nce Bigham Young University lerodution to Sociology Dept of Potical Pitzer Science McGraw-Hill Pimis Text: ISON: 0-20-15250-5, McGraw-Hill 4 A Dison of The Mera BComTecra is uy fn Capon rd at crea am acl petopaph fies eas p™ “Panu asnarct Oe Poles Seience apv.abe compen! Cori ©2010 The Meow arpa ne A tt reed Procite United Sef Aneres Ea8, Demise Unites Se Cap to 176 copa Tes patenion ay te reseed dibudinany om ‘yam mete ces rate rae an, veto rer wer emisien e bishe ‘Pe howl iio may de mari abratest Mebane pbicsion eins Biscause. The ‘esr s sob esperar te atl seat sch Fou sek OHO ISHSFizectovoucionte | Foner Poles Toemetimonie [enenceni | Sevalogr Anais Today? Cops, 68 neve 897 G. William Domhof teaches at she Universtyof California, Santa Cruz, He hasa BA. from Duke Univesity, an M.A tom Kent Sate Universe, and a PhD. from the Universigyof Miami His many articles and books on power in the United State ncade The Power Elite ond he Siete (1990), Stele Autonoms or Clas Dominance? (1996), and Who Rules Amarice (1998). essay Who Rules America Today? G. William Domhott Who has predominant power in the United States? The short answer is found in an adaptation of the well-known golden rule: Those who have the gold are the rulers. To be exact, the wealthy people who own income-pro- ducing property—corporations, real estate, and agribusinesses—set the rules within which policy battles are waged in this country ‘The idea that a relatively fixed group of privileged people dominates the economy and government for its own benefit goes against the American grain and the founding principles of this country. “Class” and “power” are terms that make Americans uneasy, and concepts such as the “upper class” and the “power elite” put people on their guard, Americans may differ in so- » COMMUNITY POWER Not all power is wielded at the national level. To gain a full picture of who rules in the United States, itis necessary to understand the power structures that exist at the local level and see how they relate to the national power elite. Power at the local level is based on the ownership and control of land and buildings. A community power structure is essentially an aggregation of land-based interests that profit from increasingly intensive use of land. The typical way of intensifying land use is growth, which usually expresses itself in a constantly rising local population. A stecessful local power structure is able to attract the corporate plants and offices, defense contracts, federalFizeclnvowctonta | Power Plies Donbdt WhoRwies | OTrehGam Secllogy ‘ea Tay? eis 08 (Rovio 397 and state buildings, and educational and research establishments that lead to an expanded work force and then to 1 expansion of retail and other commercial activity, extensive land and housing development, and in creased financial activity. Because this chain of events is at the core of every developed locality, power analysts call the local power structure a growth coa- tition.” Growth coalitions are local counterparts to the national power elite and have many interests in common with it. However, there also can be tensions between local and national power structures. For example, if corporations decide that the local business climate has not been made favorable by a growth coalition, they can pull up stakes and leave. There also can be con- flicts between rival growth coalitions as they compete for investment from corporations, universities, and governmentagencies, Because so many government decisions can affect land values and growth potential, leaders of the growth coalition are prime participants in local government. It is the most overrepresented group on local city coun- cils and is also well represented on planning commissions, zoning boards, water boards, and downtown parking authorities. However, this direct in- volvement in government is usually not the first or only contact with govern- ment for the members of a growth coalition. These individuals often have served on the local chamber of commerce's committees and commissions concerned with growth, planning, roadways, and off-street parking. These committees are the local counterparts of policy-discussion organizations. A growth coalition does not dominate local government without opposi- tion, There is sometimes conflict between the coalition and specific neigh- borhoods. Neighborhoods are something to be used and enjoyed in the eyes, of those who live in them, but they are sites of further development for the “highest and best use” of the land in the eyes of those who run the growth coalition. This conflict berween use value and exchange value is a basic one in cities where the downtown interests try to expand into nearby neighbor- hoods. Sometimes the neighborhoods win these battles, especially when they are aided by organized environmentalists or supplemented by a univer sity community that can marshal professorial expertise and student votes ‘The Weaknesses of the Working Class In many democratic countries, the working class, defined as all white-collar and blue-collar workers who earn a salary or a wage, has more social power than it does in the United States. This power is achieved primarily through labor unions and political parties. Itis reflected in more egalitarian wealth and income distributions, a more equitable tax structure, more extensive public health services, and higher old-age and unemployment benefits. How can the American working class be relatively powerless in a country that prides itself on a history of pluralism and free elections? There are sev- eral interacting historical reasons. First, the primary producas in the United States—those who work with their hands in factories and fields—are moreRinertaweduetion to | Pewer& Politics | Domi: Wn Ras Sciolosr Ancica Toy? ovat 197 seriously divided