the interests of those who have the power to control and manipulate the
other. Individuals are no longer seen as subjects or “ends” in and for them-
selves but now only as “means”, objects or “human resources” to be used
for the realization of another ’s purpose. Sociologically expressed, others have
meaning only in how they – as individuals, a social class, or a nation – can
be used to help realize the interests and goals of those who have the power
and wealth to enforce their will. There is no longer any sense of “commu-
nity” (“Gemeinschaft”– finding one’s autonomy in solidarity or covenant with
others) but only a sense of utilitarian proximity to the other that is condi-
tioned by space and time and strategic purpose – “Gesellschaft.”
In modern civil society, such an instrumental, strategic and autarchic ratio-
nality and praxis, expressive of the interests of the real social “subject”, i.e.,
the capitalist class, have become the dominant system imperative for the func-
tioning of a class driven social totality. The “masses” who populate the other
classes of this society are socialized into, and have to learn quickly, how to
“play the game” in the context of their class position for the purpose and
possibility of their own survival. Such “game playing” by the masses should
not be called “action” or “praxis.” The very notion of action or praxis implies
and requires a “subject,” who has the autonomy and power to give expres-
sion to itself willfully through such activity. Obviously, given the historical
and ever-increasing class inequality in modern civil society, such willful and
“owned” action belongs to the social domain of the capitalist class. The activ-
ity of the masses is systematically reduced to the operant conditioning of
behaviorism, through which the masses learn the benefits of adopting the
acceptable “behavior” of social conformity by imitating the instrumentally
rational actions of their masters. The social parameters set by capitalism and
its paradigm of domination in the form of the professed isolated subject/class
require all those within these parameters to conform themselves to the same
self-centered way of life as the social norm for the sake of their own survival.
“Methodological Individualism”^1
It is this very same positivistic, bourgeois, or more contemporarily named
“neo-liberal” paradigm of the solus ipse that produces the harmless sounding
The Notion of the Totally “Other” • 123(^1) Although it was his student, Joseph Schumpeter, who created the phrase “method-
ische Individualismus”, it was Max Weber who developed the theoretical meaning of
the phrase in his Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, Berkeley: