Over de Amerikaanse power elite (naar Charles R. Mills)

Jean Pierre van Rossem · 11 maart 2003, 05:55

A complication in international politics is that the USA, leader of the western economy, has been involved in more than 50 wars between 1945 and 1975. This rise of an American military State was commented by Robert L. Heilbroner as follows: “There is no doubt that American capitalism during the 1950s and 1960s felt impelled to police the world. In those decades the United States intervened in Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; clandestinely overthrew at least one government (Guatemala), and probably another (Iran), and contributed to the demise of a third (Chile); actively supported repressive right-wing regimes in Greece and Brazil; entered into a world wide system of secret military arrangements; and ‘showed the flag’ on a total of at least fifty occasions.”[73]

All this was earlier and sharper formulated by the American sociologist Charles Wright Mills in his The power elite.[74] He concluded that the “publics” of the USA were not governed by their democratic government and its president, but by what was called the industrial-military complex. Mills wrote: “The history of modern society may readily be understood as the story of the enlargement and the centralisation of the means of power – in economic, in political, and in military institutions. The rise of the nation-state has involved similar developments in the means of violence and in those of political administration.”[75] He continous: “There is no longer, on the one hand, an economy, and, on the other, a political order, containing a military establishment as unimportant to politics and to moneymaking. There is a political economy numerously linked with military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact.”[76] Science, technique and education, and at a lower degree religion and family, may be considered as ramifications of the military, economic and political order.[77] Mills concludes: “Institutional trends may be defined as opportunities by those who occupy the command posts. Once such opportunities are recognised, men may avail themselves of them. Certain types of men from each of these areas, more far-sighted than others, have actively promoted the liaison even before it took its truly modern shape. Now more have come to see that their several interests can more easily be realized if they work together, in informal as well in formal ways, and accordingly they have done so.”[78] The structural interaction of the three orders conducts to a partial fusion and a coincidence of interests. So originates the American power elite forming a unity: “This unity reaches its frothier apex in sharing of that prestige which is to be had in the world of celebrity. It achieves a more solid culmination in the fact of interchangeability of positions between the three dominant institutional orders. If it is revealed by considerable traffic of personnel within and between these three, as well as by the rise of specialized go-betweens as in the new style of high-level lobbying.”[79]

This wilful coordination of the social structure – not to be confounded with a conspiracy – so typical for the American power elite allows its actors to take any decision they wish as long as it lets the people reckless to what happens abroad. In cases of less unconcern decisions in war making are possible by manipulating the people, by calling on nationalistic feelings, and by letting believe the people that they are in danger when the power elite shouldn’t act upon the by the power elite self-created facts (e.g. letting them believe that the Iraqis have mass-destruction weapons which will be used against the American people if no war – in the sense of a first strike - is ordered).

The power elite – a typical American fact – has by its structure far reaching consequences on America’s post-1945 economy. The economic order has a unique opportunity to use power for moneymaking. The easiest way is to obtain that the political order places million and billion dollars orders for the military order. In the beginning American corporations could doubt a continuity in those military orders – inspiring them in the 1950s to diversification, resulting in a less monopolistic market with a smaller business size. But since the early 1960s war making was a reliable part of the international policy of the American power elite. At once corporations could be ensured of nearly continuous military orders, making further diversification unnecessary. Not only effective wars, but the so-called Cold War with the Soviet Union, contributed to close links between giant corporations and the American power elite. The highest danger for those corporations was not inflation, even not overproduction, but that peace should break out![80]

It’s not exaggerated to state that the relatively fast fall of the scale elasticity in the USA, started in the early 1960s, was (unintentionally) provoked by the American power elite and its system of fixed orders at the giant multinational corporations, increasing sharply the degree of monopoly once further diversification was no longer necessary. Main victim of the petroleum boycott of the OPEC by October 9, 1973, this multinationalised economy carried the other capitalist economies in a structural crises, even those countries where the scale elasticity was not already insane.

In the USA the structural crisis was nearly over in 1985-1987, definitively faster than in all other countries. For the first time in history a structural crisis could be overcome without general war. Main reasons were (i) that overproduction and unemployment were never so strong as at the Great Depression and (ii) that the petroleum crisis resulted in most countries in a lower input of mechanical energy in the production process. If we consider again eq. 10, nl. r = µ - a.(eH/eNM)]/m² (with a < 0) the rationalisation of used mechanical energy, being the largest part of eNM, made that eH/eNM could be increased so that the scale elasticities of the several capitalist economies could be restored. However, it took the technological evolution several years, before machines could work with less input of mechanical energy. An other factor in the recovery was undoubtedly the introduction of the first home computers, creating several small firms taking profit from massive innovation (theory of Joseph M. Schumpeter). That finally resulted in an increase of m, also resorting in higher scale elasticities of the several economies. In most capitalist countries the third structural crisis was over in 1989. Recovery should certainly have been faster if mainly socialist governments should have stopped subventions to old and dying industries (such as steel in Europe).

