 Despite her critiques of oppression, prestige, and collectivity, in a polemical argument Weil is also critical of “revolution”, which for her refers to an inversion of forces, the victory of the weak over the powerful. This, she says, is “the equivalent of a balance whose lighter scale were to go down” (OL 74). “Revolution” in its colloquial or deterministic sense, then, has itself become an “opiate”, a word for which the laboring masses die, but which lies empty. For Weil, real revolution is precisely the re-organization of labor such that it subordinates the laborers neither to management (as in bureaucracy) nor to oppressive conditions (as in factory work). As she sees it, if revolution is to have meaning, it is only as a regulative, and not a positive, ideal (OL 53). In Weil’s adaptation of this Kantian notion, such a regulative ideal involves an attention to reality, e.g., to the present political and working conditions, to human conditions such as the struggle for power. Only in this way can it provide a standard of analysis for action: the ideal allows for a dialectical relation between a revolutionary alternative and present praxis, which is always grounded in material conditions. Freedom, then, is a unity of thought and action. It is, moreover—and not unlike in Hegel’s conceptualization—a condition of balanced relations to and interdependence with others (who check our sovereignty) and the world (which is limited and limiting). A freeing mode of production, as opposed to an alienating and oppressing one, would involve a meaningful relation to thinking and to others throughout the course of labor. When workers understand both the mechanical procedures and the efforts of other members of the collectivity, the collectivity itself becomes subject to individuals, i.e., means and ends are rightfully in a relation of equilibrium.