The ’Power-Elite’ Model and Global Reality

#21, you are 100% off in understanding what I wrote. I was not blaming anyone. I was merely explaining how difficult it is for people living in a rationalized society to deal with events once the ``box is busted``. That was all, there was no blame game. Read my post again and try to understand it.

masadi #17

`` When all aspects of life, as in modern existence, are circumscribed by bureaucracy- rules that govern behavior- which then becomes second nature to people living within such a system, when that system breaks down there is total chaos or panic. Direct control as there exists in more traditional societies can never be so encompassing as modern bureaucratic control. Bureaucracy produces standardization. When that standardized reality is shattered it produces total panic. IN other words, a bureaucratic social structure produces a society where thinking ``outside the box`` becomes impossible. When the box shatters, there is massive upheavel. As a microcosm, look at what happened in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and tell me would a metropolitan person who shops for his or her existence in a super market have feared better under those conditions or a hunter-gatherer? ``

It is unfair to compare the response to USA to hurricane Katrina and conclude American society is on the same level to that one of a cave dwellers. 1000 people died in hurricane Katrina because 50,000 odd people choose to disobey evacuvation orders. Compare the ability of US society to handle a variety of situations - massive nuclear attack, massive conventional attack, outbreak of deadly flu, severe drought, severe floods, massive earthquake etc. Compare even the ability of medieval kingdom to handle similar situations.
America has 290 million people which is a large number compared to the number of people living 2000 years ago.

#19, it is a pathetic form of ``scholarship`` that tries to label and caricature people based on bits of information. Your entire thesis is built upon flimsy foundations when you do that.

Harish,

I pity you because you`ve always fired salvos off other people`s shoulders.

But for the record, I have been talking about the Islamists closely emulating the Marxists for a while... but then whatever I say will not appeal to you given that the conclusions I draw are usually as hurtful for the self-professed Gandhi-lovers as they are for the Islamists and vice versa... hence Masadi`s outbursts on Ras Siddiqui`s article.

Maybe the kitch Islamist efforts may bring some beneficial results to our madarassa educated felons......it would inspire them to read the original Wright Mills, Adorno, Habermas or deridda ........................

#16, sure, the answer to your question is contained in part of the quote you reproduced, <<< when such bureaucratized control- which covers almost every aspect of existence- breaks down >>>

When all aspects of life, as in modern existence, are circumscribed by bureaucracy- rules that govern behavior- which then becomes second nature to people living within such a system, when that system breaks down there is total chaos or panic. Direct control as there exists in more traditional societies can never be so encompassing as modern bureaucratic control. Bureaucracy produces standardization. When that standardized reality is shattered it produces total panic. IN other words, a bureaucratic social structure produces a society where thinking ``outside the box`` becomes impossible. When the box shatters, there is massive upheavel. As a microcosm, look at what happened in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and tell me would a metropolitan person who shops for his or her existence in a super market have feared better under those conditions or a hunter-gatherer?

This by the way is not my original idea or exposition. It was suggest way back by sociologist Karl Mannheim, who states while explaining a bureaucratized society, ``In an adequately functioning society, the neurotic is only the borderline case in a state of ``general disorganization``, it is he who sets the pattern.``

Re #15:

Dear masadi:

I am curious about

{However the hope is that when such bureaucratized control- which covers almost every aspect of existence- breaks down the effects are much more massive than the upheavals seen during revolutions of old.}

Can you elaborate the `` more massive`` part?

Respectfully submitted,

#14, the means available to the colonizers of old were different and not as encompassing as those available to the neo-colonizers of today given technological advancement and an economic structure that is much more centralized globally compared to what existed in the early history of industrialization. However the hope is that when such bureaucratized control- which covers almost every aspect of existence- breaks down the effects are much more massive than the upheavals seen during revolutions of old. The American empire is fast headed in that direction, and therein lies hope for the world seeking to escape this totally dominating control.

# 13

Throught history, a minority of elites has always enjoyed decisional power over vast numbers of non-elite majority. Additionally, no matter how far we look back, we find that savvy colonizers - those aspiring to create durable and profitable colonies away from home - never relied solely on direct force and control to create and sustain colonies.

Colonization of body and colonization of mind have always been the two necessary tools of all colonizers.

#2,#3, you write <<< But, don`t you agree that eventually, people in these countries need to be accountable for their own actions >>> & <<< It`s about time we reformed our ways instead of just blaming others >>>

The difference between the new form and the old form of colonization lies in the institutionalization and bureaucratization of control as against direct control. The difference between the elite of the Victorian era and the US power elite today lies in the concentration of power and the means of control of which the concentrated mass media is a new and major tool. When one country isolated from the rest or one individual isolated from the group plays out its or his or her part in that machinery, it becomes increasingly difficult to ``take personal responsibility`` by going against the tide.

Bureaucratic control works in subtle ways, for the individual it transforms the personality, converting a diverse society into a mass, as also for nations in the global division of labor and relationship viz a viz the Core.