The last decade of the 20th century was again one of serious growth, not so high as in the 1960s, but fast enough to restore all profit rates. Meantime the whole society qualitatively changed in the last half of the century. How that was breeding the so-called postmodern society, with its typical feelings of uncertainty and indeterminacy, with its instable nuclear families having replaced the larger old traditional family, I explained earlier in two other articles.

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Sorry, maar op dit nep forum (dat niet eens in staat is om exponenten behoorlijk af te drukken, laat staan tabellen, vergelijkingen of formules) zijn de voetnoten weggevallen. Ik plak ze er dus even bij.
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[73] Heilbroner Robert L., The making of economic society, op.cit., pp. 286-287.

[74] Mills C. Wright, The power elite, New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. There exist also an edition by Penguin Books Ltd. Further comments can be found in: Mills C. Wright, “The power elite: military economic and political” in: Kornhouser A.W. (ed) Problems of power in American democracy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1963, (1957), pp. 145-183, and in: Mills C. Wright, The Causes of World War Three, Westport: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1958. A good survey of Mills’s thinking, unfortunately in Dutch, is: Wibier M.J., C. Wright Mills als socioloog en wetenschapstheoreticus, Deventer: van Loghum Slaterus, 1976.

[75] Mills C. Wright, “Power, politics and people”, in: The collected essays of C. Wright Mills. Edited and with an introduction by Irvin Louis Horrowitz, New York, 1963, p. 25/

[76] Ibidem, p. 27.

[77] Mills C. Wright, The power elite, op.cit., pp. 6-11, 222-224.

[78] Mills C. Wright, The power elite: military economic and political” in: Kornhouser A.W. (ed) Problems of power in American democracy, art.cit.,p. 30.

