Fridoy, September 17, 1571
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Page Five
Friay Seteber17 ~91 HL ICIGA DIL
America Inc.:
The owners
B
0
0
K
S
Morton Mintz and Jerry S.
Cohen, AMERICA, INC.:
WHO 0 W N S AND OPER-
ATES THE UNITED STATES,
Dial, $10.00.
By BRUCE LEVINE
Fifteen years ago, Professor
C. Wright Mills wrote a book
entitled, The Power Elite. As
its name implied, Mills' book set
out to explode the myth that
American society is a demo-
cratic, egalitarian one. In chap-
ters entitled, "The Higher Cir-
cles," The Chief Executives,"
"The Warlords," and "The Po-
litical Directorate," Mills paint-
ed the portrait of an America
dominated by a small group of
economic, political, and mili-
tary aristocrats.
The fact that the publication
of his book produced the collec-
tive howl of rage and pain that
it did indicated that in essen-
tials Mills had hit his mark.
Since then, a whole school of
radical sociologists has arisen
whose members (such as Wil-
liam Domhoff and Gabriel Kol-
ko have sought to further the
work of the late Professor
Mills., All of their books have
been informative, many of them
well written, but only a few of
them have succeeded in improv-
ing on The Power Elite itself.
America, Inc. is, unfortunately,
not among these last few. In-
deed. itis not unfair to say
that this book is noteworthy
Authors Mintz and Cohen -
although maintaining a dis-
tinctly less militant and con-
sciously radical mood than do
the Millsians -- follow essen-
tially a Millsian method of
analysis. The first few chapters
of America, Inc. document
(once again) the progress of
corporate centralization. The
second group of chapters is
concerned with the extension of
corporate control over the poli-
tical life of the nation. Mintz
and Cohen see the principal
mechanism by which this con-
trol is exerted in the tremen-
dous campaign contributions
which the corporations, and
only the corporations, are
wealthy enough to make to poli-
ticians. ("We are not likely to
get fundamental reforms" in
politics, they declare, "so long
as candidates for public office
remain indentured to the con-
centrated industries that fi-
nance their campaigns.")
What solutions did C. Wright
Mills suggest to the problems
which he outlined? Well, as a
matter of fact, Mills was never
terribly clear on this point. Ei-
ther he saw his role purely in
exposing the power elite or he
was simply unable to formulate
a solution. In any case, The
Power Elite itself is remark-
ably evasive as to solutions.
Messrs, Mintz and Cohen, on
the other hand, being "prac-
tical" liberals, face the mat-
ter of solutions squarely. The
conclusions which they reach,
the social medicines which they
prescribe, are (or ought to be
eye-openers. They are simulta-
neously inadequate and quite
sufficient.
"Inadequate," we say, because
they would be impossible to
implement or (if implemented)
would fail miserably to solve the
broader societal problems to
which they are directed. "Suf-
ficient," at the same time, be-
cause they do, in fact address
themselves directly (and sole-
ly) to the two aspects of our
society's crisis (corporate con-
centration and corporate cam-
paign contributions) n o t e d
above.
The Mintz - Cohen solutions
are simple. To corporate oligo-
poly they would oppose vigorous
trust-busting and federal rather
than (the weaker) state cor-
porate chartering. To curtail
corporate political power they
propose to limi campaign con-
tributions to a set maximum, re-
duce the cost of TV time and
like measures.
Now just what would trust-
busting accomplish? The au-
thors are crystal clear on this
question. By preventing the fur-
ther growth of super-corpora-
tions, by breaking up those
which already exist into smaller
units, the authors hope to re-
turn us to "a society in which
competition is the regulator of
the economy."
What the authors cannot or
will not understand is that it is
(and was) competition itself
which fosters and, indeed,
makes inevitable the trend to-
ward monopoly. It is the pur-
pose of competition, after all,
to drive the less effective com-
petitor from the field. Social
Darwinism - the glorification
and transformation into social
morality of the jungle law of
"survival of the fittest" - is the
purest ideological expression of
competitive capitalism. It is
clear that the more successful
this competition is - the more
vigorous it is - the more quick-
ly does it pare down the num-
ber of competing producers.
With the disappearance of
each minor company, the re-
maining enterprises expand
their own markets, become
more powerful, and become
more "competitive". And it be-
comes ever more difficult for
new producers to enter that
market and to survive there.
The Mintz - Cohen protesta-
tions to the side, industrial his-
tory in both the U.S. and in
Europe have shown that it is
that the corporations are Amer-
ica, as the present book's title
suggests.
The corporations control the
means of production, transpor-
tation, communication, and ex-
change. In brief, they hold in
their hands the very lifelines
which sustain the population as
a whole. And so long as this
state of affairs continues, the
well-being and happiness of the
corporations (on the one side)
andt1
lic office, and this more funda-
mental relationship will remain.
And while it does, all govern-
ment decisions of any conse-
quence - no matter who makes
them-will have to be tailored
to accommodate it. (A grasp of
this fact is a prerequisite to un-
derstanding why some of the
staunchest defenders of the
"rights" of Big Business have
historically proven to be poli-
ticians with no personal ties to
industry at all, viz., the Euro-
pean social democrats, Ameri-
can social-reformers in office,
and so on.)
