[lbo-talk] ruling class

[Josh Narins]

> At 5:54 AM -0700 2/4/06, Mike Ballard wrote:
> 
> >Anyone can set up a business or a political party, just ask a member of the
> >Libertarian Party or even a Green. In fact, a successful political party 
> >tends
> >to be a business which supports business and in turn, successful 
> >businesses,
> >corporations and landlords support major political parties.  The ruling 
> >class
> >supports the major political parties.  It's in their class interests to do 
> >so.
> 
> 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.
> 
> >It is in their class interests to control the State.
> 
> 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.
> 
> > 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.

Well, multi-polar dictatorship, but yeah.
A few companies are slightly better.
Don't Southwest Airlines employees own the company or something? These
are rare exceptions, and I do not doubt that the economic overlords
actively work against such companies.


> > 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.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
> 
> 
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