> This is precisely the assumption I'm challenging. I disagree that
> electoral politics constitute the "largest stock of political power".
Challenging assumptions is good, but I didn't exactly say *that*. What I said or -- in any case -- what I mean is that national elections are an arena in which the largest stock of *concentrated* political power is disputed.
> If we define politics formally and broadly as the
> institution by which important social decisions are made, it is clear
> that most important decisions do not involve electoral politics (e.g.,
> Wal-mart deciding to rely on Chinese wholesalers and thereby putting U.
> S. manufacturing companies out of business). The notion that politics
> is tantamount to electoral politics is thus an effective ideological
> strategy for obscuring the actual means by which political power works
> in our capitalist society.
For clarity, I understand political power as a specific form of *social* power. And social power at its broadest is wealth. Or, more specifically, productive wealth. Or, if you prefer, ultimately, labor's productive power.
What, in my understanding, distinguishes political power from other forms of social power is that it is power deployed deliberately and immediately -- not for individual consumption, not for its own individual self-expansion (i.e. capital), but to prop up or dismantle specific social structures and, most prominently among them, production relations.
Political power is "extra-economic" power, i.e. power outside of the market sphere. It's relatively concentrated and organized. In normal times, it is *universal* in scope. It enjoys a large measure of social legitimacy and acceptance. Etc.
In my understanding, what you seem to be alluding to is not political power proper, but other forms of social power. No doubt, the most important social "decisions" affecting the lives of *most* people are not immediately political, but economic. Some of those are, indeed, personalized decisions (hiring or firing, selling or purchasing this or that, etc.), some of them are not decisions proper (e.g. raising or lowering wage rates or other prices, etc.), but they result rather from the aggregation of myriad individual decisions through markets.
I'm stating all this for clarity of communication. But I don't really want to get now into a dispute with you about the definition of politics. So, I have no qualm about "admitting" that, in my view and by far, the largest stock of overall social power is "the economy." And, in the economy, "the population" figures most prominently. And, in the population, more specifically, the working people. Under capitalism, the working people and other productive powers are appropriated by -- placed under the control and to the service of -- the capitalists.
The power scattered all over the economy, largely expressed as market phenomena, is n times larger than the power concentrated in the State.
But, in my view, that is not political power proper. Immediately, directly, Bill Gates is allowed to use his wealth for his own consumption or to make his personal estate even bigger, but he cannot tax people (monopoly power doesn't cut it) or wage wars or etc. He can influence legislation, policy making, law enforcement, and policy implementation, but he has to do it through the political channels: lobbying, campaign funding, outright corruption, etc.
So, I do claim that national elections is a political arena in which the largest stock of *concentrated* social power is disputed. Again, concentrated *and* -- I'm adding -- organized *and* universally vested *and* socially legitimized. So, I don't think it's an accident or a misunderstanding that modern socialists have historically focused, first and foremost, on growing as a political force, aiming to take over the power of the State.
I understand that capitalist life generates its own dissolution in every which way, that people get fed up with capitalist life in this or that manifestation, and that -- prompted by that, in their effort to meet their needs -- people locally, spontaneously develop a myriad social institutions that escape or erode or somehow limit the operation and effects of markets and capitalism. All that is to be encouraged. It's all local evidence that capitalism sucks and people reject it.
But that's precisely why politics is so key. In and by themselves, these initiatives will be fragile, because they lack -- to use Marx's term again -- the universality socially vested in money or capital (or "the market") or the State. So, those efforts can more easily be thwarted or dissolved. That's why, if those efforts are to survive, they need to be generalized, they must become universal, and that requires that they reshape themselves as political efforts, that they grow into political forces.
Take the resistance to the occupation of Iraq. If you're serious about it, you cannot limit it to individually dropping out, or protesting locally or even nationally. You have to dispute the making and implementation of foreign policy, the management of the military power of the country -- i.e. you have to enter electoral politics!
Again, State power is massive, concentrated, organized, universally vested social power. Concentration, organization, and universality compound social power. Electoral politics is too important to be left to the politicians alone. IMO, and I say this with all due respect, the fact that some people in the left, in rich countries for the most part, argue that socialism can be built without taking State power is a rationalization of the fact that they have remained politically marginal for generations. It's like Aesop's fabled fox dissing the grapes he couldn't reach.
Too long already and need to get ready for the day.