Well, these things are a matter of degree. In The Poverty of Philosophy Marx gives seven criteria for a group to count as a class (by way of explaining why the French peasantry weren't one); the passage repays study. It diminishes the cohesion of the RC in America that it is pervaded by a short sighted selfish mentality, and that reduces the degree to which the ruling elite counts as a class. But the group is self-consciously a class, even if short sighted. Remember W's remark quoted in F 9/11, "I see the haves and the have mores. Some call the elite. I call you my constituency." (Paraphrase.)
And to register a note of disagreement with Jim, the "power elite" he refers to are precisely the penumbra of far-sighted, forward thinking individuals, the "wise men," who can think beyond the next quarterly report are take in and synthesize different views of the class as a whole. The "organic intellectuals" of the RC, as it were -- some of them actual full fledged members who had wealth based on exploitation of labor, like John Foster and Allen Dulles or Paul Nitze, some of them merely trusted counselors, like Dean Acheson or Henry Kissinger, some more "traditional" types inhabiting the think tanks or university seats. That group can be a s much as part of the RC, even without vast ownership of productive assets, as the groups of intellectuals Marx says break away from the RC in times of crisis and join the proletariat.
Anyway, I agree with Doug that we are facing an unusual fractured RC now. I have thought so since the Reagan era, a period where I thought the lights were on but nobody was home. This, plus the absence of sharp working class or international opposition (as Charles says) weakens the compulsion to form and attend to groups of wise men, plus the current structure of the market encourages short term thinking and a watchus grabit & run mentality. Kevin Philips also thinks that the ascendancy of religious right that is awaiting the immanent Second Coming enhances short-sightedness, which it would.
But I don't think this means we have no RC -- just a suicidally short-sighted one. I read Diamond's Collapse with a horrified shock of recognition, despite his attempt to put an optimistic spin on things. And I normally agree with Doug about the glibness of the doomsayers and the astounding resiliency of US capitalism.
--- tfast <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
> Or more positively stated they were so successful
> about locking in the
> structural conditions to secure their reproduction
> they are now
> concentrating on accumulating capital.
>
> Travis
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >
> > No, the merely rich, the mere business class care
> about accumulating
> > capital. To be a proper ruling class, it has to be
> conscious of itself
> > as such. The people who agitated for the Federal
> Reserve and who
> > designed the post-WW II Bretton Woods architecture
> were a proper
> > ruling class. So were the people who led the
> crackdown of the 1970s
> > that culminated in Volcker and Reagan. I'm not
> sure we have one now -
> > and in part because they're too focused on
> accumulating capital to
> > worry about the conditions of their own
> reproduction.
> >
> > Doug
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