[79] Ibidem, p. 29.
Do 6 Mrt 2003, 02:59

11 maart 2003, 05:55	#1
Jean Pierre van Rossem Vreemdeling Geregistreerd: 11 maart 2003 Berichten: 80	A complication in international politics is that the USA, leader of the western economy, has been involved in more than 50 wars between 1945 and 1975. This rise of an American military State was commented by Robert L. Heilbroner as follows: “There is no doubt that American capitalism during the 1950s and 1960s felt impelled to police the world. In those decades the United States intervened in Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; clandestinely overthrew at least one government (Guatemala), and probably another (Iran), and contributed to the demise of a third (Chile); actively supported repressive right-wing regimes in Greece and Brazil; entered into a world wide system of secret military arrangements; and ‘showed the flag’ on a total of at least fifty occasions.”[73] All this was earlier and sharper formulated by the American sociologist Charles Wright Mills in his The power elite.[74] He concluded that the “publics” of the USA were not governed by their democratic government and its president, but by what was called the industrial-military complex. Mills wrote: “The history of modern society may readily be understood as the story of the enlargement and the centralisation of the means of power – in economic, in political, and in military institutions. The rise of the nation-state has involved similar developments in the means of violence and in those of political administration.”[75] He continous: “There is no longer, on the one hand, an economy, and, on the other, a political order, containing a military establishment as unimportant to politics and to moneymaking. There is a political economy numerously linked with military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact.”[76] Science, technique and education, and at a lower degree religion and family, may be considered as ramifications of the military, economic and political order.[77] Mills concludes: “Institutional trends may be defined as opportunities by those who occupy the command posts. Once such opportunities are recognised, men may avail themselves of them. Certain types of men from each of these areas, more far-sighted than others, have actively promoted the liaison even before it took its truly modern shape. Now more have come to see that their several interests can more easily be realized if they work together, in informal as well in formal ways, and accordingly they have done so.”[78] The structural interaction of the three orders conducts to a partial fusion and a coincidence of interests. So originates the American power elite forming a unity: “This unity reaches its frothier apex in sharing of that prestige which is to be had in the world of celebrity. It achieves a more solid culmination in the fact of interchangeability of positions between the three dominant institutional orders. If it is revealed by considerable traffic of personnel within and between these three, as well as by the rise of specialized go-betweens as in the new style of high-level lobbying.”[79] This wilful coordination of the social structure – not to be confounded with a conspiracy – so typical for the American power elite allows its actors to take any decision they wish as long as it lets the people reckless to what happens abroad. In cases of less unconcern decisions in war making are possible by manipulating the people, by calling on nationalistic feelings, and by letting believe the people that they are in danger when the power elite shouldn’t act upon the by the power elite self-created facts (e.g. letting them believe that the Iraqis have mass-destruction weapons which will be used against the American people if no war – in the sense of a first strike - is ordered). The power elite – a typical American fact – has by its structure far reaching consequences on America’s post-1945 economy. The economic order has a unique opportunity to use power for moneymaking. The easiest way is to obtain that the political order places million and billion dollars orders for the military order. In the beginning American corporations could doubt a continuity in those military orders – inspiring them in the 1950s to diversification, resulting in a less monopolistic market with a smaller business size. But since the early 1960s war making was a reliable part of the international policy of the American power elite. At once corporations could be ensured of nearly continuous military orders, making further diversification unnecessary. Not only effective wars, but the so-called Cold War with the Soviet Union, contributed to close links between giant corporations and the American power elite. The highest danger for those corporations was not inflation, even not overproduction, but that peace should break out![80] It’s not exaggerated to state that the relatively fast fall of the scale elasticity in the USA, started in the early 1960s, was (unintentionally) provoked by the American power elite and its system of fixed orders at the giant multinational corporations, increasing sharply the degree of monopoly once further diversification was no longer necessary. Main victim of the petroleum boycott of the OPEC by October 9, 1973, this multinationalised economy carried the other capitalist economies in a structural crises, even those countries where the scale elasticity was not already insane. In the USA the structural crisis was nearly over in 1985-1987, definitively faster than in all other countries. For the first time in history a structural crisis could be overcome without general war. Main reasons were (i) that overproduction and unemployment were never so strong as at the Great Depression and (ii) that the petroleum crisis resulted in most countries in a lower input of mechanical energy in the production process. If we consider again eq. 10, nl. r = µ - a.(eH/eNM)]/m² (with a < 0) the rationalisation of used mechanical energy, being the largest part of eNM, made that eH/eNM could be increased so that the scale elasticities of the several capitalist economies could be restored. However, it took the technological evolution several years, before machines could work with less input of mechanical energy. An other factor in the recovery was undoubtedly the introduction of the first home computers, creating several small firms taking profit from massive innovation (theory of Joseph M. Schumpeter). That finally resulted in an increase of m, also resorting in higher scale elasticities of the several economies. In most capitalist countries the third structural crisis was over in 1989. Recovery should certainly have been faster if mainly socialist governments should have stopped subventions to old and dying industries (such as steel in Europe). The last decade of the 20th century was again one of serious growth, not so high as in the 1960s, but fast enough to restore all profit rates. Meantime the whole society qualitatively changed in the last half of the century. How that was breeding the so-called postmodern society, with its typical feelings of uncertainty and indeterminacy, with its instable nuclear families having replaced the larger old traditional family, I explained earlier in two other articles. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry, maar op dit nep forum (dat niet eens in staat is om exponenten behoorlijk af te drukken, laat staan tabellen, vergelijkingen of formules) zijn de voetnoten weggevallen. Ik plak ze er dus even bij. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [73] Heilbroner Robert L., The making of economic society, op.cit., pp. 286-287. [74] Mills C. Wright, The power elite, New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. There exist also an edition by Penguin Books Ltd. Further comments can be found in: Mills C. Wright, “The power elite: military economic and political” in: Kornhouser A.W. (ed) Problems of power in American democracy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1963, (1957), pp. 145-183, and in: Mills C. Wright, The Causes of World War Three, Westport: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1958. A good survey of Mills’s thinking, unfortunately in Dutch, is: Wibier M.J., C. Wright Mills als socioloog en wetenschapstheoreticus, Deventer: van Loghum Slaterus, 1976. [75] Mills C. Wright, “Power, politics and people”, in: The collected essays of C. Wright Mills. Edited and with an introduction by Irvin Louis Horrowitz, New York, 1963, p. 25/ [76] Ibidem, p. 27. [77] Mills C. Wright, The power elite, op.cit., pp. 6-11, 222-224. [78] Mills C. Wright, The power elite: military economic and political” in: Kornhouser A.W. (ed) Problems of power in American democracy, art.cit.,p. 30. [79] Ibidem, p. 29. Do 6 Mrt 2003, 02:59