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Pluralism, Marxism and Power

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As a key concept of study politics, power has complex definitions offered by different political ideologies. The essential definition for power is "the ability to make people (or things) do what they would not otherwise have done" (Mclead and Macmillan 2009 P 425). This definition has been modified by both pluralism and marxism into a new concepts and exercised in different ways due to the different politics views that two approaches believed. Universal desire sets itself up as a power to encourage one social class to maximize their specific objective interests. As the important marxism ideologist, Karl Marx criticized capitalism and alienation of power. The studies of Ludwig Feuerbach about alienation and religion inspired Marx to developed his theory of power which has been accepted by most of the following marxists. The idea of God pointed by Feuerbach for Marx’s view assumed that the nature of human being is "property-mad" and "acquisitive." The vision of God shows the best qualities of humanity, the ability to love, care, share and forgive which is the “alienated essence of humanity that has been projected onto an alien being” (Schecter 2011:402). According to Marx, once humans decided to accept this assumption, that made it is easy for legal theorists and bourgeois economists to benefit their own interest within a capitalist society (ibid). Hence, Hegel pointed out that within capitalist civil society, seeking for self-interest is entirely legitimate because the sphere is self-regarding (Held 1996:132). This situation of society gives the chance for power to come into play, because on the basis of Marx, power acquired by the faulty modes of knowledge functioned well. In this case the faulty modes of knowledge stand for the relationships between the owner of production and the proletarian class in capitalist society (Schecter 2011:403). The relationship has been accepted naturally as people in some way believe it is appointed by God. “The concept of power not only figures in, but lies at the heart of, the Marxian analysis of capitalism” (Isaac 1987:116). marxian view of power is interested in the theory of class relations, rather than looking at behavioral regularities. In fact, for marxists, the class relations of capitalism are closely related to the relations of domination. Hence in general it could be said that for the theory of marxian, who control the means of produ

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