Another helpful step toward my own goal of articulating how capitalism finds its purest expression in Wokeism, which is effectively the commoditisation of identity. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the marketisation of sex. Your writing is one of my favourite discoveries of 2023 because it opens doors, whereas too many things I read just keep locking the doors on a perspective with ever more turns of the key.
Oct 2, 2023·edited Oct 2, 2023Liked by David McGrogan
Let me start by grumbling that I've never much liked the presupposition that the 'old left' necessarily means 'Marxist' (which seems a common assumption). I've never once been a Marxist. I've always been somewhere in the 'old left', and I have often enjoyed good arguments with Marxists, anarchists, and flat-out capitalists of various stripes. The 'old left' I would associate with my own views was by necessity a chaotic alliance of different allegiances and perspectives. Thus my first major fault line with many on the left was my insistence that attempting to exclude and preclude Christian, religious, conservative etc. voices was unacceptably unprincipled. It is not pointed out often enough how much the shape of 'left thinking' in the US has been distorted by an engrained prejudice against Christians that can only be anti-democratic and is also rather unproductive too. Add to this that the majority of black US citizens are Christians, and you find ideological Gordian knots that nobody wants to recognise, much less untie.
Preambles aside, I'm having some difficulty tracking some of your key arguments here, David. In particular, this paragraph:
"Human rights, in this line of thinking, are merely one of the means by which the market is ‘actively and ceaselessly created’, because they encourage individuals to think of themselves as individuals, rivalrous and conflictual, and therefore in need of a set of coercive legal guarantees that they can hold against one another at any given moment. Every other individual is, in the world of human rights, merely a barrier to one’s own freedom or self-actualisation; it is therefore for the state to constantly police social interactions such that nobody stands in the way of anybody else’s pursuit of their personal desires."
So this, I take it, is the Marxist critique of human rights you flagged, and which I presume you are taking from Chevallier to some degree. Yet this seems to me to fly in the face of the history of human rights as a successor to 'the Rights of Man' that attempted to rework the state-based rights conceptions that dominated prior to World War II. The purpose of the human rights agreements *at founding* was nothing like what this paragraph discusses, being more concerned with providing protections for individuals *from states*, having discovered in brutal detail that such abuses could not be prevented by 'the Rights of Man' which presumed a nation, and that therefore could provide no protections whatsoever to refugees (a point discussed at length by Hannah Arendt). Hence the need for so-called 'universal' protections.
So is this Marxist critique of human rights (if I have this correct), a critique of where 'rights thinking' *went*? Because it is not to any degree a description of their original motives or purposes. Human rights are protections for individuals *and* communities *and* churches etc. from abuse by the state. It is not until the US invents the conflict between 'civil liberties' and 'civil rights' (mauling in the process the meaning of 'rights') that what the paragraph excerpted above suggests could be legitimately claimed. (I have a Stranger Worlds coming up in three weeks addressing this point, coincidentally.) I think this is tied up with your notes about 'positive rights' too, about which I confess an interest.
Any clarification you can offer here would be welcome. I am uncertain if I disagree with you, or have merely some nitpickery with respect to how you've framed your points here. (Also, I apologise for the length of the comment, but I have not had time to shorten it.)
The prostitution issue, in my view, is a smokescreen (these bastards have no interest in regulating the sex market, which is an inexhaustible diamond mine); the real target is children.
Our children have never been in greater danger than at the start of the 21st century.
PS: I'm never sure about the automatic translation done by the supposed "artificial intelligence" software, but hey, I guess it's close to what I think.
Both the Resolution and the Minority Opinion are products of the ideologically possessed. The fundamental premise is all prostitutes are women and this is patently not the case. There are male prostitutes, both straight and gay, yet they are totally lost amongst the rhetoric about marginalisation.
Another helpful step toward my own goal of articulating how capitalism finds its purest expression in Wokeism, which is effectively the commoditisation of identity. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the marketisation of sex. Your writing is one of my favourite discoveries of 2023 because it opens doors, whereas too many things I read just keep locking the doors on a perspective with ever more turns of the key.
Let me start by grumbling that I've never much liked the presupposition that the 'old left' necessarily means 'Marxist' (which seems a common assumption). I've never once been a Marxist. I've always been somewhere in the 'old left', and I have often enjoyed good arguments with Marxists, anarchists, and flat-out capitalists of various stripes. The 'old left' I would associate with my own views was by necessity a chaotic alliance of different allegiances and perspectives. Thus my first major fault line with many on the left was my insistence that attempting to exclude and preclude Christian, religious, conservative etc. voices was unacceptably unprincipled. It is not pointed out often enough how much the shape of 'left thinking' in the US has been distorted by an engrained prejudice against Christians that can only be anti-democratic and is also rather unproductive too. Add to this that the majority of black US citizens are Christians, and you find ideological Gordian knots that nobody wants to recognise, much less untie.
Preambles aside, I'm having some difficulty tracking some of your key arguments here, David. In particular, this paragraph:
"Human rights, in this line of thinking, are merely one of the means by which the market is ‘actively and ceaselessly created’, because they encourage individuals to think of themselves as individuals, rivalrous and conflictual, and therefore in need of a set of coercive legal guarantees that they can hold against one another at any given moment. Every other individual is, in the world of human rights, merely a barrier to one’s own freedom or self-actualisation; it is therefore for the state to constantly police social interactions such that nobody stands in the way of anybody else’s pursuit of their personal desires."
So this, I take it, is the Marxist critique of human rights you flagged, and which I presume you are taking from Chevallier to some degree. Yet this seems to me to fly in the face of the history of human rights as a successor to 'the Rights of Man' that attempted to rework the state-based rights conceptions that dominated prior to World War II. The purpose of the human rights agreements *at founding* was nothing like what this paragraph discusses, being more concerned with providing protections for individuals *from states*, having discovered in brutal detail that such abuses could not be prevented by 'the Rights of Man' which presumed a nation, and that therefore could provide no protections whatsoever to refugees (a point discussed at length by Hannah Arendt). Hence the need for so-called 'universal' protections.
So is this Marxist critique of human rights (if I have this correct), a critique of where 'rights thinking' *went*? Because it is not to any degree a description of their original motives or purposes. Human rights are protections for individuals *and* communities *and* churches etc. from abuse by the state. It is not until the US invents the conflict between 'civil liberties' and 'civil rights' (mauling in the process the meaning of 'rights') that what the paragraph excerpted above suggests could be legitimately claimed. (I have a Stranger Worlds coming up in three weeks addressing this point, coincidentally.) I think this is tied up with your notes about 'positive rights' too, about which I confess an interest.
Any clarification you can offer here would be welcome. I am uncertain if I disagree with you, or have merely some nitpickery with respect to how you've framed your points here. (Also, I apologise for the length of the comment, but I have not had time to shorten it.)
Long comment and needs a proper post in response I think. I'll do my best!
Very good, thought-provoking article.
The prostitution issue, in my view, is a smokescreen (these bastards have no interest in regulating the sex market, which is an inexhaustible diamond mine); the real target is children.
Our children have never been in greater danger than at the start of the 21st century.
PS: I'm never sure about the automatic translation done by the supposed "artificial intelligence" software, but hey, I guess it's close to what I think.
Thank you!
Both the Resolution and the Minority Opinion are products of the ideologically possessed. The fundamental premise is all prostitutes are women and this is patently not the case. There are male prostitutes, both straight and gay, yet they are totally lost amongst the rhetoric about marginalisation.
I seem to have repeated your point on commoditisation. This wasn't intentional but it's good to see it's not just me who notices this theme.