Doris,
Thanks for your post. Really interesting and helpful.
I should probably have explained my view a little more, and I see a break
in the traffic, so ---- here goes:
My understanding of the concepts "subject", "subjective", and
"subjectivity(ies)" took shape in the process of trying to understand the
changing theories of value in political economic scribblings over the last
few centuries.
The emergence of subjective value theory (also known as "marginal utility
theory") in the late 19th century gave great impetus to the idea of
'subjective' being identical to 'depends on one's point of view', with a
particular emphasis on personal experiences and/or perceptions of pain and
pleasure. In turn, that particular notion of value became (and has become
again) the basis of quite harsh and dry economic theory and policy. At the
time of its emergence, subjective value theory is closely related to the
proliferation of psychology as a discipline and (though somewhat less
obviously) the way people began to use the telegraph for exchange of money
(when it was discovered that people had "wired" money to each other,
starting with the sum of $10, people started bringing all sorts of things
along to the telegraph office for "wiring". One mother brought a cake to
send to her son who was at war).
Before that, and during the transition to the more psychologistic theory of
value, the term "subject" was generally meant in quite a formal sense,
i.e., as the active, agentive element in an event-relationship, of
practically any temporal or spatial scale (as exemplified by Marx and,
before him, Hegel).
The political implications of the "Austrians'" (there were English at it
first, but the Austrians were and remain the most famous proponents of the
theory) subjective value theory are interesting --- at least they are to me.
The turn from an objective theories of value, such as those of John Locke,
in which value was seen to inhere in precious metals, to Smith's labour
theory of value, in which people's activity actually becomes "the first"
form of money, was very revolutionary and radical (Liberalism was critical
theory in the first instance). It meant (at least in theory in the first
place; later, in appearance) the end of mercantilism and Royal Decree
Monopolia: it meant a change in social and economic configurations at a
very large scale.
Then comes 19th century socialism, of which Marx is only one example
(albeit the most sophisticated for mine), which teased out the very deep
implications of Smith's theory of value: that what people do creates value;
it is the very font of what we call value. No need for the histories of
what this meant at a larger scale (cf. revolutions of 1848). All this came
from the obvious problems of more or less valued (and *de*valued) forms of
labour raised by what was in essence, and by all criteria of the formal use
of the term "subject" at that time, a theory of subjective value: value had
"moved" from being seen as a freestanding, atemporal, *objective*, static
attribute of inert materials (gold and silver) to being seen as a product
of human activity.
The apologists and reactionaries response to socialist "labour theories of
value", and their attendant social upheaval, was what we now call
"subjective value theory": i.e., it was not people's activity _per se_ that
created value; it was active *psychologies*; perceptions of value.
Henceforth value, meant in the broadest possible terms, came to be seen as
"subjective", or, "whatever one thought" was valuable _was_ valuable. The
basis of the theory is that the value of any given object was a relation
between the psychological pain one was willing to suffer in order to gain
psychological pleasure.
Of course, in this view, the more pain that needs alleviating, the more
work gets done in order to alleviate it. Henceforth the production and
distribution of psychological pain is treated in policy circles as
identical to the production and distribution of the psychological desire to
alleviate said pain via labour; in other words, the more impoverished the
labourer, the more work.
One result is that value, in the form of money, is falsely ensconced as the
subject (active agent) of economic policy. The implications may seem banal,
but they are not. This is (partly) why I so vehemently object to any notion
that "subjective" means "depends on how you see/feel/perceive it".
If anyone wants far more extensive details of this stuff, let me know. I'm
happy to share it. Most is available on the "publications" link of my home
page, esp doc thesis. I've written more in recent times that is not there.
Best regards,
Phil
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Opinions expressed in this email are my own unless otherwise stated.
If you have received this in error, please ignore and delete it.
Phil Graham
Lecturer (Communication)
UQ Business School
www.uq.edu.au/~uqpgraha
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