Once upon a time, say in the early 1970s, a highly-regarded but obscure young Assistant Professor at a prestigious University in the USA was approached by Bill, a member of the Board of Regents, at the coffee-break of a seminar on some aspect of global politics and invited to lunch. Over lunch, Bill said he had been very impressed by – let us call him – John´s contribution to the seminar, had checked him out, and would like to offer him a job in Washington. Within a few months, John had leave of absence from the University and was a member of a Policy Group working for Bill, who, for the second time in his career, was a member of the Cabinet of the President of the USA.
In his new job, with Bill as his mentor and sponsor, John moves in the circles where he regularly encounters members of the power-elites. In particular, he contributes to “Policy-forums” organised by the Council on Foreign Relations, (CFR). Other contributors will be rising stars like himself, and they will be discussing policy-issues with Wall Street moguls, Corporate CEOs , current and former Secretaries of State, National Security Advisers and other Cabinet officers, former heads of the CIA, Presidents of major Foundations, newspaper commentators and senior editors from Network and Cable TV, chief officers of global NGOs and prominent neo-liberal and neo-Conservative strategists.
The results of those policy-forums will be written up by a small team of academics. They will be published in one of the CFR´s House Journals such as Foreign Affairs, summarised in articles in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and presented on prime-time TV. Only those who know how the power-elites work will be aware that these proposals do not originate from a group of independent academic policy-wonks with no connection to business or government or any political party.
With Bill´s help and guidance, John´s career continues to flourish after he leaves Washington. He chairs important committees at the University, is promoted to a very senior faculty post over the heads of much better qualified colleagues. He gains a fearsome reputation as someone who makes life ruinously difficult for those who cross him. Through Bill, and his contacts at the CFR, he joins the Boards of several major corporations. He becomes moderately wealthy in a very short time. He travels by private jets and spends weekends at the summer-homes of corporate billionaires, ex-Presidents, leading Senators and Wall-Street moguls. The directors of the CFR invite him to become a Fellow.
During the next round of Presidential primaries and elections, he is one of a several dozen CFR Fellows who act as Policy Advisers to the main candidates from both parties. After the election, he returns to Washington, as an Assistant Secretary of State. He works closely with the President as a member of his inner circle of trusted advisers – all Fellows of the CFR. He has become – as they say – a Global Player, a member of the US power-elites, one of a mere six thousand people, a one in a million person who is part of what David Rothkopf calls “The Superclass” [FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX 2008]
David Rothkopf defines Superclass as people whose decisions have the power to affect millions of ordinary lives. And the CFR has acted as the hub around which the SuperClass has evolved and operated since the 1920s, initially in the US and later globally. The original members were almost exclusively drawn from or closely connected with some of the most sophisticated corporate capitalists in the world. Names like Morgan, Rockefeller, Harriman, Ford, together with those of foreign policy mandarins like the Dulles Brothers, Acheson, Kennan, appear in the 1920s and 1930s,, and today, in among many leading neo-conservatives and neo-liberals, they still appear. New blood from the middle-classes, like John, arrive from outside the East Coast or West Coast cliques, are spotted relatively early and groomed into positions of influence.
The system has been developed and refined to ensure that the new entrants can be relied on to continue the process of controlling the USA – and large parts of the global economy – that was embarked upon all those years ago. Not only are the people intellectually very capable, the power-elites system as a whole is one that is capable of constant learning and adaptation.
At http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/national.html William (Bill) Domhoff demonstrates that despite (relatively) free speech, regular elections, and organized opposition, in the USA, rule by the wealthy few is possible because, although they constantly claim to be relatively powerless:”
The rich” coalesce into a social upper class that has developed institutions by which the children of its members are socialized into an upper-class worldview, and newly wealthy people are assimilated.
Members of this upper class control corporations, which have been the primary mechanisms for generating and holding wealth in the United States for upwards of 150 years now.
There exists a network of nonprofit organizations through which members of the upper class and hired corporate leaders not yet in the upper class, shape policy debates in the United States.
Members of the upper class, with the help of their high-level employees in profit and nonprofit institutions, are able to dominate the federal government in Washington.
Working people have less power than in many other democratic countries.
Domhoff is but one of a growing number of scholars and commentators who aim to help the general public to understand the history and range of the power-elites´ anti-democratic modus vivendi, at every level from the local to the Federal to the Global,
From a process Point of View, however, nothing illustrates their capacity to maximise their potential better than their routine use of what are called “Policy-Forums” .
These highly-effective policy-forming processes were pioneered in Britain and the British Empire around 100 years ago, and at that time they was called “Round Tables”.
Their benefits to the power-elites are much greater than merely the production of a constant stream of influential papers. articles, and books. They are the engine that powers the power-elites.
TO BE CONTINUED.
