The Traditional American Upper Class vs. Current American Oligarchs
Some incomplete thoughts
During graduate school in sociology, one of the areas of study that interested me was class and stratification, and how those were connected to political power. Of course, I read the classics Marx, Durkheim and Weber, with their takes on class, stratification and power, but I was particularly interested in the twentieth century sociologists who focused their research on the American Upper Class. Folks like E. Digby Baltzell with his detailed study The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Class in America, and C. Wright Mills’ The Power Elite, but most especially the highly prolific G. William Domhoff whose Who Rules America was first published in 1967 and is currently in it’s 8th edition (2023). Other books by Domhoff Higher Circles (1970), The Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats (1974) were all part of my graduate school reading.
One of the important takeaways from Baltzell, Mills, and Domhoff, was that while inheritance of wealth was a defining factor for upper class membership, the American upper class was also socially and culturally fairly tightly knit. They attended a limited number of elite prep schools, an even smaller number of elite colleges, and as adults joined a clearly defined group of social clubs and organizations. Also as adults, the men (because in the 1970’s it was primarily just men), connected with each other through the interlocking directorates of American corporations.
Unlike other American social classes, the upper class was “class conscious,” they understood that they belonged to a social class with common interests. One of those common interests was, of course, maintaining the social, economic and political structures that made the continued accumulation of capital in private hands possible. A second common interest that was inculcated through private schools and elite colleges was a responsibility to maintain the legitimacy, in the eyes of non-elites, of the social, economic and political systems that made capitalist wealth possible. The buy-in on supporting the accumulation of capital was clearly more widespread than the buy-in on maintaining legitimacy, especially when it was costly (legislation that protected workers, the environment, and raised taxes, etc.). This included ideas like maintaining the appearance (if not always the reality) of the impartiality of judges and courts, and when those appearances failed, widespread condemnation lead to resignations.
My own research in sociology included detailed examination of federal government involvement in promoting outdoor recreation. I found that members of the upper class were heavily involved behind the scenes through Presidential Commissions and more informal advisory roles with promoting federal spending and federal legislation. Multiple commissions and advisory committees through the 1950’s to the 1970’s advanced the idea that the federal government should be involved in creating free and inexpensive outdoor recreation spaces in the eastern United States, within easy driving distance of working and middle classes of the densely settled urban east coast. It was a movement that funded the aquistion of substantial public lands in the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Alabama, during those decades, and paid to develop trails and campgrounds. Clearly articulated in the work of the advisory groups that supported these developments was maintaining the health and emotional well-being of the working and middle classes. More subtly the minutes and reports of these groups suggested that failure to create healthy outlets for outdoor recreation might lead to disatisfaction, anger and opposition from workers.
In short, the research I read and the original research I engaged in created a picture of an American Upper Class that viewed both private capital accumulation (growing personal wealth) and legitimation (insuring that working and middle classes viewed social/economic/political institutions as legitimate) as things with which U. S. government should be concerned. Moreover that picture was predicated on the Upper Class having common educational and cultural experiences, and maintaining common social ties into adulthood.
It has recently become apparent to me that the knowledge base I spent most of the 1970’s, 1980’s and early 1990’s developing is sadly out of date, and that political, economic and social power in the U. S. have changed substantially in that time. Today we are facing governance by oligarchs who have nothing more in common that the obscene size of their wealth, and clearly believe that government exists only to expand their private wealth with no concern for maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of working and middle classes. My lack of awareness of this transformation until recently is squarely on me. When I left the competitive academic world of four year colleges and universities in 1996 to teach at a community college I shifted my priorities away from keeping up with the research and understanding of my field.
How did we get here? I don’t really know, but it is clear that people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have amassed fortunes that give them enormous political clout, and seem narrowly focused on capital accumulation with little concern for maintaining legitimacy. It’s not just the immigrants (Musk, Thiel, Murdock) or the internet/tech guys (Zuckerberg), but includes the home grown oligarchs (Kochs and Waltons), who show little concern for what ordinary American workers want or need. The new American oligarchs do not have common roots, culture, education or values, except for the accumulation of capital.
To me the big question is, should they be worried about legitimacy? Will Americans just take whatever the oligarchs dish out? Or will their be real resistence, even violent resistence? The reaction of ordinary people to Luigi Mangioni should be taken as a warning sign. Outright class warfare is not pretty, or comfortable, or safe for anyone but especially for those who are the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Big social changes are often accompanied by violence, but violence always has far reaching consequences and harms as well.
These are the kinds of scary thoughts that occupy me when I’m not thinking about cancer and my up-coming surgery.