``..I hope people have read Doug's brilliant preliminary essay on the ruling class in the new LBO...'' ad
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Well, I just got around to it this morning (Sat. 16th). And yes, hurray Doug. (I am remiss in my subscription fees as usual..soon to be remedied) I read the essay as asking, Who Rules America---with its note to William Domhoff. My edition dates from 1967. My copy has a personal history, a little note on the inside jacket. It was given to me by the older brother of a friend who was part of FSM with Michael Tiger and later went to Boalt with him... and told me the story of Tiger's rejection by Douglas. Yes an aging yellow paperback carries all that with it. Well and there's a bunch of Jewish stuff, leg of lamb dinners, lots of books, prints of Orozco on the walls, half drunk stories of the old man from the Abraham Lincoln brigade, Hollywood HUAC hearings, the SF City Hall steps, heros, villians, turn coats, courage, personal ruin, Torilla Flats, flamenco guitar, Josh White, Mississippi Freedom riders... It all pours over me tonight. Good people, great times---all gone.
I am wondering how much was revised by 1983 as it now seems the 70s were a critical transitionn period between the post-WWII era and our own rotten post 80s.
``By controlling every major opinion-molding institution in the country, members of the upper class play a predominant role in determining the framework within which decisions on important issues are reached.'' Domhoff
Let's just grant that statement as fact, and then reverse wire it, so that by listing the known to be important opinion-molding institutions, another list, the new upper-class drops out with names, which can then be researched. The trick is to pick out the institutions and figure out how they function internally so that the concrete movers and shakers can be identified. Maybe the social register was an quick and dirty method that once worked, but may now fail---as Doug points out in his essay.
I would suggest some institutions and some changes of emphasis amoung those institutional categories. First of all is the rise and proliferation of the righwing think tank industry. For example, the Olin Foundation---a personal favorite of mine, after I discovered that the whole move to push the Greek and Roman classics (a la the Bernal controversey) was funded by them to promote the necon agenda in education under the absurd rubric of a return to traditional values. Say what, jive motherfuckers? Since when was the US ever interested in ancient history? Oh, nevermind.
These new think tanks were modeled on the old academic-expert-filthy-rich elite (say RAND) where most of the military-industrial-complex policy apparatus forged US foriegn policy and domestic policy---giving the latter a slightly liberal ring---a sort of legacy of the much older Rockefeller foundation which attempted to compete in private sector terms with the federal government New Deal reforms and their high end policy whiz kids.
Anyway what shifted between the 1967 edition of Domkoff and now was not the reliance on think tanks for organizing coherent national policy, or the general emphasis on serving the rich while talking nice humanistic sounding crap to the rest of us----but the actual people who populated this new-old industry of opinion makers. These will be among the new ruling elite--well by definition. The change of personnel reflected a change in the quality of mind, and quality of interest for a changed elite.
There is another sort of internal shift of power. At one time the giant public universities used to contribute a great deal to the national discourse of policy and public mind and were a key liberal influence. The public universities in California, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Pennslyvania, even Texas. These universities supplied the local state power structures with policy and adminstrative personnel who actually ran the governing apparatus of their respective states. In the 1980s most of these public university systems were greatly effected by the wave of tax cuts to public institutions and suffered a great decline in both their influence and their production of liberal policy initatives, studies, and effectiveness. Instead what rose to replace them were the private elite universities like Stanford and the east coast wonders like Harvard and Yale. While these were always influencial, with the post-WWII rise of college educated masses, the elite schools fell behind temporarily in their postion of traditional influence due probably to a simple numbers game and a war of attrition. There were just more experts, more smart people interested in public policy, reform, social issues, coming out of the public university systems---and more importantly these public universities were made available to a whole class of people who could never have afforded a college education before WWII. Well, like me for example. The point here is that the underlying class background of a significant number of potential policy makers were not from elite schools, were not themselves members of any elite and in fact were from a middle to working class backgrounds.
