US lawyers in establishing the legal fiction of the personhood of the corporation or the Personhood of Capital make a nice representation of the deep bourgeois ideological illusory concept of Individual Determinism. Capital is a profoundly determining _social_ institution in capitalism, natch. By making Capital fictional individuals, the "story", i.e. Lie, of Individual determinism is internally consistent.
CB On 1/5/2011 10:13 AM, c b wrote: >> “In community, the individual is, crucial as the prior condition for >> forming a community. … Every individual in the community guarantees >> the community; the public is a chimera, numerality is everything…” >> >> – Søren Kierkegaard, Journals >> >> ^^^^ >> Pace Kierkegaard, of course , for we social determinists , this is >> absolutely backward, fundamentally wrong. The social, the communal, >> the community is prior to individuals. Kierkegaard's statement is a >> basic maxim of bourgeois ideology, whether as existentialism, >> libertarianism, Social Darwinism, positivism, Reaganism, Tea Parting >> et al. In all , "the" individual is primary over and determinative of >> the social. It is an error in the understanding of the levels of >> organization of reality, and specifically of human life. Human >> culture, society and history constitute an emergent level of reality, >> in which the whole is more than the some of its parts, and is >> determinative of the parts. It is a philosophical error concerning the >> relationship of the whole and the parts. "The" human individual is a >> social individual. Even Kierkegaard was; he just didn't know it. So, >> is the most radical libertarian; they just don't know it. Our species >> name should be, not homo sapiens, but homo communis. Our high level of >> sociality is the differentia specifica of our species. But no-one lives in a vacuum. ^^^^^^^ CB: Hello ! Exactly. No _individual_, no ONE, lives in a social vaccum. No one is an isolated individual. This is the fundamental bourgeols ideological trick, foolishness. It is rife among the intelligencia of bourgeois society. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis