Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Yes, There is an Imperialist Ruling Class

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Yes, There is an Imperialist Ruling Class

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch. (a must-read article)

Contemporary history is neither a series of random occurrences nor the predetermined plaything of a small cabal of super-empowered conspirators. The truth is somewhere in-between. A sizeable cadre of class- and system-conscious deep-state and imperial planners from the heights of concentrated private and governmental power join together to shape the outlines of much of recent history. Along with professional class “experts” agreeable to their basic aims, they do so in accord with their shared interests in the endless upward accumulation of wealth and power. They serve the profits system that is still headquartered primarily in the United States even as it develops ever more and varied outposts across a globalizing world.

They exercise vastly disproportionate influence on the course of events and policy largely behind the scenes, in the darkly deceptive name of democracy.

At last there are people really studying the core decision-makers of the Empire and totally ignoring the facade of employed official decision-makers who hangout in Washington DC.

Street bases this article on Laurence H. Shoup's recently published book by the title Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council of Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2014 from which he quotes extensively.

I have been an amateur power structure analyst for most of my adult life while struggling in various jobs trying to support myself. I gave up on academia a long time ago because I felt that I would be too constrained to do any serious work. However, there are others who have managed to survive this milieu and have actually thrived. One such person appears to be Lawrence Shoup. I will definitely read his book.