[Events] Sociology Seminar, This Wednesday 2-3pm, CG053

[Lee.Monaghan]

SOCIOLOGY SEMINAR 
 

Wednesday, 21st April, 2-3pm, CG053 

Capital Accumulation and the Historical Decline of Liberal Individualism.

Dr. Micheal O'Flynn

Department of Sociology, University of Limerick.

 

 

The concept of 'the individual' as an independent source of inherent drives and desires, and/or as a self-contained bearer of rights anterior to the state and society, has been a feature of Western social thought for at least three hundred years. The assumptions and principles of liberal individualism (concerned with the freedom of 'the individual' so conceived), along with the political concept of the abstract individual itself, grew out of early bourgeois struggles to establish, consolidate and maintain the set of socio-economic relations we now call capitalism. Of late 'the individual' is failing to serve its political social function. The continuous transformation of the capitalist system, its tendency toward monopoly, its accelerating extension of commodification into the remaining global commons, particularly into the realms of knowledge and culture, undermines the social function of the very ideology used to rationalise the underlying processes. The increased subordination and/or elimination of the owner-entrepreneur means that increasingly coercive measures are required to facilitate the extraction of surplus value, and claims to represent 'the individual' can offer little in the way of legitimation. Since current arrangements make it increasingly difficult to represent the 'freedom of capital' as the 'freedom of the individual', liberal individualism (in its 19th century form at least) is in terminal decline. Many of its central tenets have been abandoned and as this paper argues, these will never again be embraced by the representatives of capital, crucially because liberal individualism can no longer credibly represent the needs of either industrial or finance capitalism in a favourable light

 

Seminar convenor:

Dr. Lee F. Monaghan 
Senior Lecturer 
Department of Sociology 
University of Limerick 
Ireland

tel: 00353(0)61-213346

e-mail: lee.monaghan at ul.ie

http://www.ul.ie/sociology/lee.monaghan.html 

 

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