----- Original Message ----- From: "frank scott" <frank at marin.cc.ca.us> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 4:59 PM Subject: Re: power
> "...More discussion and argument
> by all means, but power and violence are the problem, not the solution."
>
> agree about violence, of course, but let's be careful about
> power...rather nice and necessary to have it, exercised democratically,
> and especially not exercised against people, or over people, but in
> common...the word can have many definitions, but lets be careful not to
> confuse it with oppresion and other things that are not inherent in
> power, but in its exercise...
> fs
====================
I find the distinction of power-over [coercive capacity either individual or institutionally backed -class, state etc.] vis a vis power-to [neo-Hegelian theories of positive liberty, Robert Hale -an under appreciated power-to and power-over theorist, Amartya Sen's "capabilities" approach, Foucault etc.] rather helpful. I was intending the first in the context given above. I think the whole anti-power discourse is clearly directed at the notion of power-over for the sake of enlarging the scale and scope of power-to. In the latter sense social expressions of dignity/dignifying behavior are forms of power.
Ian