I think both of you should reconsider raghu's initial argument that power means power over people. A successful strike does _not_ give the workers power over the capitalist owners; it changes the decisions those owners make by changing the conditions under which the decisions are made. You can call that power over peole but phrasing it that way is misconceived. The power the working class desires is the power to abolish itself as a working class and thereby abolish capitalism and capitalists. Ragu can reduce that to power over people if he wants to, but I think it's silly and misleading.
If workers (organized or not) in a given workplace can make that workplace unpleasant for a supervisor who tries to enforce some irritating regulation, and as a result he/she lays off, again you can reduce that to power over people, and again I think it is misleading and silly. Carrol Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 5:30 PM To: Progressive Economics; Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] The austerity debate 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. me: >> 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. raghu: > Fair enough. I should amend my original statement slightly to "Power, > if it has any meaning at all, must refer to control by one > human being or group of human beings over another." me: >> 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."<< > No, this is logically incoherent. Power is not an object that can be > possessed. It is a relation between a subject and an object. ... > The "working class" cannot "have power". If it did, over whom would it > have this power? But can't the working class as a whole (if organized democratically) refer to a "group of human beings" that has control over another (capitalists, etc.) If so, it has "power" in the sense of raghu's definition. That is, the working class would have power over the capitalists. (This theoretical situation is sometimes called the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," though in practice that phrase usually refers to the "Dictatorship of the Party," violating its original meaning for Marx. The Party Dictatorship uses the rhetoric of Proletarian Dictatorship in an effort to legitimize its rule.) In a socialist or communist system (getting beyond the Dictatorship of the Proletariat), there would be no capitalist class, so raghu's point makes a lot of sense. Power relations would be different. The collective of the working class would have power over the individuals of the working class, while a democratic system would maintain the power of the individuals over the collective. (By the way, this vision of "different power relations" is similar to the view that liberals believe that is -- or should be -- approached in our current society: the state has power over individuals, but democracy gives the individuals power over the state. What they miss is the way in which capitalist power systematically tilts the democracy -- and the state -- in their favor.) -- 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 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
