Julio Huato wrote: >>> Count me among those "power-hungry" people. >>> >>> Working people must develop an intense appetite for power.
me: >> obviously, I meant people who want personal power for themselves to >> promote their careers, etc. I was not talking about the class as a >> whole. raghu: > Power, if it has any meaning at all, must refer to control by one > human being over another. It makes no sense at all to talk about > "power" held by a class as a whole. Of course, it is a matter of definition (and "power" is one of those words that's difficult to pin down, along with "pornography"). Suppose we use the standard meaning, i.e., to refer to the power of one individual. That means if the working class as a whole is organized democratically, it can act "as if it were one human being" and thus have "power." But "power" doesn't have to be that of an individual. The way capitalism works (its structure and "laws of motion") in effect give the capitalist class as a whole "power," i.e., the power to dominate and exploit workers. This might be thought of as the power of abstract capital, i.e., the power shared by all individuals who have the characteristics that capitalists share as a class. If we wish, we might think of this as the power of an abstract individual (who Marx called "Moneybags"). To different degrees, individual capitalists each share in this class power: just owning sufficient capital gives an individual the ability to share in the booty extracted from the working class. However, in a different social situation, e.g., one in which proletarianization of labor is not general (or after the workers take the power away from capitalists), the individual with capital may not have that power. -- Jim Devine / "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." -- John Buchan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
