Stoller:
But property rights are NOT an ideological 'weapon,' Bill---property rights are a MATERIAL relation. Ideologies FOLLOW material relations---not vice versa.Bill:
No. Property RIGHTS Are an ideological weapon. The distillation into enacting law provides the cement for the Material relations.
I think you've got the order wrong. FIRST come the relations, then the ideology.
The bourgeois overthrew feudalism's claim to elite ownership of the means of production; they did not question elite ownership of the means of production (think of slavery in the U.S. as the 'Declaration of Independence' was being drafted).
Ideology FIRST didn't have much effect there, now did it?
Obviously 'democracy' was promoted to those (the proletariat & peasantry) who ACTUALLY fought the bourgeoisie's wars FOR THEM . AND property rights (with the implication that there was plenty of property to go around...) was promoted to them as well.
But we KNOW that 'democracy' is a MEANINGLESS term unless we ask: Democracy for WHICH CLASS?
This still needs to be dealt with...
Democracy in the workforce is NOT democracy for the bosses of the workforce.
Until a NEW CLASS is installed in power, (bourgeois) elections are nothing but a cynical way to BLAME the disenfranchised voters for their LACK of meaningful choices in the first place.
Bill:
And underlying the threat of democracy was the potential articulation of Marx's concept of alienation - a concept quickly hurled into the garbage can once decisions about economic output, plant efficiency, surplus labor, etc. were removed from an exploited class.
Stoller:
I wasn't defending Stalinism, my friend.
Bill:
Good grief, was I suggesting that you were?
Seemed like you were. Sorry if I got that wrong...
Bill:
I thought you were defending attempts to introduce democratic restructuring - empowering trade unions etc. Democracy is a threat to Any privileged class. As an ideology it serves as a weapon. All "rights" are created and so used.
Yes, I'm talking about democracy. Democracy in the workforce; democracy regarding the means of production; democracy concerning participation in actually running the state.
But the property relations cannot stay as they are now.
Otherwise, it's just more liberal blather---like the type General George and his homeboys sold to the proletariat and the peasantry over two hundred years ago.
There must be ACTION to BACK UP the talk.
