This post from Mark Stahlman is the most naive, misinformed, self-deceived, and
deceptive piece of writing I've ever
seen on this list.
Is it a satire? A joke? If so, I apologize for not getting it and for taking it
seriously.
Stahlman writes:
The ONE-PERCENT is a statistical account of wealth distribution -- NOT a
useful description of *power* distribution.
Every one of these 1%'ers is totally on their own. Yes, I know quite a
few of them -- I was a Wall Street investment banker, you will recall.
They have no political party (when Barack Obama is actually working for the
Pentagon, as everyone in DC knows). they have no effective institutions
and they don't even have a sense of "class" solidarity. As the financial
mechanisms of Congressional elections make clear, it's every man/woman for
themselves, bought by narrow-interest lobbyists.
This is completely false.
As has been well-documented, the capitalist class began working consciously and
deliberately to organize itself as a class in the 70s.
Perhaps the most familiar example of capitalists’ efforts to organize as a
class in the 1970s is a memo sent by then corporate lawyer and future Supreme
Court Justice, Louis Powell, to the Director of the US Chamber of Congress.
Written in 1971 (just a few months before Nixon appointed Powell to the Court),
the memo urged business to pursue political power, aggressively and
determinedly. Powell advised, “Strength lies in organization, in careful
long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an
indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through
united action and national organizations.” Business agreed. Both the Chamber of
Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business doubled in
membership size during the seventies. In 1972, the Business Roundtable formed
out of the merger of three other groups; its membership was comprised of
corporate CEOs. By the end of the decade, 113 of the top Fortune 200 companies
would be members.
One place to find a clear account of the efforts undertaken by capital as a
class is in Hacker and Pierson's book, Winner-Take-All Politics. Hacker and
Pierson detail the organization of the class power of the very rich, “the
relentless effectiveness of modern, efficient organizations operating in a much
less modern and efficient political system” (115). In a “domestic version of
Shock and Awe,” corporations amped up their Washington offices and numbers of
lobbyists. Moreover, they began to build coalitions, working from the
standpoint of the interests of business as a whole instead of their own narrow
industry-specific concerns. Corporations upped their contributions to PACs and
began cultivating opposition candidates as well as cozying up to incumbents. By
the 1990s, business, while deeply involved with both political parties, was
working through radical elements of the Republican party relentlessly focused
on tax cuts. Two groups, “elite rather than mass organizations” stand out,
Americans for Tax Reform and Club for Growth. Despite overwhelming voter doubt
in the benefits of tax cuts, these groups kept the Republicans unified and
focused on tax cuts as the one solution to any and all political problems.
The current efforts by lobbying groups, not to mention corporate money in
politics, are well known--this is one of the reasons the Sup Ct decision in
Citizens United is so damaging.
Jodi Dean
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