Doug Henwood wrote:
> On May 21, 2008, at 10:49 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> Okay, I can see why you want to pitch it that way, but dish: what's
>> the
>> book really about?
>>
>
> WHo the American ruling class is today, if such a thing exists as a
> coherent social formation. Sociology, economics, and gossip. So it
> really is Mills + VF.
> ___________________________________
>
That is brings up an interesting sociological question: must the ruling
class be a coherent social group to function effectively as the ruling
class in a capitalist society? Or is their social function as the expropriators coherence enough?
Miles
^^^^ CB: Seems logically that it only has to be united on the _political_ issues it has in conflict with the class it rules. Ruling is a political issue. It doesn't have to be in unity on issues that are not critical to maintaining the status quo political system and economic system. Many members can just be passive with respect to many issues, just as long as they don't act in support of the ruled masses. And most of the time, most of the critical issues are not even in contest in our times. The ruled class is so divided and unconscious, they aren't even contesting for power or to change the system fundamentally. The US ruling class has things on automatic pilot , substantially. In fact, large sections of the ruled class act as agents for the ruling class, fighting colonialists and anti-communist wars, sacrificing their lives en masse for their ruling classes, suppressing oppressed minorities of their fellow workers by acting out structural racist institutions "domestically", suppressing American communists. The American ruled class has been in deep "Rip Van Winkle" mode for decades, like all those people in West Virginia and Kentucky just demonstrated in the primary.
Hey, I hope Doug's book after next is on the ruled class in America, four volumes, putting all that public opinion research into the service of the Peoples' consciousness of itself in, of, by and for itself as a revolutionary class
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