A Ruling Class?
Domhoff, William
A Ruling Class? WHO RULES AMERICA NOW? A VIEW FOR THE '80s by G. William Domhoff Prentice-Hall/Spectrum. 230 pp. $15.95 hardcover. $6.95 paperback. In the vacuous dialogue of what passes for...
...He also recognizes a loose oppositional liberal-labor coalition rooted in the trade unions and environmental, consumer, and minority groups...
...The network brings the power elite into contact with academic experts, university administrators, and media specialists for the purpose of hammering out broad solutions to national and world problems...
...he does not insist on complete control over every aspect of social life...
...Domhoffs discussion of how such programs are translated into government policy is perhaps his greatest contribution to our understanding of American politics...
...Who wins most political struggles...
...Since his 1967 book, Who Rules America?, Domhoff has inspired the development of a subspecialty in political sociology ("power structure research") aimed at exposing the hierarchical distribution of wealth and power in the United States...
...In what sense, then, is there an American ruling class...
...Domhoff, on the other hand, poses three additional questions: Who benefits from society's institutional arrangements...
...To be sure, some groups are richer and stronger than others, but none, so the conventional wisdom holds, is dominant...
...Funded by business donations, the policy-planning network is run by activist executives and non-business trustees who are often members of the upper class themselves...
...By "social class," for example, he means not just an economic category, but a division of society made up of people and families with common backgrounds who freely intermingle and intermarry while restricting their contact with other segments of society...
...These Domhoff finds in the private schools, clubs, and posh resorts that cater to the upper class—the Town and Country set, New England prep academies, and such retreats as Northern California's Bohemian Grove...
...And even for managers who have no stake in ownership, the profit motive remains the rai-son d'etre of everyday life...
...As redoubtable as DomhofFs scholarship is, his work has come under intense criticism...
...Domhoffs objective is to prove empirically, without shrill rhetoric or conspiracy theories, that "there is a social upper class in the United States that is a ruling class by virtue of its distinct role in the economy and government...
...The pluralists answer that there simply isn't one, while the structuralists argue somewhat obscurely that the state is "objectively biased in favor of capital...
...While hardly original, his basic concepts are free from the rigidity that has marred much Marxist writing...
...And who holds vital leadership positions...
...Despite a multitude of signs to the contrary, most Americans continue to believe they live in a genuine democracy where power is shared by a variety of competitive interest groups...
...also contains updated material on campaign financing and the candidate-selection process as well as a new chapter on community power structures...
...Domhoff rather circuitously responds to this and other criticisms in the final chapter of his new book...
...He also marshals evidence to disprove the fashionable notion that control over corporate policy has passed out of the hands of major stockholders to a new breed of public-spirited professional managers...
...His seventh and latest book, Who Rules America Now?, is both a sequel to his earlier work and a thorough exposition of his theoretical views...
...The struggle over government policy is the outcome of the horse trading and infighting of these three forces...
...He readily acknowledges that the upper class is fragmented, identifying two basic camps—a moderate wing based in the very largest and most international corporations and associated with the Council on Foreign Relations, Committee for Economic Development, the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations and the Brookings Institution, and a conservative wing exemplified by the Chamber of Commerce and the Hoover and American Enterprise Institutes...
...The upper class is also objectively set apart from the rest of us by its fantastic wealth...
...The Carter Administration alone employed no less than thirteen Tri-lateralists, including the President and Walter Mondale...
...In fact, almost 30 per cent of the nation's top corporate directors hail from families listed in the Social Register...
...In addition, two extraordinary institutions—the Business Council and the Business Roundtable—act as de facto liaisons between the planning network and the Federal Government...
...Among other prerequisites, there must be mechanisms and institutions for socializing the younger generation, as well as those adults who have risen from lower social levels, to accept and understand their special status...
...Although the critics may protest that ruling classes don't quack, it is probably as sound a reply as our current understanding of classes and power allows...
...If the answer to all three is the upper class, then, he concludes, you have a ruling class—semantic nuances notwithstanding...
...No one has done more to pierce the veil of this pluralist ideology than G. William Domhoff, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz...
...Equally important is the ability of the class to use its wealth to shape public opinion and mold government policy...
...It achieves this directly through the mass media and advertising channels, and indirectly by means of a sophisticated network of policy-planning groups, foundations, and such think tanks as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Committee for Economic Development...
...Not only are the position papers of the planning organizations submitted directly to elected officials and their staffs, but because of their expertise, network members are appointed with alarming consistency to key Cabinet positions and Presidential commissions...
...Most troubling and ironic is an attack raised by both pluralists and "structuralist" Marxists, who contend that the upper class is simply too fragmented to dominate government in any unified and direct sense...
...In the vacuous dialogue of what passes for political discourse in mainstream America, it is taboo to speak of an American "ruling class...
...Among other innovations, the network is credited with formulating the basic blueprints for the Marshall Plan, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty...
...Together, they form a "power elite," which acts as the leadership arm of the upper class...
...And of those executives who sit on two or more corporate boards—the "inner group" of the corporate community—upper-class pedigrees are far more common...
...Domhoff tells us that a mere 0.5 per cent of the population owns 20 to 25 per cent of all privately held wealth and 45 to 50 per cent of privately held corporate stock...
...If there is an American ruling class fitting this framework, it must be sufficiently cohesive to enable its members to sustain a common social outlook...
...Out of this milieu emerges an old-boy network of mutual acquaintances and shared experiences which sets the upper class apart from the rest of us subjectively...
...Similarly, by "class domination," he refers to the ability of a class to set the general terms under which other classes must operate...
...This is a glib rejoinder, reminiscent of the old quip: "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck...
...Bill Blum (Bill Blum is a Los Angeles attorney and writer...
...It is not simply wealth which makes the upper class a ruling class, according to Domhoff...
...Who Rules America Now...
Vol. 48 • June 1984 • No. 6
