>>> Robert Wrubel <
Charles Brown : ^^^^^^^^^
Not exclusively. The ideas of the ruling class can "rule" through unconscious structures, and economic, not extra-economic, coercion; and not through secret or diabolical conspiracies of the ruling class. Although, what about the Straussians and Neo-Cons ?
^^^^
The other point is that the "capitalist class" is not a single entity, and individual capitalists, or capitalist nations, don't always have the same interests, follow the same policies, or think alike. Inflation and currency devaluation terrifies some and works for others, e.g.
BW
^^^^ CB: I agree with this. There are "levels of issues". There might be disagreements between capitalists or groups of capitalists on issues at the levels you mention. During the era of WWI there were very big differences between national groups of imperialists to the extent that they sent millions of their workers to war against each other - inter-imperialist rivalry, and divided and re-divided the world of colonies. I guess when I think about it, the imperialists were "united" on the issue of workers from different nations being so sharply divided as to commit mass murder against each other according to nationality ( Workers of different nations _really_ divided and disunited).
On the fundamental issue of whether the capitalist system should be ended and replaced with socialism, we might guess or hypothesize or infer that there is a high percentage of agreement ( active or passive) among the ruling class.
On this point, I usually guess or hypothesize or infer that for the capitalists to continue to rule as a class there must be greater unity of the capitalist class than there is of the working class on the critical issues of class conflict. That's my " law of relativity of internal class unity between ruling and ruled classes." That's why our slogan is "workers, _unite_ !" and the rulers rule by keeping us divided.
By the way, the ruling class is easier to keep united because it is much smaller than the ruled class. In general, ruling classes are elite minorities of the population
>From this we can deduce another hypothesis. An issue that capitalists
as a whole class must be substantially united on is keeping the working
class divided.
To keep this from being a mass ,and thereby unwieldy, conspiracy, we might say that not all the capitalists have to consciously and actively agree on the critical class conflict issues, but they just must not actively oppose their class conscious leaders. A lot (most ?) of them aren't into politics. They leave that up to their leaders/vanguard.
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