(Chuck Grimes)
``..We've had a series of books in recent years that amount to little more than a pornography of wealth. But the connection of wealth to actual power is rarely explored. Sure, hedge fund managers can deploy billions, and CEOs can hire and fire thousands, but what is the relation of that narrow economic power to broader political, social and cultural power?..'' Doug
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So, this book doesn't answer the question either, I take it?
As I recall Mills was a little vague too on exactly how the PE rule. I think it took Domkoff to really spell it out with names and linkages. But I haven't re-read Who Rules America in a very long time.
^^^^^ CB: I think the flaw in the approach of these books is not looking at the superclass/power elite/ruling class _in relation to_ the subclass/powerless underdogs/ruled class. A book on this relationship would automatically be a discussion of class "warfare", a topic that is tabooed by the mass media; the media regularly scolds "liberal" politicians for any discussion of "class warfare".
Furthermore, such an approach ( using the class warfare concept) inherently treats the ruled class, the working class, as a unity in relation to the ruling class. . Implicit in even talking about one working class is a potential unity of that class, which the ruled class doesn't even want crossing the minds of members of the working class. Even the notion of a single working class gives too much recognition to
the existence of a single working class ; not middle, lower, upper middle, poor, under etc. "classes", divided against each other. Just the regular acknowledgment of the existence of "one thing" such as a working class, and another thing, a ruling class of bourgeoisie , would be dangerous to the ruling class if it became an ordinary and widespread way of thinking about American society.
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