> pms wrote:
>
> >Sort of puts Clinton's trial out there as a racist coup.
>
> Interesting story on the front page of today's New York Times reporting
> that a bunch of big campaign contributors gave the Republican leadership a
> talking-to yesterday for pushing impeachment. Interesting in itself as a
> piece of news, but also from the theoretical point of view - about who's
> behind the impeachment, and the role of money in politics. From the lead:
>
> <quote>
>
> ...<SNIP>..
>
> </quote>
>
> Sounds like the politicans, like corporate managers, have a degree of
> autonomy until they fuck up, when the owners come in to complain.
Two observations:
(1) This is pretty consistent with the picture that Domhoff has drawn over the years, distinguishing between the ruling class as a whole and the decision-making apparatus which is mostly a subset of that class, but which also recruits what amounts to up-and-coming managers from the (mostly upper-) middle class.
Domhoff is concerned, among other things, to explain how there can be quite a degree of seeming conflict and even individual autonomy within the political system without resorting to the pluralist model of policital power which he has opposed with a lifetime of work. This whole little drama seems like a perfect little illustration that he might include in some future work.
(Not leaving out, of course, Clinton's simultaneous role in doing the bidding of other/overlapping ruling class interest groups.)
(2) The specific dynamics -- politicians swept away on a stream of moral rhetoric that appeals more to the (prototypically) white Southern masses, rather than the (modern incarnation of the) Bourbon lords of real economic power -- recalls the 19th-century dynamic that gave rise to the "populist" style of racism which came back with a vengence in the mide-to-late 1950s as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum.
The white aristocracy would really have preferred an hierarchical ideology that made no distinction between black and white trash, but was quite willing to make the pragmatic compromise with the ideology of herrenvolk democracy, since it bore no resemblance whatsoever to actual democracy, and left them with virtually everything they wanted, anyway, with a bonus army of fiercely devoted "pawns in their game."
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
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