> Which is a nod in the direction of
> _not_ splitting the capitalist class
> into fragments according to some
> quasi-marxist formula. If you
> separate off rentiers, for example,
> as a different class you obscure the
> inner structure of the class. Only
> about half of the working class
> actually has jobs. Less than half of
> the capitalist class has anything to
> do with managing capital.
On the contrary. To defeat the parasites politically, we need them divided. So we need to pit each fragment against the others, drive wedges in every little political, social, economic, cultural, demographic cranny of difference among them, turn them into social and political dust.
Doug wrote:
> I was fascinated to learn in Sven
> Beckert's history of the NYC
> bourgeoisie that fantabulous parties
> and gossip sheets were an essential
> part of that bourgeoisie's rise from
> the 1870s onward.
I'm reading David Laibman's book, Deep History: A Study in Social Evolution and Human Potential (SUNY Press, 2007), a book I strongly recommend to those interested in the relevance and actuality of Marxism.
This is in David's book (pp. 107-108):
"In different historical periods, the capitalist upper class has either flaunted its consumption, or concealed it from society at large. In the United States, the decades just before and after the turn of the twentieth century are often referred to as the "robber-baron" era; members of "society" (the wealthy social upper class) were given to lavish and conspicuous display of their wealth. This sort of display, when it occurs, is not merely incidental to accumulation. It plays a significant role in establishing incentives for upward mobility to the middle and professional classes, and indeed to the most talented individuals from the working class as well. This enforces ideological control over the upper- and middle-managerial strata. Ruling classes are rarely in a position to staff all positions of power in the varied institutions of society from among their own members [...], and therefore need mechanisms to assimilate "new blood" into their ranks, as well as to establish their ideological dominance and deprive the subaltern classes of potential leadership. Conspicuous consumption also establishes hegemony: it displays power, and signals to the dominated and exploited classes their own powerlessness, and consequently reinforces the sense of inferiority and inability at those levels. In short, upper-class levels of consumption play a major role in the reproduction of class power and the conditions for continuing accumulation.
"In the middle of the twentieth century, given the massive shift in the balance of class forces brought about by the Great Depression, and also by the fact of the Soviet challenge on the world scene, ruling classes in the capitalist countries retracted their conspicuous consumption to a large degree. From ostentatious urban palaces and highly visible restricted residential communities such as Grosse Point, Michigan (where the Detroit automobile elite resided), they withdrew into exurban and offshore locations not widely known or accessible to the population at large. This may also have resulted from the high rates of taxation on the upper levels of income instituted during the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidencies, which may have bit more deeply into upper-class consumption than into other uses of profit income.
"With the reversal of the balance of forces in favor of the ruling strata in the late twentieth century, and continuing into the twenty-first, and spurred by the retreat of progressive taxation and rising rates of exploitation and profit, capitalist consumption has increasingly come back into its own. This, however, raises the specter of what I will call, borrowing and redefining a term from Jürgen Habermas (1975), "legitimation crisis": the political fallout from the outrage experienced by workers at the sight of stretch limos, multimillion dollar duplex and triplex apartments, executive "salaries" many hundreds of times the wages of working people, and so forth. When levels of upper-class consumption greatly exceed what is functional for ideological hegemony and recruitment, that excess becomes dangerous for continued reproduction of capitalist domination, and invites the possibility of political insurrection. This then sets a maximum to the "consumption share" (the ratio of capitalist consumption to total net income), and defines one barrier to the critical tendency for the profit share to rise."