ABSTRACT
In Karl Marx, the analysis of the form of the subject follows directly from the analysis of the commodity form. The commodity is a thing in which the concrete muldplicity of use-values becomes simply the material shell of the abstract property of value, which manifests itself as the capacity to be exchanged with other commodities in a specific relation. The idea of the isolated and self-contained nature of the human personality, the 'natural state' from which the 'conflict of freedom to infinity' follows, corresponds exactly to commodity production, where the producers are formally autonomous, linked only by the artificially created legal system. Legal fetishism complements commodity fetishism. Only in commodity production does the abstract legal form see the light; in other words, only there does the general capacity to possess a right become distinguished from concrete legal claims. Private property becomes perfected and universal with the transition to commodity production, or more accurately, to capitalist commodity production.
