★ラッセル協会講演(録音):東宮隆「ラッセルの権力論」 第2巻第5章 テレグラフ・ハウス時代末期(承前)
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My next piece of work was Power: A New Social Analysis. In this book I maintained that a sphere for freedom is still desirable even in a socialist state, but this sphere has to be defined afresh and not in liberal terms. This doctrine I still hold. The thesis of this book seems to me important, and I hoped that it would attract more attention than it has done. It was intended as a refutation both of Marx and of the classical economists, not on a point of detail, but on the fundamental assumptions that they shared. I argued that power, rather than wealth, should be the basic concept in social theory, and that social justice should consist in equalization of power to the greatest practicable degree. It followed that State ownership of land and capital was no advance unless the State was democratic, and even then only if methods were devised for curbing the power of officials. A part of my thesis was taken up and popularized in Burnham's Managerial Revolution, but otherwise the book fell rather flat. I still hold, however, that what it has to say is of very great importance if the evils of totalitarianism are to be avoided, particularly under a Socialist regime. |