From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Apr 18 2006 - 14:14:12 EDT
Hi Paulo, If capital is interpreted as a general abstract relation, e.g. as an enforcible claim or ownership entitlement to society's surplus labour/-product/-value in general, expressible in money, then obviously *by definition* capital is indifferent to particular use-values or particular people - what matters then is only value-augmentation by any means, or from any source; in the same way that a banknote is "indifferent" to the goods for which it is exchanged, i.e. it could exchange for any number of different kinds of goods (though, if the banknote functions as capital, it aims to exchange for something that can in turn be exchanged for a higher value, "trading up" as it were). I'm just suggesting that "capital in general" is only an abstraction we use, the reality is that of "many capitals", and those capitals and their owners are not indifferent to particular use-values, or to particular people, even precisely in function of the instrumental rationality that operates. One contradiction for subjectivities is that if production is a means to an end, pursued for instrumental reasons, the producers may be required not to be indifferent to what they produce, although in reality, they are indifferent to it. They may be indifferent, yet cannot show that indifference. In a certain sense, you might say, they may have to believe in what they are doing, or at least make a show that they do, although in reality they don't believe in it. There is a rich management literature on worker-motivation, never-ending in the diversity of its themes, because of course what may motivate a human being to perform a task could be all sorts of things depending on personality, history, circumstances etc. It's a complex topic if you delve into it. Indifference is often seen as the polar opposite of love or care, and a frequent management preoccupation is "how do we get our people to care more about their work". All sorts of incentives may be thrown into the battle to reduce indifference. You might be a professional who does the work that is in your nature to do, or you might be a worker who does a job in which he is really estranged from himself (subjectively alienated). In some professions, reducing indifference to the minimum is absolutely critical in a practical sense - if e.g. a medical doctor becomes indifferent to his patients, the patients may die, or if an air traffic controller becomes indifferent about routing planes through airspace, horrific accidents can happen. That means that in many occupations, especially those involving major responsibility, you often really have to like what you are doing, beyond competency, otherwise really bad things happen. In other occupations, more subjective indifference is possible, because it has less consequence. An author who has reflected on this type of thing is the sociologist Richard Sennett, for example, he looks at what high job mobility or employment uncertainty does to people's subjectivities. Jurriaan
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