Marxist analysis removed personal blame from labor conflict while deepening it
Evidence
Ever since Marx, the social struggle has developed into this form, despite infinite differences in other respects. Since it has been recognized that the condition of labor is determined by the objective conditions and forms of production, irrespective of the desires and capacities of particular individuals, the personal bitterness of both general and local battles has greatly decreased. The entrepreneur is no longer a bloodsucker and damnable egoist, nor does the worker suffer from sinful greediness under all circumstances. Both parties have at least begun no longer to burden each other’s consciences with their mutual demands and tactics as acts of personal meanness. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 307
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s argument arc: objectified social struggle parallels the blasé attitude’s depersonalization of urban relations that Simmel details in The Metropolis and Mental Life. — connects to: Marx broke with political economy by abstracting structures apart from individuals; Mature Marx employed structural rather than sequential causality
- SEED: Potential essay angle: how impersonal ideologies (Marxism, but also modern institutional language) raise the stakes of conflict precisely by removing personal accountability — relevant to the Julius reading.