[lbo-talk] ruling class

[Miles Jackson]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> 
>> I'm not sure that the existence of the ruling class
>> requires agreement on common interests (much less
>> being right about them), as opposed to, e.g., common
>> culture, solidarity, broadly shared values, simialr
>> positions wrt to productivea ssets, and the like.,
>> After all, the pre-WWI ruling class had no clue and
>> fairly little agreement aboyr what was in their common
>> interests, but surely constituted a class.
> 
> 
> The pre-WW I ruling class agitated to created the Federal Reserve. It 
> was maybe their formative experience.
> 
> Doug
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> 

But Justin has a good point here: whether or not they consciously 
share interests, the ruling class is the ruling class, due to their 
position in the social structure.  The only interest the ruling class 
must share is accumulating capital.  If we're trying to understand 
capitalism as a social system, the psychology doesn't have to get more 
complicated than that.  --Now, if we're interested in the psychology 
of members of the ruling class (say, as a person might be fascinated 
with cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder or dissociative identity 
disorder), that's a quite distinct and different research topic.

Miles

Miles