Friday, May 9, 2014
How the Elite Control the World: The Rich Getting Richer, the Upper Class & Money in America (1996)
Lewis H. Lapham (born January 8, 1935) is an American writer. He was the editor of the American monthly Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly, a quarterly publication about history and literature, and has written numerous books on politics and current affairs.
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy by mandating that there is one such particular class in the given society, and then appointing itself as that class.
Sometimes, there is a ruling class in 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.
A 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.
Under the Marxist view of 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 such 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 negatively because they are often viewed as having little respect of or interest in the rights of the inferior classes.
Analogous to the class of the major capitalists, other modes of production give rise to different ruling classes: under feudalism, it was the feudal lords, while under slavery, it was the slave-owners. Under the feudal society, feudal lords had power over the vassals because of their control of the fiefs. This gave them political and military power over the people. In slavery, because complete rights of the person's life belonged to the slave owner, they could and did every implementation that would help the production in the farm.[1]
Mattei Dogan, in his recent studies on elites in contemporary societies, has argued that because of their complexity and their heterogeneity and particularly because of the social division of work and the multiple levels of stratification, there is not, or can not be, a coherent ruling class, even if in the past there were solid examples of ruling classes, like in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, and the more recent totalitarian regimes of the 20th century (communist and fascist).
Globalization theorists argue that today a transnational capitalist class has emerged.
There are several examples of ruling class systems in movies, novels, and television shows. The 2005 American independent film The American Ruling Class written by former Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham and directed by John Kirby is a semi-documentary that examines how the American economy is structured and for whom. Although it is a US film, the same principles also apply to many other countries as well.
In the novel Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, everyone is genetically made and classified. The Alpha class is the ruling class because they have the highest positions possible and control most of the world in the novel. This situation can also be found in the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four where Big Brother and the government literally control what the nation hears, sees, and learns.
Examples in movies include Gattaca where the genetically-born were superior and the ruling class and V for Vendetta, which had a severe totalitarian government in Britain. The comedic film The Ruling Class was a satire of British aristocracy, depiciting nobility as self-serving and cruel, juxtaposed against an insane relative who believes that he is Jesus Christ, whom they identify as a "bloody Bolshevik".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruling_c...
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MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR PRIZE.
ReplyDeleteRussian riches are now to much for the west to ignore. Russia is becoming the biggest supplier of oil and gas to most of the industrialised world, and that is only going to increase, making Russia the most prosperous country in the world. With such wealth, comes even greater military power and influence.
Russia has just began to scratch the surface of its own natural resources, if allowed to continue, Russia would soon outstrip the USA and the rest of the world in its economical, financial, and military might, that would pose a serious threat to the present global power structure, led by the USA. That is why the west have made what seems to be a sudden and dramatic change in their political, economic, and financial dealings with Russia.
The Ukraine is just a pawn as regards the wests real target; a Russia under the control of the global financial elite, with their political puppet in Moscow. Putin, like Saddam Hussein, and Colonel Ghadaffi, who resisted the wests controlling overtures, were both stigmatised as a Hitler, fascists, nazi's, an evil empire. Putin has been given the same treatment.
All that the financial villains in the west need is an excuse to get rid of Putin and those around him. There are many in Russia ready to line their pockets, as Oligarchs aplenty have left Russia, and many of those would like to see Putin removed from power. Those Oligarchs that have remained are ready to do a deal, for profit is their ultimate goal, as politics are just being the means to becoming even wealthier, and to become part of that global ruling money mafia.
The heart of that global money making mafia is in the west.
National interests, culture, religion, mean nothing to those whose greed knows no bounds, only profit. Like all addicts, they pursue their addiction at any cost.
Provocation is the name of the game, as the west are using its puppet regime in Kiev, who have started to attack the Pro-Russian people of Ukraine, hoping to provoke Putin into invading the Ukraine in their defense, leading to all kinds of scenario's which the west will use to destroy Putins credibility. Worldwide condemnation, UN denunciation, EU alienation? All this and more to get control of the greatest prize of all, Russia's enormous riches, they even risk war, possibly a world war. For we are dealing with a global mafia who have become God's in their own image, for look what they have already achieved on the world scene?
Since the fall of the Soviet Union over twenty years ago the west have been bringing once Soviet controlled countries into the EU, and once a member are also part of that european military body called NATO. Those countries now have missile systems, and many have American bases stationed there, so that Russia is now surrounded by an armada of military hardware that puts them under siege. The Ukraine virtually completes the encirclement of Russia as far as the west is concerned. The global money mafia are backed by the greatest military machine that they have created and been financing for decades at the expense and impoverisment of hundreds of millions of people, they have made that military machine far superior to all else on the planet. Now the west is going for Checkmate.
Will Putin go to war if provoked to far? Being a deeply religous man will his beliefs take him in another direction? The near future will reveal all.