Pels Dick. Property and Power in Social Theory

London: Routledge, 1998. — 328 p.In social and political theories of class inequality and stratification property
and power perform a key role. However, theorists have yet to clearly define
these concepts, their mutual boundaries and their scopes of application.
Moreover, a ‘primacy puzzle’ remains unsolved: is power ultimately dependent
upon property, or property upon power? Which is primary, which derivative?Dick Pels seeks answers to the property/power puzzle by undertaking a
broad historical inquiry into its intellectual origins and present-day effects.
He re-examines the increasingly misleading terms of the debate between
property and power by placing the traditional controversy within the
framework of intellectual rivalry. He traces the intricate pattern of rivalry
between the two concepts through a series of case studies, including:Marxism vs. anarchism
the fascist assertion of the primacy of the political
social science as power theory
the managerial revolution
the knowledge society and the new intellectual classesHaving examined knowledge as property-and-power, Pels elaborates a radical
and reflexive theory of intellectual rivalry.Property and Power in Social Theory unravels the dialectics of social-scientific
dichotomies and provides a novel and informative way of organizing
twentieth-century social theory. This work makes a valuable contribution to
sociological theory and to the history of thought.Dick Pels is Professor of the Social Theory of Knowledge in the Faculty of
Philosophy at the University of Groningen. He is also scholar in residence at
the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research.