Yes, it would be wonderful if everyone could experiment with the broadest range of sexual activity imaginable to them; it’d be equally wonderful if no one ever had to use violence, but in a fundamentally violent and oppressive organization of mankind, sometimes violence is necessary, and just like the social-democratic bourgeoisie who opposed the violence which would harm their own social position wrapped that opposition in grand and convincing pacifistic arguments, sex-positivity all to often functions as an excuse for exploiting others.

I keep hearing all this talk of not wanting to tell this or that person how to think or feel, and that sentiment comes from the right place, but let’s not get caught up in the cult of the individual. I hear: I “identify” as this, “my interests” are such and such, but from whence come this identify, from whence come these interests? We can’t forget that as things currently stand, we are situated in system which survives in part by its amazing capability to create needs. I want an iphone, a nice car, etc. etc. etc. and there is nothing insincere or false about these desires, they’re just as real as my desire to help my fellow man, the fact that their created by the capitalist system doesn’t swallow them up into inconsequentiality. In fact, the better part of what I think of as my “self” is nothing more than the construction of this system, is built by my society. “Be yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks” No, if no one else thought about it, it would be absurd and meaningless to even say I had a self. 

So we find these selves, which are socially constructed, in a society in which the prevailing ideas are precisely those which benefit the ruling class, would it not be an exercise in wanton ignorance to pretend that we’d never encounter “individuals,” certain aspects of whom are constructed to benefit that class? And should we not be equally wary of our own tendency to use Sex-Positivity to exploit those aspects ? Because I know, and I’m disgusted with myself for it, that I’ve been with girls and treated them in such a fashion, though they were willing and even “desired” it, that was built into them by a White, Male dominated society precisely so that White Males like myself could act in such a fashion, and the rationalizations of Sex-Positivity I employed to make myself feel better about it doesn’t mean a damn if human beings keep on being exploited and disrespected.

So, yes, regardless of where it came from, homosexuals, for instance, find themselves attracted to other men, and theirs no reason they should feel any shame in doing so, so sex-positiivty that helps them in that struggle is good, but, and this is something that seems infinitely out of Tumblr’s grasp sometimes,that doesn’t mean sex-positivity is always good. It doesn’t mean these blanket statements you drape over conversations mightn’t just stifle the real, living discourse that might be the key to other’s liberation. If you find yourself resorting to these pre-formed verities and not looking at how something functions in different circumstances, you’re building up your own self-righteousness and nothing more.

logicallypositive:

akagoldfish:

a-higher-level:

At the risk of sounding incredibly pedantic, I felt the need to put this clarification out there. A lot of times I’ll see Marxists or sort of vaguely far-left people, particularly new ones, making posts where they use commodity fetishism as if it sort of just means being really materialistic or obsessed with commodities, or even being sexually attracted to them. For instance, just earlier today I saw this Apple product-scented perfume, and though no one misused commodity-fetishism describing this particular product, a common example of a typical misuse of the term would be someone re-blogging it and saying something like “talk about commodity-fetishism.” And I always cringe when I see posts of such a sort, because it makes one look as if they’ve sort of run into the word a few times without delving into what it actually means.

The problem is, and I think this has a lot to do with the way in which Fruedianism and similar ideas have pervaded our culture, in common parlance, when someone talks of fetish, they almost always  mean a sexual fetish, or at the very least an obsession or attraction to something so intense it is almost sexual. The problem is, that’s not the only meaning of term, and its certainly not what it commonly meant during Marx’s time, as the term erotic or sexual fetish was introduced long after Marx had died, by Alfred Binet.  Rather, fetishism during Marx’s time referred to the belief that some object, usually a man-made one, such as an idol, has mystical or supernatural powers. It largely originated from Western descriptions of African or other indigenous religions / forms of spirituality. 

So when we talk about commodity-fetishism, it has nothing to do with sexualizing or even being intensely/perversely attracted to commodities, it has to do the fact that often when we talk about human relations within the context of a market, we do it in a manner so abstracted from the subjective human actors between which those relations occur that we begin to mystify those relations, and see them sort of as things-in-themselves with their own properties and functions. So, like with fetishism in its original sense, in which a mundane object is scene as having mystical powers, human relations are seen as objects that function in certain ways. This point is so central to the Marxist critique of bourgeoisie economics precisely because bourgeoisie economics looks at human relations as they transpire in the context of a specific economic order (ie. capitalism) and, becase of commodity-fetishism, acts as though such relations are distinct and able to be studied scientifically independently of the human subjects between which they occur.

The bolded part is the main thing everyone should keep in mind. This is a concept I’ve talked about a lot in my writing on capitalist social order (see: why I don’t like the term “pro-choice”), and for those who weren’t clear, this is the origin of concept.

