Any orthdox Marxist would point out that Marx is showing how Capital operates as a structure of political domination. The very separation of these terms is involved in a serious mystification of capital itself. Marxism is not a call for the redistribution of wealth (although it doesn't ignore this question), rather it is a call to change the social relations that produce those structures of inequality. No doubt many of our Marxist collegues will express this sentiment with more clarity, but I find these reductionist readings of the Marxist project to be extremely frustrating. Robert Wood
> I think the fundamental problem from the perspective of social
> liberation is not Capital but inequality of power. That the unjust
> distribution of wealth is in fact a symptom, though not a logically
> necessary one, of unequal distribution of power. One could imagine,
> as Plato did, an universally ascetic society that would also be a
> tyranny for most of its subjects. Ostensibly this was the case in the
> Soviet Union, though in reality of course the ruling establishment
> had nicer homes and were better fed than the average citizen.* I
> think that failure to recognize this fact is a fatal error that
> orthodox Marxists are obliged to make.
>
> My guess is, although this is an empirical matter not one that can be
> settled by argument, that until the problem of power is resolved
> there is little hope of resolving the problem of economics.
>
> Speaking of personal experience, I am much more resentful of having a
> manager telling me what to do at work than the fact I'm poorly paid.
> I'd suggest that "Office Space" is of a great deal more sociological
> significance than Das Kapital.
>
> *Actually the Soviet Union and its satellites were (and Belarus, Cuba
> and probably North Korea remain) massively egalitarian economically
> compared to their Western counterparts. It is also true that the USSR
> was relatively benign as an imperial power compared to the US-Western
> Europe. However these facts should not suggest that the Soviet,
> essentially Platonic, model provide an inspiration (in terms of
> political structure) to Western leftists.
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