[OPE-L:4189] subjectivity and the value of little dogs

Gerald Lev (glevy@pratt.edu)
Wed, 12 Feb 1997 07:38:08 -0800 (PST)

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I came across an interesting quote today (from of all places a greeting
card!):

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||| "Not Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Astor together |||
||| could have raised enough money to buy a |||
||| quarter share in my little dog." |||
||| -- Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) |||
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It is part of the logic of capital to _attempt_ to reduce everything,
including life itself, to the commodity-form.. Yet, these attempts are
often resisted and the social outcome of these conflicts are frequently
uncertain. We, for instance, resist placing a price tag on the lives of
those, including "little dogs", that we love. How and where (what level
of abstraction?) is this conflict incorporated within a systematic
dialectical understanding of the capitalist mode of production?

In solidarity, Jerry

PS: I think I might assign the above quote for an essay question in one of
my introductory economics classes.