Sure, I get surplus value and alienation of the self from one’s labor. But what is it that the Marxists want for the individual? Wholeness? Please, there is no such thing, and they know it. And what of the Christians who know of surplus value and alienation? Certainly we know better than to believe in wholeness as well. But is our utopia any better or any more real?
I tend to agree with Peter Rollins about our collective brokenness, so I’m afraid the quest for the Marxist utopia is just as an absurd quest as the Christian one is for the Kingdom. But then again, who doesn’t love an absurd quest? Cheers.
The Marxists want communal responsibility among autonomous free individuals. I own my own labor, and I have a right not to be exploited by holders of a monopoly on the means by which I may exercise that labor—who then exact their “right” as monopolists to my use of “their” means. The utopia, the non-place, is the undoing of the place in which that monopoly on the means of production, and consequently the formation of capital, exists. It generally takes the position of communal ownership of the means of production, accepting the notion that individuals do not naturally each and all have within their power the ability to autonomously exercise their labor for any given end. The dis-placement of the monopoly by community is the nature of its solution.
yes, but what does the collective ownership of the means of production by labor do for the individual? Marxists do not typically take the route of communal societies (found in some Asian and African communities), that what’s better for the collective is more important than the individual. Marxists begin with liberal market theory of the rational individual and show that it’s wrong and bad for the individual. But I still don’t understand what is good for the individual?
Marxist collectivism, as I tried to say, is a replacement for capitalist monopoly. It’s not individuals existing for the sake of the collective, but the collective existing for the sake of individuals. It’s a dream of Western personal autonomy provided with a system in which everyone really can get what they need. The collective is a holding company that works for everyone, rather than everyone working for the company. Collective ownership is just a placeholder. The point isn’t the collective; the point is each and every individual. The idea of the individual’s good remains the modern Western one, and the collective is (ideally) instrumental to securing that good against monopolization.
Note that I don’t say it’s a good idea; I’m just trying to point to what I see.