[iDC] viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

[Dmytri Kleiner]

Guido Sohne wrote:

 > Those with the power to make the rules set them up in their favor. We
 > will be more likely to have class mobility if inheritance is capped
 > and wealth accumulation is periodically deconcentrated into better
 > support for the middle and lower classes.

Political power is extension of economic power, the purpose of the State 
is to protect the privilege of property.

Inheritance can not be capped significantly, because the State is the 
servant of property, and thus will never do anything that threatens the 
system of enclosure and accumulation.

 > The difference exposes what I see as 'class', as a grouping of people
 > at some level of a hierarchy, whether natural (social and genetic
 > Darwinism) or contrived (hereditary or genetic exclusivity), operating
 > in their own interests. Probably I should be calling it something
 > else.

Class is used differently in different context, but in terms of looking 
at enclosure and accumulation, relationship to the mode of production is 
the most relevant as the question you are asking is a fundamental one of 
  weather labour can acquire rent-capturing assets without inheriting 
them. As a body, it can not.

 > Why not? Is it from lack of ability or will?

Because rent-capturing assets drive all other inputs to reproduction 
costs and are not generally sold or otherwise transferred below their 
fully capitalized value.

 > Theoretically, in a
 > democracy, the numbers favor the lower classes, so why don't they take
 > advantage of it to create more opportunities for mobility?

'Democracy' as it exists in the world today is nothing more than a 
legitimization ritual, much like the coronation of a King, or the 
ratification of an appointee of the Supreme Soviet.

Regardless of whether the legitimization ritual is thematically based 
upon Lockean property rights, Divine Right, or Dictatorship of the 
Proletariat, the State is not in anyway controlled by the audience of 
these rituals, i.e. the population, but rather by the power elite, who 
frame the entire context, provide all the candidates and choices, etc.

As the State is the guarantor of property rights and the provider of the 
force required to control productive assets at a distance, 
legitimizations rituals such as elections are mechanisms for the power 
elite to control the population.


-- 
Dmytri Kleiner <dk at telekommunisten.net>
robotnik, epicurean socialist, aspiring crank

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