ABSTRACT
If we wish not to be used by the words we use, we must be prepared to reinspect our tacit language routines, in order to be able to preserve or desert them in a rationally controlled manner. However, as soon as we probe further into the daily grammar of property and power, both concepts instantly demateri-alize. ‘Power, like love’, says Roderick Martin, ‘is a word used continually in everyday speech, understood intuitively, and defined rarely: we all know what the “power game” is’ (1977:35). In the entire lexicon of sociological concepts, Robert Bierstedt complains, ‘none is more troublesome than the concept of power. We may say about it in general only what St. Augustine said about time, that we all know perfectly well what it is-until someone asks us’ (1970: 11). ‘Power’, considers R.H.Tawney, ‘is the most obvious characteristic of organised society, but it is also the most ambiguous’ (cit. Lynd 1968:103). And Daniel Bell tersely concludes: ‘Power is a difficult subject’ (1968:189).
