----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Brown" <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 6:41 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] C.W.Miils, was Rove Map
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>
>
> 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
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> 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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>
>
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