> I'm amazed, in reading around, to see proliferation of "vampire squid."
Here's another reference (penultimate para, beginning "The grave danger..."):
<www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-price-the-new-democracy-goldman-sachs-conquers-europe-6264091.html>
Excerpt:
"This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest."
Reading this piece and reflecting on how elite strategies (like the vampire squid's, as summarised above and described in more detail in the full piece) seem to have played out (if only over the past few years, but presumably much longer), I can't help but wonder whether a prioritisation for structural analysis doesn't tend to blind us to, or distract us from, the specific machinations in play. Does it require more "functionalist," impact-of-individual-actors-on-history analysis - and that forward-looking - to anticipate how the capitalist system will evolve?