[lbo-talk] Corey Robin on AJE on Bluestocking panel

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at aapt.net.au
Wed Nov 16 13:35:20 PST 2011


At 12:40 PM -0500 16/11/11, c b wrote:


>[...]Also, the government is
>subordinate to the private sector the bourgeois. The bourgeois, not
>the Congress and President ,are the Top Political Dictators.

Its important not to get muddled about this. The capitalists class are distinctly economic dictators, not political dictators. They exercise political power as well, but that is secondary. And they do not by any stretch monopolise political power. They pointedly do not act as political dictators.

Its crucial to recognise that it is economic power, control over the means of production, the power to direct what gets produced under what terms etc, where the capitalist class exercise a dictatorship.

That economic dictatorship affords enormous political influence of course. Whether through straight out blackmail, for instance the recent Quantas dispute in Australia, where the airline suddenly grounded its entire fleet worldwide without notice, in order to blackmail the Australian government into taking a particular action against Qantas workers. Or less overtly, the capitalist class exercises political influence every day by reminding us that they "provide jobs". In other words, they control the means of life which the working class depend on.

This is unfettered dictatorial economic power. It is not exercised through organs of the state. It is the primary means of ruling over the working class, it is the repression that workers are subject to every day of their lives. The political repression that political activists like us prattle on about and are obsessed about is something most people are not affected by.

This is not, in other words, Syria or Egypt, where political repression is the immediate concern.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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