CB: I want to know how this modern American ruling class makes decisions. Carrol Cox wrote: > I think this is a misleading question. The whole structure of u.s. life > generates a generally positive response to capitalist common sense, and > the prticular structure of u.s. electoral politics guarantees that > Congress & the President will be friendly -- in tune with -- one or more > particular sectors of capital. That means that in general u.s. policy > will opposethreats to "doing business," and that there will be internal > battles over policies which favor this rather than that element of > "business." But there is no machinery even to define precisely who is in > the "ruling class" and who isn't, or to make formal "ruling class" > decisions.
^^^^^ CB: No, this is a misleading response, diverting from a main task of the left. The ruling class rule is not on automatic pilot as is suggested here. They don't unconsciously wander from one successful step to the next. Ruling classes maintain rule by being more class conscious than the classes they rule. "Conscious" means aware , knowing, talking in meetings, and being self-conscious as a ruling class. Ruling classes must be continuously classes-for-themselves. An example is the memo from Mr. Justice Powell in the early seventies that started the counterreform movement that ended in Reaganism. Reaganism didn't just accidently and haphazardly fall together. Nor did Trumanism, the Cold War and McCarthyism. Capitalism has not persisted for the last 92 years or so based on the masses retaining a form of common sense and culture unattended, uncultivated and unguarded by highly conscious organic intellectuals of the ruling class. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
