How does the Ruling Class Rule?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I mean, I know they and their politicians lie. We have proof that they have done this and often, after the fact, there is further proof that they knew they were lieing at the time (Gulf of Tonkin and so on and so forth).

But how does it actually work?

Ok, so industries hire people to write legislation which then is proposed by the politicians they gave moeny to and mayors take bribes and yada yada. That's fine and there are pleanty of movies that deal with this sort of intrigue. But how does the big stuff go down? I doubt Halliberton ever called GW Bush and said "Hey, doin' anything this weekend? How 'bout you invade Iraq for us?"

Is it like they really have smoke-filled meetings where big industry types and politicians sit down and the capitalists say: "Hey we really got a good thing going here with being the only superpower. Why don't we make sure Europe and China don't catch up... we've hired all these think-tankers to provide stratagy for maintaing domenacne. Here's one paper we had them work on: 'The Role of Middle East Oil and the Industrial Development of China'. Or how 'bout 'Remaping the borders of the middle east for fun and profit'."

[Jimmie Higgins]

I guess the smoke-filled room of today is called the G8.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2005, 03:37 AM
Is it like they really have smoke-filled meetings where big industry types and politicians sit down and the capitalists say: "Hey we really got a good thing going here with being the only superpower. Why don't we make sure Europe and China don't catch up... we've hired all these think-tankers to provide stratagy for maintaing domenacne. Here's one paper we had them work on: 'The Role of Middle East Oil and the Industrial Development of China'. Or how 'bout 'Remaping the borders of the middle east for fun and profit'."
Pretty much. There are groups like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Business Roundtable, etc., which both business and political leaders belong to. Plus purely business associations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce (those are more right-wing), elite social clubs, all kinds of places where the ruling class gets together and discusses stuff.

Plus there are newspapers and magazines that are mostly read by the ruling class and its higher middle-class servants; many of these issues are debated out in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs magazine (published by the CFR), etc.

A lot of conspiracy-theorists go on about these groups like they're some shadowy, mysterious cabal, but really they're fairly open, they publish their position papers and magazines, etc They're just some of the conduits for people with lots of money to exercise political power.

A good book which looks at these mechanisms of upper-class political power is "Who Rules America Now?" by G. William Domhoff, a sociologist specializing in the study of the upper class.

[pedro san pedro]

How does the Ruling Class Rule?

because the masses allow them to