JonBenet's Reflection

Try to avoid garish and crude American trash mags if you can; fact is, you can't. We can't escape the horrible display of the exploitation of the murder of little JonBenet Ramsey. Since the spotlight has shined on an alleged killer, this story is impossible to avoid. It's everywhere. The question that comes to mind is; Why? 
 
The child was murdered. The same media that serve to sexualize children, to exploit them, are all agog now over the arrest of her alleged killer. But it is not JonBenet Ramsey they are concerned with. It is the murder of, as they say, the little "beauty queen". The real JonBenet was a little girl with all the same attributes of any. Naturally, she went along with the attention and the demands that she performed for the adults around her. She naturally and innocently found direction from the adults in her world. She had no way of knowing that she was being shamelessly exploited as a child sex object. Underneath all the grotesque tack, she was a real child who trusted the adults around her. Erase the tack, the paint and make-up, and we would naturally find a wonderful little girl. 
 
We can't blame everything on capitalism; not everything. But the exploitation of JonBenet Ramsey as well as the exploitation of her murder is married to capitalism. More generally, we can blame the cult of personality, the worship of tacky idols, and the drive to turn children into plastic people and to sexualize them for a buck. How capitalism owns the blame may not be as straighforward as we may think. It may be a little deeper, a little more complex, than the simple drive to make money. 
 
The Alienated Identity
 
It's a fairly safe assumption to suggest that the child would have grown, had she not been murdered, to learn to value herself as a commodity. 
 
To make the point, let's consider two opposing social poles. First, let's consider small hunter gatherer societies. We can also think of family, local community, or any intimate social grouping. In hunter-gatherer societies, human beings are valued for their intrinsic humanness. There may be small pecking orders of authority and so on, but even individuals that provide little or no product or services maintain value simply for being who they are. Just 'being' is qualification enough to be valued. The same is true of families. Babys and the old are given loving care and attention with no expectation of reciprocity. Human nature on its own is truly an honourable and compassionate phenomena. 
 
On the other end of that spectrum is capitalism. 
 
How humans are valued within the world of capitalist culture is rooted in the process of developing capital. From the get-go, all participants and processes are mere means to the end, which is profit. And in the process, humans learn to value only that which contributes to the acquisition of money. 
 
If we consider money itself, we may notice that it is without any tangible value. Its value is completely abstract. It has only exchange value and no use value. It is of the world of phantoms and illusions. It is not part of the tangible world of things and people. 
 
The relationship between money and identity and status is complex and it begins in the process of the manufacture of commodities. As commodities themselves are valued within this context for their potential to make profit - money, so too is the worker him or herself valued and commodified for exactly the same reason. To the extent that we accept this identity, we become alienated from ourselves. We also become alienated from other people and from the tangible world of things, family, and community. 
 
The aspect of the individual that is 'worker' is constrained, owned, exploited, and enslaved. But it is through this psychological construct that the human individual is most valued. He or she may or may not have a good credit rating, or a lot of money, or be poor. The difference has perhaps the greatest impact on who we are, how we get along, and especially, how we are valued in capitalist society. The worker has no choice but to sell his or her labour and time to an owner who has immense control over the workers life. 
 
Beyond that, the individual accepts and owns this key aspect as a defining characteristic of who he or she is. The worker is a cop, a plummer, a teacher, or a lawyer. It has tremendous impact on the identity of the individual. Aside from mere psychological affect, the role of the worker and his or her status in capitalist society has more tangible aspects. That is, depending on how much we make will mean whether we can do things and have things - or not. To be with money in capitalist society means that we are secure, free, and valued. People treat us well if we have money and display status symbols such as jewelry and expensive cars. On the other hand, if we are without it, the state will demand to know the intimate details of our lives and demand to know them in order to grant subsistence for ourselves and our children. There is no freedom for people that must rely on the dole in capitalist society. Poverty in modern capitalist society is brutal. 
 
There is a price we must pay for status; for buying into the face and role that capitalism has provided for us. That price is alienation. 
 
Like the ethereal phantom that money is, so is the identity that emanates from it. It is alienated from the world of human emotion, compassion, and human value. This identity is at odds with human value and will act in the interests of profit to the point actually harming or murdering people to that end. Unfortunately, there is no need to point out examples. We see them every day.