this idea that we are contractual in our relationship with ourselves is historically specific. You have relations of mutual obligation as far back as the odyssey, and you have something like what this is saying in there too, but it isn’t quite like this.
It’s not until until the breakdown of the feudal order and the legal framework that emerges with modern states and the capitalist mode of production that people start thinking like this
It makes sense, since what defines like 99% of our lives (excepting people for whom we work or who lend out money to make a living or who are landlords, investors, or something else that’s economically parasitic) is the contract we’re sort of forced into entering into to sell our labor for what we need to live
But I think what is way more metaphysically and ethically exciting is the possibility that we might organize society in a way that lets “the free development of each” be the “precondition for the free development of all”. Right now, the way you live your life is only up to you when you’re not working, and even that is organized socially to make you able to work again later. Imagine what it would be like if that wasn’t the case, and we devoted time and resources to what we collectively need, i...
nstead of what makes money and what middle class people can buy
