Is there an “establishment”?
Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 01:34:50 PM PDT
The word certainly appears often enough here so at least some people have an idea that there is. My thesis for this diary is that there is one and that it is at the heart of the primary battle we all wish would go away. Furthermore, it would be in the vital interests of that establishment to either defeat Senator Obama before he becomes the official nominee or certainly after he does. For some strange reason these are goals shared by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Is it coincidence or is it part of the big picture? It pays to look the anatomy and physiology of the establishment meme. Just what do we mean by an "establishment" in this context?
From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:
a group of social, economic, and political leaders who form a ruling class (as of a nation).
Too often the concept congers up images of some conspiracy pulling the strings on the puppets that make up our society. Are there real people to flesh out the idea? Look below and explore this with me.
Wikipedia says this about the word "establishment": The Establishment
"The Establishment" is a pejorative term used to refer to the traditional ruling class elite and the structures of society that they control. The term can be used to describe specific entrenched elite structures in specific institutions, but is usually informal in application and pejorative. For example, candidates for political office are often said to have to impress the "party establishment" in order to win endorsement.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the "establishment" was seen as representing restrictive, authoritarian policies. It was associated with age, as the old fashioned way of doing things, and was said to be dominated by members of the war generation who had not yet adapted to or accepted the big societal changes of the decade. In the 1980s, conservative critics (particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom) began to assert that liberals had become the new "establishment". Sociologically, one who does not belong to the "establishment" is an "outsider".
A big question raised here is the identification of a "ruling class" . Let’s look at Wikipedia’s link here Ruling Class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy.
The ruling class is a particular sector of the upper class that adheres to quite specific circumstances: it has both the most material wealth and the most widespread influence over all the other classes, and it chooses to actively exercise that power to shape the direction of a locality, a country, and/or the world. Most of the upper class does not fit the fundamentals of this description, but some do.
Most stable groups of social animals (including humans) have a visible and invisible "ruling class". The decision makers in the group may change according to the decision-type and/ or the time of observation. For example, it used to be assumed that modern societies were patriarchal and the elders dominated the real decisions, even though many market economies focus on the decision makers of each particular (assuredly minor) market sector, who may in fact be children or women.
The sociologist C. Wright Mills argued that the ruling class differs from the power elite. The latter simply refers to the small group of people with the most political power. Many of them are politicians, hired political managers, and military leaders.
In Marxist political economics, the ruling class refers to that segment or class of society that has the most economic and -- only in second line -- political power. Under capitalism, the ruling class -- the capitalists or bourgeoisie -- consists of those who own and control the means of production and thus are able to dominate and exploit the working class, getting them to labor enough to produce surplus-value, the basis for profits, interest, and rent (property income). This property income can be used to accumulate more power, to extend class domination further. The economic power of a class gives it extraordinary political power so that state or government policies almost always reflect the perceived interests of that class.
Ruling classes tend to be looked at in a negative light because they are often viewed as having little respect or care about the rights of the inferior classes.
The reference to C. Wright Mills concept of a "power elite" within the ruling class is a good place to look for sources of our current struggle in the Democratic primary. Is this struggle a struggle among members of the ruling class to see who will become part of the power elite? Is it a struggle between the ruling class or its power elite and a force that threatens it?
How far does the power extend? It clearly seems to have taken over the main stream media. The rhetoric about last night’s primary certainly suggests that. Many people are identifying Hillary Clinton and the Republicans as being closer than Clinton is to Obama who is in the same party. How else do we explain this if not that they are "insiders" and Obama is an "outsider"? But how can that be? Obama is a Senator. Clearly he is also a part of the establishment. Or is he?
Many of us have held the conviction that Martin Luther King’s death came about because he became a threat to the established order. How is that? He began to link together racial injustice, economic injustice, imperial war, and other actions by the establishment into a coherent whole.
George Lakoff has linked Obama’s success to his ability to not get caught up into the issues trap but instead knowing to stay focused on progressive values. Let’s look at this. What it means is that as long as a candidate can keep in the issues debate, there can be no chance that that candidate will give the voting public a clearer vision of how all the issues are related and related to the special interests and needs of the ruling class, establishment, or power elite or whatever other term you wish to use. On the other hand a candidate becomes very dangerous when that candidate begins to repeat the kind of analysis that Martin Luther King was creating. To show how all the issues go back to a common source and to identify that source as the establishment has a very threatening quality to the powers that be. Who are these people? Again let us rely on Wikipedia:Power Elite
Social structure forming "power elite"
The "American Way" and the "American Dream" has been defined as
that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
It has been argued that a relatively fixed group of privileged Americans shape our economy and government solely because of their higher wealth and social status. This idea goes against the original American way, and begins a new one. This new American way involves a fixed group of Americans, called the "power elite".
The "power elite" stems from many groups that form into one:
• Corporate Community: This group includes rich corporations, banks and agribusinesses. These tend to dominate the federal government in Washington.
• Growth Coalitions: This group includes real estate, construction and land development companies. These tend to dominate the local governments.
Both the corporate communities and growth coalitions sometimes will have conflicting ideas and competition between each other over profits and investment opportunities. However, they tend to have the same policies affecting their general welfare. These groups have the ability to organize and defend their interests due to their large wealth and income. The owners and managers of these large income producing properties hold a great share of all of the income and wealth in the US. This is more than any other industrial democracy (they are 1% of the entire U.S. population). By holding this share of income, these groups clearly create the dominating class in the U.S. This dominating class has name of its own:
• Corporate Rich: This group becomes more of a common social group. They belong to the same social clubs, they vacation at the same summer and winter resorts and they send their children to the same private schools. They create the "social upper class".
• Place Entrepreneurs: This group tends to be filled with members of the "growth coalition". They sell locations and buildings. By doing this, they become the local upper class in their respective cities. Because of this, they tend to mingle with the "corporate rich" in vacation/resort settings or educational settings.
• Policy – Formation Network: This group tends to be filled with members from both the "corporate rich" and the "place entrepreneurs/growth coalition". They develop and direct non-profit organizations, charity foundations and policy discussion groups. As these non-profit groups join at a national level, they are able to create policies for local communities and national level city development organizations.
All of these groups take a part in creating the ultimate "power elite", the leadership group for the corporate rich as a whole.
• "Power elite": This group tends to have corporate owners join with top level executives in the "corporate community" and the "policy formation network". This group tends to be the wealthiest in the US and use this group title to create policies for the US to use on a national level. However, it is clear that not all people in the power elite group are involved in governance. Some simply enjoy the lifestyle wealth can bring.
It seems very possible that Senator Obama is an outsider and has the vision of taking power away from those who now hold it so desperately. It seems very possible that the meaning of the many fronted attack on him lays in the closeness of all the people engaged in those attacks, namely, the media, the republicans, Senator Clinton, and others. Seen in that light, the counting of delegates and the mathematical proofs that Hillary can’t win are possibly a form of whistling in the dark. These people do not give up that easy. What to do about it? I wish I knew.
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