>>> dhenwood at panix.com 10/04/00 02:57PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>Denial that banking elites are the main sector of the ruling class
>2000 must mean you are Rip Van Winkle. Wake up.
It's the secrecy part that's a problem for me, and the narrowness of your definition of elites. A relative handful of financiers and industrialists own and control the U.S. capital stock. But we've got a pretty good idea of who they are and how they think. And it's more people than could fit into even a large conference room.
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CB: Yea, I have a bad habit of using the root "bank" in a sort of slang way for financialists of all sorts, which you sharpened me up on before.
As to the lack of secrecy, I have no doubt that "you" have a good idea about who they are, but most people don't. So, for the working class, the People, the great mass of folks, it is a secret. Most people think Clinton and the various government officials are running things, and they are not. They are agents of the ruling class, who are the principles.
I have been thinking, do any left economists do charts of the main owners , with family trees, etc. ? The Morgan Group, the Rockefeller Group, etc. I recall you recently remarked that a high percentage of wealth source can be attributed to inheritance. There should be a basic left economic "who's who" of capital book that is updated regularly.
On the fitting into a large conference room, yea, but even though this is a ruling _class_, so numbering in the 100,000's, doesn't it have a sort of central committee/board of directors to carry out its business ? An e-mail list or something ? In other words, something of a representative action group ( I mean above national and local states as "executive committees") ?
On the secrecy further, I kind of think part of the genius of the bourgeoisie as a ruling class is that it is comfortable with being inconspicuous, literally _private_. This makes it a less easily definable target than ruling classes that flount their wealth and power. I could even throw something in about the personification of the corporation, as a fake or disguising body for this breed of rich. They are hidden behind the corporate veil, and all.
I know Marxism encourages analysis of the system rather than plots. But Marxism also recognizes that because ruling classes are always minority elites, they depend upon greater class consciousness than the classes that they exploit to retain their rule. The "greater class consciousness" consists in part of communicating wth each other and knowing that everybody communicating has class interests in common against the exploited class, ruling class common interests that in critical junctures and structures must unite them over their differences and competitions. "Conspiracy" has too much of a conotation of temporary to describe it. But it is not predominantly an unconscious process among people who are anonymous to each other. The "central committee" and its subcommittees do hatch specific plots , as well.
As to the Fed, that could be directed by a special subcommittee of the "central committee", although Greenspan may not need much handling.