. Now even the champagne makers and bottlers are on strike. And autumn is here.