The alternatives are clear, as
are the political strategies. One
can, with Mintz and Cohen, set
oneself the task of patching up
(but not replacing) the capital-
ist system (in their case, by
setting it back a century or so).
Or, one may work toward over-
throwing that system altogether
and building in its place a demo-
cratic, socialist one. The latter
strategy is aimed at placing the
giant industrial enterprises at
the command exclusively of the
population, not at breaking those
enterprises down into tiny, war-
ring, privately-owned mini-mon-
sters.
The reformist strategy will
usually appear the more "real"
because it is the less ambitious.
It seems easier to work through
the Democratic Party, for ex-
ample, get elected to office, and
sponsor little bills like those
which Mintz and Cohen cham-
pion, than to work to build a
mass revolutionary movement.
But such "realism" is illusory.
Once in office, as we have seen,
the restrictions imposed by cap-
italism and its needs, will be
suffocating. And the path to rev-
olution, although long, difficult,
and paved with constant c16ap-
pointments, offers the only pos-
sible solution to corporate eih-
pire-building, corporate- control-
led government, and the havoc
which that combination wreaks
on mankind.
Today's Writer. ..
Bruce Levine is a former edi-
torial page editor of the Daily
and a member of the Interna-
tional Socialists.
THE ALLEY
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precisely "bigness" which has
been the principal characteris-
tic of those industries able to
survive competition, and it has
been "bigness" which that com-
petition has stimulated even
further. That is how the prb-
sent corporate monsters evolv-
ed, and a reversion to trust-
busting (even could it be ac-
complished) would only place us
back on the same road, albeit a
few squares back.
A discussion of trust-bust-
ing, though. is purely academic.
This country could quite simply
not afford, to try it. For the
same reasons why size is a
determining advantage in inter-
national competition. At the
present time, American indus-
try is struggling desperately
simply to retain the share of
the world market which it pre-
sently controls. The kind of
wholesale assault on corporate
power which Messrs. Cohen and
Mintz prescribe would deal a
devastating - probably an irre-
parable - blow to American in-
dustry's chances in that strug-
gle, and it would aggravate most
of the ills which now plague our
economy: unemployment, trade
and payments deficits, and so
on.
The authors' political reme-
dies are similarly impractical.
To understand why, we need to
examine more closely the real,
the fundamental, reason for the
business - government "com-
munity of interest."
As noted above, the Millsians
(from the master down through
the "right - wing" Millsians,
Mintz and Cohen) attribute this
phenomenon to the infiltration
into government of corporate
personnel and money. In short,
to what Ralph Nader (in this
book's Introduction) calls "an-
impressive variety of strata-
gems". Thus we have a sort of
conspiracy theory of corporate
power. Consistently, those who
stand by this theory propose so-
lutions aimed at foiling con-
spiracies.
Unfortunately for Messrs. Co-
hen and Mintz (unfortunately
for us all!) conspiracy is only
the smallest, least consequential
factor in corporate power-ac-
quistion on the political plane.
Much more important is the
single, central, inescapable fact
and the welfare of the nation
itself (on the other) will be
seen to be indistinguishable.
Anything w h i c h weakens the
corporations, w h i c h restricts
their productivity, which threat-
ens their profit margins, which
inhibits their further growth, will
show up in economic ill-health
for the society at large. Break
all the conspiracies. remove all
the corporate stooges from pub-
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Photos . ..
Today's photographs were se-
lected from The Middle Ameri-
cans, text by Robert Coles and
photographs by Jon Erikson
(Little, Brown & Co., $12.50).
Most of us prefer to ignore
our Middle American habitats
because we are either trying
too hard to escape them or,
more often, because their very
familiarity occupies our atten-
tion so completely. We ignore
both the common and the un-
common because we cannot
bring focus to the significant.
This book provides a discern-
ing, yet sympathetic, look at
the one hundred and thirty
million Americans w ho find
themselves or, shall we say,
ourselves, located within the
gravitational middle. Although
Coles advises that the Middle
Americans he has interviewed
for the last five years are
neither black, red, or brown, or
intellectuals or youth cultists,
still, the concerns of his sub-
jects involve those perplexities
of survival which plague us all.
Coles and Erikson, who did
their work independently, have
joined together in a volume
which uniquely counterbalances
charity with incisiveness.
only because it emphasizes and
aggravates - and therefore
highlights - precisely the
weaknesses of Professor Mills'
seminal work. In doing so, au-
thors Mintz and Cohen may
help us come to understand the
general crisis of the Millsian
school of analysis and even con-
tribuate indirectly to resolving
that crisis.
The central theme of the
books by Mills as well as by his
political heirs is the ever-in-
creasing centralization of power
in fewer and fewer hands. The
fact of this centralization they
have all documented thorough-
ly. This phenomenon is most ap-
parent in the economic field, in
the ongoing mergers and con-
glomerations of the corpora-
tions.
Parallel to this development,
the Millsians discovered. the
greater and greater coincidence
of corporate interests and gov-
ernment policies. They ascribed
this perceived "community of
interests" to the evident pene-
tration into high government
positions of corporate execu-
tives and their representatives.
A healthy chunk of The Power
Elite is devoted to documenting
this penetration, and for those
who followed after Mills (most
clearly, Domhoff ) this single
factor became the overriding
conceirn.
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