among themselves than is the case in most other countries. The deepest and most important of these divisions is between whites and AE rican Americans. In the beginning, of course, African Americans had no so- cial power because of their enslavement, but even after African Americans gained their freedom, prejudice in the white working class kept the two groups apart. ‘This black-white split in the working class is reinforced by conflicts be- tween craft workers—also called skilled workers—and industrial workers— also called mass production or unskilled workers. In the late nineteenth cen- tury craft workers tried to keep their wages high by opposing the immigration of industrial workers into the country. Their sense of supe- iority as skilled workers was reinforced by the fact that they were of north- em European, Protestant origin whereas the new industrial workers tended. to be Catholics and Jews from eastern and southem Europe."" Some African Americans, along with other racial minorities, are now in the ranks of the in- dustrial workers as well, It would be difficult to overcome these longstanding historical divisions even if workers could develop their own political party, but they are unable to do so because of the way the electoral system greatly disadvantages third parties. As a result, workers have no place to go but to the Republicans or Democrats. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, craft work- ers sometimes supported the Democrats, while the immigrant industrial workers tended to support the Republicans, and most African Americans could not vote at all. Even when craft and industrial workers moved into the Democratic Party en masse in the 1930s, they could not control the party be- cause of the traditional power of wealthy southern planters and merchants within it, reinforced by the voting alliance with northern Republicans on some issues discussed earlier as the conservative voting bloc. Nor did workers have much luck organizing themselves through unions. Employers were able to call on the government to defeat organizing drives and strikes through both court injunctions and arrests, Not only did employ- ers have great influence with politicians, but the American tradition of law, based on “laissez-faire,” “individualistic,” antigovernment liberalism, was fiercely opposed to any restraint of trade or interference with private prop: erty. [twas not until the 1930s that the liberaHlabor coalition was able to pass the National Labor Relations Act guaranteeing workers the right to join a union and engage in collective bargaining. This advance was made possible by excluding the southern work force, that is, agricultural and seasonal la- bor, from coverage by the new laws. Further, the passage of this legislation had only a limited impact because the industrial unions were defeated al- most completely in the south and southwest. Unions thrived in a few major industries in the north after World War II, but their power was eroded be- ginning in the 1970s as the big corporations moved their factories to other countries, introduced labor-saving technolegy, ot lost market share to Euro- pean and Japanese companies. Corporate lawyers have rendered the Na-ize mrouctin rt Poles Dente Woefies | OThavGan- si (aise 807) tional Labor Relations Act harmless to corporations through a series of le islative amendments and successful court cases.” Only 10 percent of private- sector workers are still in unions. Given this history of internal division, political frustration, and union defeat, it is not surprising that American workers continue to accept the highly individualistic ideology that has characterized the United States since its founding. That is, they have not been able to develop the counter organi- zations that could create and disseminate a more communal, cooperative, and pro-government way of looking at the problems facing average Ameri- cans at home, school, and the workplace. This acceptance makes it even more difficult to organize workers around bread-and-butter issues. There- fore, they sometimes vote instead on the basis of social issues, racial resent- ments, or religious convictions. Those who are deeply religious, opposed to affirmative action, or opposed to gun control, sometimes vote for the avow= edly anti-union and anti-government Republican Party. Thus, it is important not to confuse freedom with social power. Since the 1960s there has been a great expansion in individual rights as a result of the civil rights, feminist, and lesbian-gay movements, but during that time the ratio of a top business executive's pay toa factory worker's pay increased from 41 to I to 98 to 1, and some chief executives now make tens of millions of dollars each year while most people's income hes been stuck for years in the $20,000 to $50,000 a year range."! American workers can say and do what they want within very broad limits and their children can study hard in school and then join the well-off professional class as doctors, lawyers, archi- tects, or engineers, However, most Americans have very little social power if they are not part of the power elite. » CONCLUSION ‘The differentiation between a national corporate community based on the production of goods and services, on the one hand, and local growth coali- tions based on land use, on the other, provides a subtle, less monolithic pic- ture of power in the United States than power analysts painted in the past. At the same time, it shows that government in this country, at whatever level, is mostly dominated by business in one form or another. The libera}labor coalition at the national level and the neighborhood-environmentaluniver- sity coalitions at the local level are sometimes able to win delays or modifica tions on specific policies or projects, but so far