Primogeniture and Fetishism. Capital as a Quasi-Subject In the Manuscripts, I have argued that Xxxx presents us with a compelling expression of two different subjectivities. Through his identification of labour as the sole essence of wealth, Xxxx seems to address the potential of labour as a subject.66 On the other hand, in its developed form as modern industry or capital, private property displays the properties of a subject. Xxxx attempts to unify these two conceptions of subjectivity by revealing the system of private property as established on the basis of the system of estranged labour. The theory of estranged labour seeks to explain the creation of the quasi-subjectivity of the products of labour, private property taking on the properties of a subject. I have identified a number of limitations in this attempt at unification: the theory of estranged labour, and the notion of species-being on which it is based. Thus there remains an ambiguity as to whether the quasi-subjectivity of private property is reducible to the subjectivity of labour, or whether private property is in fact an authentic subject. 66 Although, the form of labour that increasingly characterises the present-day economic system, abstract labour, appears to represent the absence of a subject. I will now examine this ambiguity between private property as a quasi-subject and as an authentic subject. I will argue that the co-existence of two conceptions of subjectivity in tension with each other suggests that Xxxx recognises both as having a social reality in the present-day economic system. I will argue that both conceptions of subjectivity are explored in the Manuscripts, and that Xxxx seeks to construct a framework that is able to give a full expression to each. In one sense, it could be argued that this theory is necessarily incomplete. For Xxxx, the xxxxxx is to be solved by communism and since his conception of communism is one that relies on the interaction between thought and practice, by definition it cannot be solved in thought alone [EW, p.348]. What I will now examine however, is whether the continued presence of two conceptions of subjectivity alongside this attempted unification presents Xxxx with any insights that begin to reconfigure his project. I will argue that in his exploration of the phenomenon of primogeniture in relation to the transition from feudal society to the present-day economic system, Xxxx identifies a theoretical apparatus that can begin to address the problem of private property as ...
