[lbo-talk] Footnote: Power Elite/Ruling Class Re: A Major Division in the US Power Elite...

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Oct 2 12:02:39 PDT 2006


On 10/2/06, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Control of the mideast has been central to u.s. policy for 60 years, and
> the ruling class has rallied around that policy (in both active and
> passive ways). A change in that strategy would be prefigured by more
> active participation by more members of the capitalist class, including,
> as I say, even the Paris Hiltons. ???

Capitalists, when they really lose confidence in the politics or economics of a given country, take their money out of that country, aka capital flight. In this crucial respect, the US power elite's politics has yet to lose the confidence of (domestic and foreign) capitalists. If they did, the current account deficit (which increased $5.2 billion to $218.4 billion in the second quarter of 2006, according to the BEA, <http://bea.gov/bea/glance.htm>) would become a problem.

On 10/2/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 2, 2006, at 11:12 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > I think, using Yoshie's rough distinction between power elite and
> > ruling
> > class, that it is the _latter_ that should be subject to this debate.
> > Power Elite is _normal_ politics (analogous to "normal science")
>
> That's not Mills' definition, if such things matter to you.

This is the way Mills put it: "[T]hey [the power elite] are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment." It's clear that only a minority of the members of the capitalist class occupy such positions, even if we limited ourselves only to US capitalists. Hence it makes sense to distinguish the power elite, who actually run major political and economic institutions, most of whom are American, and the capitalist class (i.e., the ruling class) who have invested in the USA, the latter of whom are multinational.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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