[lbo-talk] ruling class

[Miles Jackson]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> Miles Jackson wrote:
> 
>>  The only interest the ruling class must share is accumulating capital.
> 
> 
> 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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> 

Okay, I'm confused.  According to Marx, the bourgeoisie are "in power" 
in capitalist societies, and they are clearly constituted as a class 
that "overthrew feudalism and monarchy to make society into bourgeois 
society" (Pov. of Philosophy).  Thus, in a capitalist society, the 
bourgeoisie are the "ruling class", and we clearly have one now.  --I 
think my confusion hinges on the definition of "ruling" in a large and 
complex society.  For me, put simply, you have the capital, you get to 
make (and break!) the rules.  Creating elaborate new political 
mechanisms (Fed, Bretton Woods) is not the defining characteristic of 
the ruling class.

Miles