CB writes: > It 's faux Marxist class analysis to deny that that the ruling class > has leaders who meet in conspiratorial cliques, not to mention it > defies good sense.
The fact is that they _do_ meet in "conspiratorial" confabs (covens?) to decide what to do, just as the old ML types (back in the 1970s) used to have their private meetings before the more public meetings of larger organizations which they were participating in -- in order to figure out what "Line" to push in the latter's democratic decision-making process. _Of course_ the richest of the rich capitalists get together. They might even apply so-called "democratic" centralist methods in public operations, like the ML types did. The problem is that it's too easy to put too much weight on these meetings, to come up with a full-scale aluminum-foil-hat _conspiracy theory_. Sure, these are powerful people we're talking about, able to command huge bureaucratic corporations to obey their bidding (at least if it helps the bottom line) and to mobilize gigantic amounts of money. But there are often _other_ groups within the capitalist class (which also meet in private) to push for _their_ goals. And the goals of one capitalist conspiracy can conflict with those of another. There's "competition of elites" of the sort that Schumpeter referred to. So then compromise becomes the watch-word. In that case, it's very often required that representatives of the various conspiracies meet in more open forums (such as the Senate and the House of Representatives) to iron out differences and come up with a coherent plan. Even then, it has to be put into effect, which in many case means a government (or government-sponsored or government-like) bureaucracy such as the Federal Reserve has to be set up. Then, it's unclear whether that bureaucracy will follow the coherent plan to the letter or will stray away from it, bending it to serve their own interests. It's also unlikely that the "coherent plan" will cover all future contingencies -- so that it will change over time. Political pressure from the outside of the establishment can also change the Fed's behavior. Awhile back, when he wasn't telling us that the best thing for the left to do is to read Ezra Pound, Carrol Cox said that a true conspiracy theory only makes sense if the "plot" would fall apart if it were revealed to the public at large. That makes sense to me. The plot to create the Federal Reserve _didn't require_ any real secrecy because the two houses of Congress almost entirely represented the capitalist class (as did the President). Further, the urban wing of that class was on the ascendancy (the rural sector was the main locus of opposition to the establishment of a central bank) at the same time that the largest and most influential manufacturing companies had major financial dimensions and had major financial leaders on their boards. (At the most basic level, they were joint-stock limited-liability corporations that sold shares in public.) That is, the political establishment basically agreed with the Line being pushed by Morgan and the other "conspirators." That said, I view the Federal Reserve as a public-private partnership, also known as a government-sponsored cartel. It doesn't try to serve the larger "public" as much as to do a tight-rope act between serving the immediate interests of individual bankers and serving the long-term collective interests of the financial sector of the ruling class (while fending off efforts to make it submit to more control by Congress). I don't think that anyone who studies the Fed seriously would disagree. Most economists would say that it's a _good thing_ that the Fed is a cartel. The big difference is that they don't want it to be _called_ a cartel, just like they don't want the economic system called "capitalism." > The capitalist system is not a non-human > automaton. There's no such thing as the "Invisible Hand" or the > magical price mechanism. ... If course capitalism isn't an automaton. But parts of it do act as if there's an invisible hand (i.e., that often there are unintended results of purposiveful actions because of the relationships between all of the individuals in the system). It's not Smith's invisible hand in the most important cases, however. Rather, it's often Marx's invisible hand, in which the unthinking workings of the system grind out results that _hurt_ capitalists. That, by the way, is the basic idea behind Marx's falling rate of profit theory and behind various under-consumption theories (including Marx's own in the GRUNDRISSE). The invisible hand aspects of the system are limited and conditioned by other parts of the system, of course. The _whole system_ isn't run by any invisible hand.) None of the capitalists _planned_ for the financial system to melt-down in 2008. Rather, it's a matter of all of them looking out for "number one" -- pushing the financial system down the primrose path to perdition. After the disaster hit, of course, they closed ranks to force the costs of the mess onto those outside of their class. > The idea that the Fed was founded ( or functions) for the working > class good as opposed to the benefit of the finance capitalists seems > a bit of a fairy tale. I don't think that _anyone_ on pen-l believes in this fairy tale. It's a "straw man," not someone's actual position. > The idea that it just fell out of the sky as > opposed to being put together by the leaders of the ruling class > doesn't pass the smell test either. I don't think that _anyone_ on pen-l believes in the "fell out of the sky" theory. It's a "straw man," not someone's actual position. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
