Analyzing Marx by Richard W. Miller;

Author:Richard W. Miller;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

BETTER THEORIES OF POWER

If social philosophy is to be truly helpful to social science, it should not just diagnose confusions, but suggest new directions. Understanding how the question of the ruling class has been begged does suggest new tactics and concerns. If political theorists are to take seriously the question of the extent to which there is a ruling class, they must connect descriptions of political structure with explanations of historical change. They must face the fact that disorder and repression have played an important role in the politics of all the Western democracies and have often been a part of processes leading to useful change. They must become aware of the factual assumptions behind the measurements and interpretations they make, not in order to pursue the chimera of methods independent of factual assumptions, but to avoid begging the question when rival hypotheses need to be compared. In sum, political theory, if concerned with the extent to which there is a ruling class, is more historical, more aware of the role of nonelectoral conflict, and less apt to end disputes over underlying theories on methodological grounds.

This expansion of the scope of research into power is to the good if the notion of a ruling class merely captures some significant phenomena left out of account by alternative measures of political power. In addition, there may be a more definite gain, an important fundamental hypothesis further confirmed and accepted. It may be at least approximately true that there is a ruling class in the United States and in other advanced industrial countries. The reader will no doubt have guessed that I think there is such a class, and that it is big business. I hope that the facts I have sketched and the specific studies I have cited make this claim plausible. Yet, though these facts and studies are not esoteric, when eminent and well-informed theorists occasionally confront the question of whether there is a ruling class in the United States, they beg the question through misinterpretation. A ruling-class hypothesis is supposed to imply routine and pervasive political intervention, “the hand of an economic ruling elite in every major domain of public activity.”22 Or it is said to require a conscious “conspiracy among . . . officials to finesse . . . discontent.”23 Or it is consigned to the scrap heap of untestable statements of faith “metaphysical rather than empirical.”24 I hope that the analysis of Marx’s theory in the previous chapter makes it clear that a live option is not tested if the idea of a ruling class is assessed in these ways.

Finally, a better understanding of the idea of a ruling class can help us to avoid begging a practical question. Every major movement for reform in the United States has involved people’s going beyond electoral politics and protected forms of expression. Within living memories, the tactics include the sitdown strikes and physical exclusion of strikebreakers through which industrial unions triumphed; the illegal demonstrations, many genuinely disruptive, and the ghetto

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.