On The Self

Aside from our stolen labor, the state, the bootstraps myth, and “green capitalism”; perhaps the most deep seated, subtle lie of this system is that it is individualistic. As if forcing individuals to work in jobs they hate just to get by, or making every necessity privatized, taking power out of the individual’s hands and into the hands of property owners, was individualistic. Luckily, it seems as though the leftist values of collectivism have been in recent years getting a remodeling. Individualistic communists, as strange as that may sound, are looking for a new perspective on anticapitalism to adapt to a system that has changed quite a bit since Marx’s time.

Due to the reliance on the material condition of society, we see all things through capitalist relations, and through that we define everything by capitalism. In other words, capitalism can only interpret and define reality through its internal relations and “truths”. One of these “truths” being that private property is an individual right; some exclusions even apply there of course, but then again, capitalism only defines what it, or we, think of as reality due to the philosophies behind capitalism. In order for capitalism to even exist in the first place, people have to practice it, and in this practice those who practice these particular relations must translate objects and actions that are at their core, not capitalist, they are essentially worth nothing. Money for instance, the natural world does not have the concept of money, we made it up. More specifically, value in any form, is not an inherent part of reality apart from our subjective interpretation of it. Because of this we find that we are going to have to translate what is nothing more than raw material things, whether it be objects such as diamonds, or actions such as labor, into some sort of quantified value. However, these things cannot be translated into capitalist production if they are not translated in a way that relates to other commodities, there are other constraints of capitalism that prevent it from assigning value that clashes with other capitalist structures. For instance, if you decided to sell a diamond for a dollar in the U.S. market, you would most likely go out of business, because it costs you more to either buy it from somebody else, or pay people to mine it (there are obviously many other problematic factors here but for the sake of keeping on task we aren’t going to go into them). Now, perhaps there is a demand for green rocks because they are used in some religious practice, depending on the cost to buy them, a business owner knows that they can of course capitalize on the fact that people value these rocks as being very important, and raise the price, assuming that there is little to no competition at the moment. However while the owner’s price is greatly a reflection of the market value for such items, the members of the religion may have vastly different ideas about how much those rocks should really cost, how much value they really hold. Will there be some members who agree that the owner’s price is fair, maybe, but we can assume that not everyone will have the same opinion. Be aware this is ontop of the value generated from labour, I am in no way trying to replace it with an alternative theory. This discrepancy between what something costs and how much somebody thinks it should cost is a fundamental aspect to how capitalism clashes with the individual. As we rely on capitalist structures for almost if not everything we need, we also have to come to terms with seeing value in things we buy failing to correspond with their prices. Do we also see commodities in accordance to mainstream ideas of the self fail to correspond with how much value we invest in ourselves? Of course. As capitalism must translate things into its “language” by giving it value, it also translates us into capitalist functions. Selling your labor to producers is just alike in this way to selling goods on the market.

The market translation of demand, specifically psychological demand regarding the self, unsuccessfully turns what is thought of as an aspect of individuality into a product. These appearances of individuality are profited on because the illusion is reflected according to physical or social uses, ie. clothes, beauty products, ect. However, this portrayal of individuality is insufficient and very discrepant in value. As if the value associated with objects that we identify with ourselves are how much we really matter. Capitalism cannot provide an accurate reparation as it cannot assign a value to something so subjective, it cannot translate something that is both without and filled with value. You cannot buy and sell a “self”, you can however buy and sell fragments of identities. Nearly everything produced under capitalism is interpreted by most individuals as self expression, personal lifestyles, the personal in general. This is how we connect a part of what the self really is, or is not, with what we consume. I may like x so I will buy x because I’m a person who likes x, to put simply, this makes a declaration on one of my natures as an individual. Producers do take advantage of this, the fragments of identity can be organized and assigned a standardized value. Through this ability to organize the “self” as products, the fragments, producers may be able to increasingly standardize products to appeal to stereotyped identities; which most often align with class structure. More expensive styles corresponding with a richer consumer base and so on.

