[lbo-talk] ruling class

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Mon Apr 3 03:39:53 PDT 2006


Bill Bartlett wrote:

And if the Greens, or the Libertarian party, were more successful, the ruling class would buy whatever influence they could with them too. But its only influence, not control. In the final analysis, the working class have the power to sweep them all out and elect someone new. That's control.

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Bill...in the FINAL analysis, the working class *could* make a social revolution. If we had ham, we'd have ham and eggs, if we had eggs. The working class creates Capital. If the workers downed tools worldwide for a week, the revo would be won. Nothing would move. Nothing would be created, not even the poltical power of the ruling class.

At this stage of the class struggle (the here and now), the ability to buy influence is pretty much synonomous with the ability to control. The capitalist class buys our time and skills everyday we go to work for them. They also buy their politicians. The State is theirs, just as the economy is. That's political-economy. One can separate the two in one's mind, but not in the reality of everyday life.

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As I said, >It is in their (capitalist) class interests to control the State.

To which you replied: But the state is controlled by politicians elected (in the main) by the working class and the capitalist class are only a tiny percent of the voters, so they can't exercise direct control of the state. However the capitalist class do own the economy, its their personal property.

**** Mike B) says:

Successful polytricksters in a bourgeois democracy are, for the most part, treated as employees of the capitalist class and, for the most, they act like servants, at least the ones who don't already have millions and billions in cash to call their own. Granted, the latter is more the case in the USA than in Australia. I think it's millions for Congress and a billion for the Senate in the USA. Still, I look around and watch the pollies of the bourgeois democracies of the world work. I've never seen one come out in support of a working class strike. Perhaps, I've missed a few events. That's quite possible. But, such behaviour is not the norm. Bourgeois democracy a quid pro quo arrangement between the politicians and their buyers : one does not bite the hand which feeds one.

Sure the capitalist class own "the economy", but even there we 'enjoy' nuances.

After all, we are not chattel slaves, we are wage-slaves and our time is only owned as long as we consent to it being owned i.e. we can quit and look for work elsewhere while we sleep under a bridge.

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Mike B) wrote < followed by Bill:


> The overwhelming majority of the electorate are treated and act as consumers
of the commodified political process.
>But consumers no more control the political process in a bourgeois
>democracy than wage-slaves control the process of commodity production
>under capitalism.

That's not true though is it? The electorate is free to elect anyone it chooses, however workers aren't free to elect new bosses. The manufacture of goods and services isn't a democracy. The economy is a totalitarian dictatorship.

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The electorate is as free to choose which pre-selected polytrickster to vote for as much as they are free to choose to buy a Ford or a Yugo.

I agree with you that workers are not free to elect their bosses. Capital is a bureaucratically imposed social relation.

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First Mike B), then Bill B:


> After all, if there is a ruling class, there is a ruled class--even
>in Australia. ;P

There's no argument from me about there being a ruled class, The argument I'm making is about how the ruling class rule us. They rule through their ownership of the economy, not their ownership of the state. Its important to understand that clearly if we're to do anything about changing it. Because your interpretation implies that the capitalist class would be defeated if working class interests merely democratised the state. My interpretation suggests that this would be useless, that emancipation requires the democratisation of the means of production.

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Essentially, I agree with you Bill. But....I agree that the capitalist and landlord classes rule most of us and that most of us are wage-slaves. They rule us because of their ownership of "the economy", which includes their ownership of our skills over periods of time and their ownership of the Earth (natural resources). All of this 'ownership' has to be legalized by the State, which of course, has the power of force and violence to back up its legal codes. And, I would argue that although a class conscious proletariat could easily defeat an already class conscious capitalist class at the polls, it could not defeat the cap class in reality, concretely, except by organizing to take, hold and operate the means of production for themselves i.e. 'democratically'. This level of class conscious organization would affect very negatively the ability of the capitalist class to order their hired wage-slave enforcers in the State to shoot their brothers and sisters. But, that's another argument....

Hi-ho, Mike B)

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