raghu wrote: >> 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.
Julio Huato wrote: > If the term power has any meaning at all, it must refer to the ability > to accomplish a purpose in and through our social relations. In other > words, ultimately, all human power is *labor power*, the *productive > power of labor*. In the last analysis, the productive power of labor > is the power of humans to transform nature into wealth, freedom, etc. > -- i.e. more power. Julio, you use two different meanings of "power" here. Marx's phrase "labor power" refers to the human ability to produce (or in AK Sen's lingo, a human capacity). This ability to produce may or may not be realized as actual labor (effort). On the other hand, the "productive power of labor" refers to the results of the use of labor-power as labor, i.e., the effectiveness of effort. So the first meaning of "power" refers to a capability and the second to effectiveness. There's at least one more meaning of "power," the one which raghu used and was at the center of the pen-l discussion: this is the common meaning -- associated with the political scientist Robert Dahl -- in which "power" means that person “A” gets person “B” to do what “A” wants. (To my mind, "A" might be a group rather than an individual.) Power may or may not involve coercion. The key role that power has in the normal workings of capitalism is that having sufficient money allows an individual capitalist to command labor and get it to create more money (surplus-value). There's also political power, etc. -- 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