they have not been able to alter the terms of the debate, elect very many of their own political repre- sentatives, or make either the income or wealth distribution less unequal through higher minimum wages, better benefits packages, and more pro- gressive taxation they consistently advocate. ‘Whether we look at “who benefits,” “who governs,” or ‘who wins” as our power indicator, the power elite and the growth coalitions currently haveT ‘ezeredoctanto | Power Pie T oats wie ate PENDNOTES maw 1 Secalogy America Todo Conse, 28 (Rest the preponderance of power in the United States, and all present indica- tions are that they will continue to do so. But power structures are not im- mutable, They do change, sometimes suddenly or dramatically, as the col- lapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of South Africa most recently and dramatically demonstrate, but no one can predict when grad- ual underlying trends or unexpected breakdowns will lead to new power ar rangements. No one predicted the Great Depression of the 1930s and the ensuing set of programs called the New Deal, for example. Nor did anyone predict the activist phase of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s or the subsequent transformation of the Democratic Party in the south, mak- ing the entire party potentially open to the influence of the liberallabor coalition for the first time in American history. Due to the fall of the Soviet Union, Americans are now less concerned. with foreign threats to their way of life. They have seen their incomes stag- nate while the rich become even richer. Organized labor has become more involved in politics as it watches its position continue to be undermined. Mi- nority groups, civil rights groups, women’s groups, and environmentalists are working more closely with each other than they have for two decades. Whether these trends and changes will lead to a challenge to the power elite through a transformed Democratic Party, and whether such a challenge would have any success, is one of those imponderables that cannot be pre- dicted even after careful study of structural and attitudinal changes by sev- eral generations of social scientists 4. Dennis Wrong, Power: Its Forms, Bases, and Uses, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979, p. 2 2. E. Dighy Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Glass, New York, The Free Press, 1958; G. William Domhoff, The Higher Gircles, New York, Random House, 1970; G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America®, Mountain View, CA, Mayfield, 1998, 3. Edward Wolff, Top Heavy, New York, The New Press, 1996, p. 67. ‘4, Michael Uscem, The Inner Girdle, New York, Oxford University Press, 1984; Beth Mintz and Michael Schwartz, The Proer Structure of American Busines, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985; Domhoff, Who Rules Ameria?, op. cit, chap. 2 8. Wolff, op. cit, p. 63. 6. Thomas R. Dye, Who's Running America?, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice: Hall, 1995, chap. 6; Useem, op. cit. 7. Dye, op. cit, chap. 9; Domhoff, Who Rules America?, op. cit. chap. 4; Harold Salzman and G. William Dombof, “Nonprofit Organizations and the Corpo- rate Community,” Social Science History 7203-216, 1988. ‘8 Alice O'Connor, “Community Action, Urban Reforms and the Fight Againstoo ‘ae nvoectn a Secelogy ‘ama Teta? Compre. 138 (Revised 97) Poverty: The Ford Foundation’s Gray Areas Program,” Journal of Urban History 20: 586-626, 1996; Marshall Robinson, “The Ford Foundation: Sow- ing the Seeds of a Revolution," Environment 35: 10-20, 1998. 9. Philip Burch, Elites in American History, 3 vols., New York, Holmes and Meier, 1981-82; Beth Mintz, “The President’s Cabinet, 1897-1972," Insur= gent Sociologist 5: 181-148, 1975; Domboff, Who Rules America?, op. cit., chap. 7 410. Steven Rosenstone, Roy Behr, and Edward Lazarus, Third Parties in America, 2nd ed,, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1996. 11. Dan Clawson, Alan Neustadtl, and Denise Scott, Money Talks: Corporate PACS and Political Influence, New York, Basic Books, 1992; Herbert Alexan- der and Anthony Corrado, Financing the 1992 Election, Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1995, 12, David M. Potter, The South and the Concurrent Majority, Baton Rouge, Lou- isiana State University Press, 1972; Mack Shelley, The Permanent Majority, Tuscaloosa, The University of Alabama Press, 1983. 13. G. William Domhoff, The Power Bite and the State, Hawthorne, NY, Aldine de Gruyter, 1990, chap. 9 414, Aage Clausen, How Congressmen Decide, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1973; Barbara Sinclair, Congressional Realignment, 1925-1978, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982, 18. Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Congres. A Poitical-Economic History of Roll Call Voting, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 229-232. 16. James W. Prothro, The Dollar Decade, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State Univer- sity Press, 1954; Leonard Silk and David Vogel, Ethics and Profits, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1976. 17, John Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987. 48. Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Devel apment, 1870-1925, Ithaca, NY, Comell University Press, 1986, 49, Michael Goldfield, The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States, Chi- cago, University of Chicago Press, 1987; Domhoff, The Power Elite and the Siate, op. cit. chap. 4 20. James Gross, Broken Promise: The Subversion of US. Labor Relations Policy, 1947-1994, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1995. 21. Lawrence Mishel and Jared Bernstein, The State of Working America, 1994— 95, Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1994