[lbo-talk] Leninist/Maoist Finance?

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at dodo.com.au
Sun Jan 8 17:33:37 PST 2006


At 7:53 PM -0500 8/1/06, Charles Brown wrote:


>>If the working class were the ruling class, who would they rule over?


>^^^^
>CB: The bourgeoisie. They still exist , especially with state power in other
>countries.

But why and in what sense would the capitalist class still exist? Why not just expropriate the means of production? And if the means of production is expropriated, in what possibly way can the capitalist class be said to still exist? Without their ownership of the means of production and the special power and privilege that this affords them, former capitalists are capitalists no more. They are no longer a separate class in any meaningful way.

So the capitalist class would not still exist. Unless the working class, despite its power, chooses to retain a capitalist system and chooses to submit to capitalist bosses, in which case the working class would not be a ruling class in any meaningful way.

So it seems completely meaningless to speak of the working class as a ruling class. There would have to be other classes over which they are ruling, but why would a ruling class do all the work while allowing a subject class to do no work? The whole notion is preposterous.


>Take Cuba. The Cuban bourgeoisie are still trying to take Cuba over ( from
>Miami). The Cuban socialist state rules over them, preventing them from
>taking Cuba back over.

The "Cuban bourgeoisie" to which you are referring is not "Cuban", since they mostly live in America and in the main are not "bourgeoisie", in the sense that most of them aren't capitalists either. And of course the Cuban working class is in no sense ruling over these people.


>The Cuban state also rules in defense against the U.S. capitalist state.

That is irrelevant to the issue.

Bill bartlett Bracknell tas



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