On Jun 6, 2007, at 10:56 AM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> The interests and power of the capitalists are the
> gravitational mass around which government, law, and
> social structure are warped in capitalist society.
> Their core interests are unchallengeable short of
> major social upheaval, whereas it is not even 100%
> clear what the core interests of the PMMC are, and
> maybe they are not, unlike the those of capitalist
> class, unitary.
Riffing off Mills, I've been thinking lately that the American PMC's (I'd prefer to leave out the middle, because it's confusing - the people I'm thinking of are in, say, the 75th to 95th percentiles of the income distribution) political influence is mainly expressed through Congress, which is a secondary branch of the federal government. The executive branch is the branch of the capitalists/ ruling class/power elite, as Marx first argued in that famous quote about the executive committee. All the divisions in the PMC are visible in the legislative branch - for every Tom Tancredo there's a Chuck Schumer, etc.
Doug