We can talk of logical relations in abstract, independent of the objects being related. Same with mathematical relations of sorts, such as functions. I know human relations aren’t mathematical objects, but I guess from a purely logical point of view what is ontologically wrong about viewing relations as separate from the subjects. In other words, what’s wrong with considering relations in the abstract? Why is that somehow a wrong mode of thinking?

The thing is, unlike most mathematical entities (at least that I’m familiar with), the relations are occurring in the web of social reality which is dynamic, and not in the sense of what, say, calculus deals with when it addresses various intersecting and changing functions, because at the base level that which is happening with all those functions on a purely rational, predictable, and hence mathematical logic, but dynamic in the sense that every instant human social reality is being actively shaped by human perceptions of it. So, for example, its a fact of reality that Obama is president, but that real, objective existence as such is the sum total of so many subjective perceptions of it connected and corroborated via language and communication. If you’re skeptical of Marxists, you can even look into John Searle’s work on Social Reality, which remains completely within the Analytic tradition.

 Right, so you have these relations situated in, and thus constantly subject to alteration by, this social reality, the fundamental structure of which is inherently different and dependent on a different logic then mathematical structures. But economics takes these relations and in a sense ossifies them, takes a snapshot of them which, as such is disconnected from the dialectal whole, and thus not a true image. These relations, which economics studies, are only existent in their current state as a result, as we’ve touched upon, of a social reality actively crafted perpetually by not-fully rational or math-adhering subjects. And the actions (and perceptions) of these subjects are largely contingent upon the economic structure in which their situated, and, thus, those relations must be colored by both the subjects and, syllogistically, the economic structure.

So we can thus say that the relations are at least partially determined, and are constantly being determined, by whatever economic structure the subjects are within. And yet we also know that economic structures are not eternal, that humans have existed in tribes, under feudalism, and so forth, and thus, under each, human relations were fundamentally different. So to take the relations as they currently exist under capitalism, and abstract them, so that they seem eternal, so that they seem inherent in human beings rather than a reflection of human beings organized in a specific way, ie. capitalism, is fallacious, and it is that fallacious mode of thought to which Marx gave the name Commodity-fetishism.

[With the caveat that this post is obviously colored by personal bias/ experience and may come across as (or actually more or less be) a melodramatic rant by some kid trying to rationalize the fact that he didn’t get accepted where he wanted to go, I think there is a valid criticism or two in here somewhere.]

As most of you are probably aware, today was the day when most of the most competitive colleges in the country released their regular decision admissions. I, for one, have been accepted at NYU and Cornell, but not Brown, where I most wanted to go and where, consequently, I invested the most effort with regards to the application process. Ironically, a good friend of mine was dying to get into NYU, but was rejected, while being admitted to Brown, where he has no plans of going. What is the root of this seemingly contradictory phenomenon which seems to be arising more and more each year? Instrumental Rationality.

For any individual, the most rational thing to do, as they enter this college process, is apply to as many colleges [within whatever strata they’re attempting to enter], even if their far more partial to a certain institution and not all that interested in others of equal apparent caliber. Yet, at the same time, the end result of so many “rational individuals” doing the most “rational,” thing, a terribly irrational outcome emerges: students fail to get into those institutions most desirable to them, even if their equally, if not more, qualified, then most accepted students, because the excess of applications by virtually indistinguishable students has made the entire process far more random and accurate. Many of the upper level schools in the country could probably glean from their applicant pool 3 or 4 equally qualified full freshmen classes, so that, in the process of weeding it down to just one, an incredibly amount of chance is added into the equation.

Now, of course, the appropriate response, from an individual standpoint, is to apply to even more schools, further exacerbating the original problem. Now, beyond the obvious problems for our education system and the chances of people ending up in the educational institutions best suited to them, it also seems incontestable that, though this problem negatively affects everyone, it adds yet another unfair advantage to the rich (in a process already hugely skewed to their benefit). How so? The first, and most obvious reason, is simply that applying to colleges is fucking expensive. I myself chocked up somewhere around 600$ of my own money this year on the application process, and most kids I know (on, of course, their parent’s dollar) applied to far more schools then I did. Furthermore, on a much subtle level, the rich can afford to go to schools that, at leas to some small degree, have found ways to counter this problem. For instance, a wealthy private high school near me meticulously orchestrates the college applications of their students, limiting certain students to certain schools and so forth, so that kids who don’t seriously plan on attending schools don’t take away any of the spots from the specific school for some given college. 

On a larger scale though, I think this highlights one of the fundamental thoughts of enlightenment and bourgeoisie thought: excessively individuated rationality. The instrumental rationality of scientific thought, to which our society has increasingly become dogmatically (and ideologically) wedded to is not comprehensive enough for a truly advantageous organisation of human beings, the society of which, as we know, is greater than the sum total of its parts, and transcends the personalized (and mind you, not as real as we, in our reified state, tend to think) selves, existing over-and-above the “individuals” of which it is constituted.