>Doug:
>
>> The ruling class hated the 1970s because it thought it was in danger
>> of losing the class war, or at least failing to win. That was the
>> reason for Volcker and the recession of 1980-82.
>
>But that only proves my point that the ruling class has the effective means
>of neutralizing public opposition, and thus do not need to buy public
>support as they used to (c.f. "machine politics").
The Volcker crackdown was, as Howard Baker said of the first Reagan budget, a riverboat gamble. They were trying to reverse all the concessions of the 1930s-1960s, and it wasn't a foregone conclusion they'd win. The NYC fiscal crisis was a dress rehearsal; as a NYT op-ed put it in 1976, if the gains of the 1960s can be rolled back in New York, the most difficult environment in the nation, then it could be done elsewhere. But it was an experiment.
But aren't you begging the question? You're assuming that the ruling class doesn't need to buy support because of the current state of popular non-mobilization. Should that change, everything would change.
Doug