The point here is that there was a shift back to the traditional suppliers of the elite intellegencia. The importance of this shift back is given even greater push since most of the high end financial institutions also drew heavily on the same elite institutions---in effect compounding the drive away from a liberal, quasi-socialist inspired democratic reform spirit of the 50s-60s.
The whole rise of neoliberalism as the new political economy answer to what remained of the fading post-Vietnam industrial rust belt of the greatest generation (WWII vets) is a great indicator of this drive to resusciate an almost empty imperial hull.
Who the fuck were those fresh scrubbed assholes anyway? All the jack-off, jive motherfuckers who waltzed into the USSR in the wake? Where the hell did they come from? Fucking Harvard economics, public policy, and other suck-my-dick little yuppie scum---with their bright smiles and vicious minds like David Brooks for example. God I loath these guys. Their little chuckles and gosh and golly ways, make me turn to insane levels of violent fantasie. How about axe murder, dude?
Stop Grimes. You've had enough. Okay. Okay. I'll be good.
So as I remember Domkoff outlined a whole institutional network of academies, think tanks, and executive branch revolving doors populated with old elites like Harriman---as the opinion makers. These were replaced with the new wave neoliberal scum from the east coast elite academies, their wall street entreperneurs-financiers, the new south and west coast quasi-criminal racketeers of big oil, big agri-buzz, and lots of real estate scam artists that Nixon and later Reagan, and now Bush II brought them. This shit moved to DC and stayed there to work their way into the next administration, and the next and the next.
There is a lot of stinking turds to dig up in Washington DC itself---one of the most class ridden cities I have ever visited. Hate it, loath it, hope desparately it is burned to the ground someday--shut-up Chuck. What a foul, slimy, jerk ridden place. Even the Cuban and Jamacian cab drivers are into the class thing. Very lousey city. Completely stuck on itself. The whole place is Robert E. Lee's plantation... mint julips, y'all, and thank you ever so kindly, Mister Charlie Grimes... Fucking swamp, flies, heat, humidity you can cut with a knife. Makes me gag. So let's not forget Washington is the fucking South---and every opinion maker in the world goes there. That disgusting place counts big time for how we got to were we are.
So just for background, I would seriously consider spending some significant time in DC doing some public archives research---enough to hate youself for being there. Just for starters, the water tastes like it came from a tolite. Go to the so-called cultural events like flag day or whatever. That that place is the capital of this country is such an atrocity, it is simply staggering. Bess Truman was absolutely right on. Fuck Washington. I am outta here. So long sucker...
What it really reminded me of was Lubbeck, Texas another shit hole place. Or Atlanta's sprawlling suburbs, not much different than Alexandria. Our National Intelligence lives in Alexandria---think on that. The last time I was in DC I was choking to death to get out. Some eighteen hours after going to Dulles, I finally arrived in SFO, the clean grey Pacific winds were blowing hard, all the colors were bleached white, god, I was back in the world again. Traffic, bridges, human beings everywhere, and not a cop in sight, a place where everybody was nobody.
Okay, focus. Opinion makers. Academia, media, political influence, the terrible stupidity of regional or provincial minded people who inhabit the corridors of power.
I've lost it, sorry Doug. I would also go spend some time in the midwest in a small city, just to feel where the heartland is---or what is reputed to be heartland. Then to one other place on the Mexican border, Texas, Arizona, or southern California---to get a grip on what Carlos Fuentes called Mezzoamerica. This should connect you to a hard core working class American that nobody seems to see at all. Sappy Mexican polka music, new pickup trucks, limes, tequila, religion, dust, leather, urine, adobe, jeans and western stuff, lots of local tragedy, shootings, kidnappings, INS raids, fat cops, maybe wonder over the border into the manquiladora sectors....
The theory here is that the bottom reflects the top in somekind of twisted mind game, so that you can see the top more clearly. Take lots of pictures and look at them later, faces, light, textures, animals, empty streets, shadows and light---that great southwestern light. Hard, sharp, cutting, empty in the west. But it goes all blurry near the ocean, say the near the Gulf, maybe Brownsville. Another empty place.
Well on the theory that who rules America, is also a question about just exactly what do they rule?
Good luck
CG