Charles Brown wrote:
>
> CB: Yea, I have a bad habit of using the root "bank" in a
> sort of slang way for financialists of all sorts,
Yes, a bad habit that originated historically with the NSDAP and Otto and Gregor Strasser who argued that there was a difference between "productive" industrial capital and "parasitic" finance captial. Congratulations on replicating a core theme of fascist economics. Most socialists only made that mistake once around 1925.
>
> 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.
This concept is fifty years out of date. It was true in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but not since WWII. Try reading G. William Domhoff or Holly Sklar. Much wealth is inherited, but elite wealth has been spread around to preclude single families from being significant factors in all but a few cases. Now there is significant intra-elite competition concerning policy.
> 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.
>
Nonsense, the last thirty years of social science points to it being largely consensual and an unconscious process on the part of the 10s of thousands of upper class and upper middle class elites that carry out the policies that are arrived at through struggle among competing elite interests. What "central committee" of capitalism? Do you think the children of the Rockefellers and Morgans and Rothschilds sit in a basement room under Wall Street drinking bourbon and telling the Fed what to do? There is almost no difference between your analysis and that of the John Birch Society except you periodically throw in the word "worker." The JBS thinks a secret group of capitalist elites control the banks and the media. The main difference is that they want to protect the middle class and you want to protect the working class, but the basic conspiratorial premise is identical.
AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
-Chip