Personalism and Division of Labor

As has been previously proposed, 'Person' can be defined as 'particular Human', thereby signifying that a Person is a part of the Human species, not in an antagonistic relation with it.  Accordingly, Personality is one's distinctive character, and Personalism is the promotion of Personality.  So, specialization is one expression of Personality, perhaps best exemplified by a member of an orchestra.  Likewise, a Division of Labor can be conceived as Personalist.  Now, Marx's "from each according to one's ability" seems a commitment to Personalism.  On the other hand, earlier, in the German Ideology, he adamantly opposes Division of Labor, associating specialization with oppression.  So, perhaps, his appreciation for Personalism expresses maturation.

Private Sector and Public Sector

In their common Economic usages, 'private sector' and 'public sector' signify a possibly antagonistic adjacency.  However, that 'private' and 'public' themselves are related as 'closed' to 'open' suggests that a more radical distinction between them is being homogenized in those usages.  Indeed, their actual relation is entailed in the concept of Division of Labor, which presupposes an organization of a work-force, and, hence, requires an organizer of its parts.  In the Republic, that organizer is the Philosopher-King, the modern correlate of which is the Government, in an orchestra, the conductor.  So, the Private-Public distinction, properly conceived, is that of Part to Whole, and any apparent antagonism, e. g. profits vs. regulation, is a symptom of a dysfunctional organization, comparable to unhealth.  Likewise, the reduction of the scope of the Public to a 'sector' that is commensurate with another 'sector', is a reduction of the Whole to a Part, and, so, signifies a dysfunctional Economic condition.

Quantification, Human, Person

While De-Personalization usually meets with disapproval, that judgment tends to lack Moral resonance.  One reason for such tepidity might be reflected in the contingent status of 'impersonal', which, like 'detached', can mean either 'impartial' or 'uncaring', depending on the circumstances.  Another reason might be that a systematic derivation of Person seems to be lacking.  Now, one approach is to define 'Person' as 'individual Human'.  However, that derivation burdens the concept with the previously discussed problem that 'individual' actually renders indistinct what it quantifies, as well as with Individual-Universal antagonism.  So, instead, without those burdens, is an alternative Quantifier--Particular, which designates a substantive as a Part of a Whole, thereby preserving its distinction from other Parts.  Accordingly, 'Person' can be defined as 'particular Human', from which it follows that De-Personalization is particular De-Humanization, and the bearer of whatever Moral status that that might entail.  In other words, if the species has an active principle of generating unique Particulars, e. g. Variations in Darwinism, and such a unique Particular is what a Person is, then De-Personalization is a type of De-Humanization, i. e. stifling the Humanness of a Person just as much a subjecting them to involuntary functioning is.

Quantification, De-Humanization, De-Personalization

Quantification per se does not de-humanize, e. g. counting a group of people, though it might when representing someone as an item in an accounting ledger.  But, it does homogenize its objects, thereby potentially de-personalizing each human being thus represented, i. e. since it abstracts from their differences.  Thus rarely noticed is that 'individualism', as it is popularly conceived, is quantification that de-personalizes.  For, 'individual' means 'one', a characteristic that is common to each in a plurality, even if counting or adding does not ensue.  So, labelling someone an 'individual' abstracts from any differences between them and any other 'individual', thereby de-personalizing them. Thus, such 'individualism' accomplishes the opposite of its aim of distinguishing each person from every other person.

Quantification, Money, Interest

Quantification entails homogenization and commensuration.  Money is mobile quantified purchase power of Demand. Price is quantified Supply.  So, contemporary Macro-Economics is far removed from Plato's Political Economy.  The latter is constituted by Demand-Supply harmonization, i. e. vital needs and a Division of Labor to meet them.  But, the fundamental unit of the former is Money-Price correlation, i. e. Price establishes the terms of the availability of Supply, the acquisition of which by Demand is facilitated by Money.  Thus, the Demand-Supply relation is switched--Price demands, and Money is supplied.  Now, Quantity is signified by a Cardinal Number, as the product of Counting, which is carried out in terms of Ordinal Numbers.  So, Quantification produces Cardinal Numbers.  But then, Cardinal Numbers are themselves enumerable, and themselves quantifiable.  It is that reflexive capacity of Quantification that facilitates the treatment of Money as itself a commodity--an object of Demand with a Price--or, in other words, facilitates Interest.  In Interest, Money homogenizes itself and makes itself commensurate with substances from which it, as a property of theirs, is categorially distinguished, and, hence, incommensurate with.

Chresmatism, Money, Quantification

Chresmatism can transpire without Money, e. g. trading a bag of rice for a pair of shoes, and then trading the shoes for two bags of rice.  But, as the example illustrates, it does require Quantification.  Or, to put it analytically, Chresmatism is Profit-seeking, and Profit is a comparison of two Quantities.  Instead, if Money is valuable to the process, it is as expediting it, by virtue of functioning as a mobile bearer of Quantity, i. e. quantity of purchase power.

Chresmatism, Greed, Exploitation

Chresmatism is a crucial factor in Marx's analysis of Exploitation, elevating its harm to more than that of Greed.  The latter deprives another of their fair share, and, so, expresses either indifference or cruelty.  In Chresmatism, a Commodity functions as a Means to Profit, and Labor is a Commodity in the Capitalist ledger.  Hence, in Chresmatism, a worker is concretely de-humanized--the Midas touch, as Aristotle suggests, applied to humans--while cruelty feeds on the humanness of its victim, and indifference ignores it without negating it.  So, insofar as Capitalism is Chresmatistic, it systematically de-humanizes, though Marx tends to not focus on its harm to the beneficiary of Exploitation, perpetual dis-ease, as has been previously discussed.  Thus, the branding of Capitalists as advocating that 'Greed is Good' does not penetrate to the source of their ill.