Re: Footnote: Power Elite/Ruling Class Re: A Major Division in the US Power Elite…

On Oct 2, 2006, at 4:08 PM, Michael Pugliese wrote:

Marxist reviews by Sweezy and Aptheker are included in, “C.Wright Mills and the Power Elite, ” edited by Bill Domhoff.

Almost finished reading it. Sweezy’s review is excellent; Aptheker is
a major windbag.

Sweezy makes the point - one I totally agree with - that no left
movement will ever succeed in the US by promising less material
wealth, and criticizes Mills’s “characteristically American”
weaknesses in that regard. “Denunciations of wealth as such, in the
earlier tradition of radical thought, are likely to fall on deaf ears
in this country today; rightly or wrongly, most Americans approve of
it and want more of it for themselves. A successful radical movement
must convince them that it really has more of it to offer the great
majority of them than has the present system of waste and plunder.”

Doug

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