Of course, becoming myself through expression is not really myself. It is an idea that could be me if I had enough money to buy it. A bit of a variation on the standardized design of whatever look or lifestyle, can give one the illusion of individuality among nothing more than bundles of products. It is the arrangement of these products that give the illusion of the individual, not the individual we are now but the one we could be. It is a reality that can only exist through its own ideal, in other words, a spook.

The market commodifies the self because we largely rely on capitalist conditions and relations in order to get what we need, the relations of capitalism will change the perception our psychology into a language that the system can understand. The self is not only commodified, and put out of our reach via money, but it can only read areas of the self that can be seen by others. The self is no longer the self under capitalism, the self is reduced to stereotypes, models of people, not actual people. The human condition of every individual is lost once it can only be interpreted by that individual through the lens of others instead of through their own. But isn’t your perception of yourself only interpreted through the ways in which other people define and interact with other individuals? Am I not always comparing and measuring myself according to their standards? I can only describe and think of myself using the language of others yes, but the way that language is arranged can only be arranged by me. I am the artist of my own essence even if the paint I use was made partially by others. It is the unique arrangement of all that one encounters into a world that only the perceiver can create that is the self. The self is a creator by nature, individuality is the medium in which the self is only shown a fragment of. But the value form attempts to give the illusion that expression is the self, that the self is now not only separate from me but out of my power, I have to now work to buy myself. Capitalism may not be the only system which attempts to distinguish self from owner, the problem is that there isn’t a distinction. I am the self, and as the self is interpretation, I am interpretation, I am creation, the creator and the creature, the essence and relation to everything but only through my arrangement. Individuality is not what I am, self expression is not me, it is only mediation with society. To fit into a particular, for lack of a better word, aesthetic, is not a becoming of myself, that aesthetic is interpreted according to me, and has become mine. However the illusion that there is a distinction between the self and its perceived qualities according to others, as well as the price tag put on that illusion is damaging to our psychological well being. It makes us feel as though we cannot fulfill our most important of psychological needs, it makes us feel as though we have to fulfill something that we already are.

The self is not materially real in this context, the self is a concept, and that concept is a tradition of mediation and interpretation with reality, that is assigned to a particular body. Tradition meaning that it has flowed throughout their lifetime, by no means does that mediation retain the same nature from birth till death. A mediation in a certain fashion, one that is always changing, one that is fluid. Interpretation of reality into a language that only I can understand, also fluid. With the mediation of my perception, my interpretation, of reality. Both are fluid due to reality, but reality is also dependent to a degree on them. All of these forces and concepts we can only sum up in the “I”, and they are all dependent on one another.

When I say that commodity relations, production, the market, value form, capitalism in general commodifies the self, it is not so much stopping you from being you, more often than not we see people only interpreting themselves with capitalistic relations; and that is the central issue, trying to confine the “self” into a stagnant, concrete idea. Trying to confine the self as a concrete idea will always lead to it being alien to a person because the self is not concrete. In a way, I contradict myself, as this confinement does indirectly stop you from feeling like you. It seems once again that the only way to solve this problem, this problem that plagues everybody, is to practice a relation that does not try to assign a separate value to ourselves. Relations that don’t continue to spew the myth of the concrete self but instead leave it to each individual to value themselves however they want without societal repercussion. This would obviously require that the value form cease to exist “objectively” according to the system, a valueless society is the only society which allows this freedom because the individual no longer subordinates their self image to their “price”. This lack of value abolishes with it the fundamental components of capitalism, money and private property rights no longer mean anything, classes and the state also are exposed for their ultimate lack of practical meaning. The liberation of the self calls for the destruction of all illusions that cage it up, and what is left seems to be communism.

It is the restriction and categorization of that which is unrestricted, disorganized, and un-categorized, by a value alien to the individual; that ultimately leads to a special kind of tyranny ingrained within the deepest inner workings of capitalism. Capitalism, with its commodification, value, class, and other forms of division; essentially tries to bottle up chaos. The self is too fluid to be restrained, and too unique to be categorized. It is this contradiction between not only capitalism, but all forms of government, as the state of things requires that all individuals live not only according to but through its proportions, that proves to be ridiculous. The organization and distinction is incompatible with the disorganized and undistinguished.