Under such conditions, social reproduction (eg. coup after coup) is a greater possibility than social revolution but revolution is not an impossibility. Here is an important discription by C. W. Mills that differentiates between two types of history making:

``When knowledgable journalists tell us that `events not men make the big decisions`, they are echoing the theory of history as fortune, chance or fate (mystical determinism)...The course of events in our time depends more on a series of human decisions than on any inevitable fate...As the circle of those who decide is narrowed, as the means of decision (and communication) are centralized and the consequences of decisions become enormous, then the course of great events often rests upon the decisions of determinable circles...an elite of power`` (C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite 1956:21-22)

To all Chowkies:

Haiy tau yeh rasm-e-zamanah, lekan phir bhi
Ho mubarak tumhain yeh saal nya, meray rafiq

Happy New Year

Mohammad Gill

#1 HP, throwing in a discussion on Islam based on this article is off-topic and inappropriate. However, what you say about Islam is incorrect. The Quran presents an ``ideal type`` society, and recommendations to reach that ideal. Its purpose is not to tabulate all details of social structure or biology or geology etc~ those references, scientifically accurate are there for a purpose, to link the whole with the specific.

Muslim societies of today are influenced more by a western institutional structure and relationships with those powers than the Quran; the Quran in Muslim societies has been reduced to mere symbolic value. That does not mean that the Quran is somehow defective. The effects of these alliances with the West as well as the condition of the world under what has followed from what you describe as ``superior`` is not something to be very proud of. People like Mills who have been pioneers in studying the US political economy have condemned it based upon humanistic criteria, criteria that the Quran is even more emphatic about than Mills. Also, you are forgetting that Ibn Khaldun, the founder of sociology and historiography was a Muslim who quotes the Quran extensively in establishing these scientific fields, in his Muqadimmah. The Quran is not defective, it is not inferior and your caricature of it is inaccurate.

If you are interested in the Quran`s system here would be a starter article http://www.selvesandothers.org/article12501.html

Chowk Editors, greatly appreciate your publication of this, hopefully someone somewhere might benefit from these ideas and when he/she gets the chance will implement its lessons and totally delink India & Pakistan from the US elite dominated system of tyranny

Hello editors can you make an editing correction please:

Salvador`s Allende should read Salvador Allende

Thank you.

“In our time problems of the western societies are almost inevitably problems of the world.” –Mills

In the last 100 years, despite so much progress by countries outside the West, the West still dominates the world completely and its conflicts and needs shape the world. If I may extend it a little more I would say that since the Industrial revolution, problems of “the western societies are almost inevitably problems of the world”.

The US is the current leader of the West and it has inherited, despite hating it so much initially, all the European problems. Since the Industrial revolution, the west or the Europe as it was known then, had been in constant turmoil and interestingly Europeans have fought more wars not only amongst themselves but with other countries of the world too. So the state of permanent war is a concept that the US has inherited from the Europeans.

We have now reached a state where no war in the world is a war until the west is involved in it. In fact, only western powers are capable of waging wars. All other military conflicts in the world are merely low impact skirmishes or in the new parlance terrorist acts.

The question is; can we blame the US military-Industrial complex for the state of permanent wars or should we say that the military industrial complex was created to sustain the state of permanent wars? Catch 22...perhaps. Though this is an important distinction considering the fact that the West had been waging wars for the last three or four centuries and the US has led the West only from the second half of the last century.

The dilemma is that the US is perfectly capable of resolving problems with just intense diplomacy without actually getting involved in Physical entanglements but like its predecessors in Europe, the US is also trigger happy. Two recent conflicts in Bosnia and Iraq present a perfect example when the use of force was completely unnecessary and both problems could have been resolved with intense diplomacy.

Clinton claimed a non existent genocide in Bosnia and Bush invented WMD in Iraq. The real reasons for both wars were intense partisan bickering and the conflict within the US society as the US economy is transforming from mainly a manuf. economy to now a high tech, finance and service economy. Both wars once again proved that “problems of the western societies are almost inevitably problems of the world.”

Bosnia was a war with limited goals but now the US has embarked upon much vaunted preemptive wars that really have no justifiable reason except for maybe 9/11. Just look at the world before 9/11, US was universally accepted as the sole super power that did not have to worry about any challenges. China’s economy was almost dependent on US and was providing cheap labor to the US manufacturers. There was no other adversary in sight and the US could have easily led the world in its goal of globalization. There was no other power economic or military in the world that could have possibly opposed the US drive to change the world’s economy on its vision but as they say 9/11 changed everything, has it really?

Was 9/11 enough reason for the US to fall into atavistic regression?

#7 by harish_hyd

[Yaar Yasser, you`re a Paki and you`re not drunk, so you know what that means? It means only you can (or maybe even you can`t) understand what you write. ]

Not that it would be any different even if you were drunk :-)

#6 by Mantolives

[Atleast a drunk `Paki` can... it would require saaton janam and then moksha for you...]

Yaar Yasser, you`re a Paki and you`re not drunk, so you know what that means? It means only you can (or maybe even you can`t) understand what you write.