Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Nov 27, 2008, at 9:47 AM, Charles Turner wrote:
>
> > My original thought was that directors of automotive corporations
> > wouldn't want to take a position against other members of their board
> > who might also sit on insurance or pharmaceutical corporation boards.
>
> I've done some preliminary research into this, with some more still
> necessary, but I can say that these overlaps just don't seem all that
> significant. I think the broader class explanation - the US
> bourgeoisie doesn't want to give an inch to the proles because it
> might embolden them to ask for more - makes more sense.
It makes better sense than any alternative explanation I have seen -- but it also seems 'thin,' in that ir raises the question of why 'they' should be so paranoid? The 'proles' have been pretty quiet for about 40 years now.
Ever since Jena I have been toying with a hypothesis: The "Ruling Class" is much larger than the core identified by either Domhoff & Mills identify -- well over 2% of the population and encompassing local elites (small capitalists, substantial independent professionals . . .).. One of the premises for this hypothesis is that "national decision making" is not the same as "rule," which must go much deeper into the society. And the 'big capitalists' & their servants know that: hence par of the calculations of the 'natinal elites' [all vocabulary here provisional and not too satisfacotry] involves maintaining the active loyalty of those 'local ruling classes.' Th e relations linking Pritzkers, Gateses, etc. to to auto dealers & local attorneys in Bloomington or Wichita pr evem Marcellus, Michigan are internal, not external, and one cannot consider either in isolation from the other.
(I can't remember my source here, but years ago I read some historian who was arguing that from the bronze age to the present rulers had usually made up about 5% of the population. Capitalism _is_, I assume, sharply different from all other social formations, but I don't know whether it would differ sharply in _this- respect or not.)
These local elites (or whatever) are _also_ the (or a) link between national rulers and the vast enforcement apparatus (staffed amd directed by non-ruling class personnel) which maintains order. Not just the police but educational bureaucracies, local charity organizations, county and municpal governments, local editors (increasingly merely employees of chains but still having to make day-to-day decisions on their own), local union bureaucrats, higher civil servants at both state & local levels, . . ..
In sum, I think it at least important to seriously consider that Domhoff and Mills, while invaluable, were seriously lacking in their implicit/explicit assumptions as to what a ruling cvlass consisted of.
Most of the national elite probably disapprove of such outrages as the Jena events; but to take action against such locaol injustices would endanger both the mroalle of the enfdorcement apparatus (police) AND of those local elites who, I'm suggesting, must be considered part of the ruling class proper.
Carrol