The Mysterious Establishment

excerpted from the book

Friendly Fascism

The New Face of Power in America

by Bertram Gross

South End Press, 1980, paper

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American Heritage Dictionary
"Establishment: An exclusive group of powerful people who rule a ) government or society by means of private agreements or decisions."

The American Establishment is not an organization. Nor is it a simple coalition or network. Like the industrial-military complex, it has no chairman or executive committees.

(Like the Golden International,)the Establishment is more complicated than any complex. It is a complex of complexes, a far-flung network of power centers, including institutional hierarchies. These are held together less by hierarchical control and more by mutual interests, shared ideologies, and accepted procedures for mediating their endless conflicts.

Like the establishments in other First World countries, the American Establishment is not just a network of State leaders. Nor is it merely a coalition of private governments. It is an interweaving of two structures- polity and economy-that under industrial capitalism have never been independent of each other. It is the modern partnership of big business and big government. As such, it is much looser and more flexible than the establishments of classic fascism. And in contrast with them, above all, it operates in part through-and is to an important extent constrained by-the democratic machinery of constitutional government. Private agreements and decisions-even well-protected secrecy-play a large role in its operations; this adds to the Establishment's inherent mystery. It is why people often refer to it as the "invisible government." Yet many of its agreements and decisions are open to public view. Indeed, so much information is available in public reports, congressional hearings, and the specialized press that anyone trying to make sense of it all runs the danger of being drowned in a sea of excessive information. This, of course, is the problem faced by all intelligence agencies, which usually feed on a diet of 95 percent public data spiced with 5 percent obtained through espionage. Also, as with intelligence and counterintelligence, there are huge information gaps side by side with huge amounts of deliberately deceptive misinformation.

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The number of people actively involved-even at the very top-is too large for any meeting or convention hall. Robert Townsend, who headed Avis before it was swallowed by IIT, has made this estimate:

"America is run largely by and for about 5,000 people who are actively supported by 50,000 beavers eager to take their places. I arrive at this figure this way: maybe 2,500 megacorporation executives, 500 politicians, lobbyists and Congressional committee chairmen, 500 investment bankers, 500 partners in major accounting firms, 500 labor brokers. If you don't like my figures, make up you own . . ."

I am convinced his figures are far too small. If there are 4,000-6,000 at the top, they are probably able to deploy at least five times as many in executive management; who in turn operate through at least ten times as many junior and contingent members. My total ranges between a quarter and a third of a million. Even without adding their dependents, this is a far cry from a small handful of people. Yet in relative numbers this large number of people is still a "few." A third of a million people numbers less than two tenths of one percent of the U.S. population of about 220 million; and with their immediate family members this would still be less than 10 percent. It is less than one hundreth of 1 percent (.0001) of the "Free World" under the shared leadership of the United / States. Seldom, if ever, has such a small number of people done so much to guide the destinies of so many over such vast expanses of the planet.

There are conflicts at all levels. Most of these are rooted in divergent or clashing interests, values, perceptions, and traditions. Some are minor, others are major. Many minor crises at various points in the Establishment are daily occurrences, surprising only the uninitiated. But "whenever we are prepared to talk about a deep political crisis," as Papandreou observes, "we should assume that the Establishment (as a whole) is undergoing a crisis, either because of internal trouble-namely, because some of its members have seen fit to alter their relative position within the coalition-or because of external trouble, because another challenger has risen who wants a share of the power." The bulk of these conflicts are resolved through bargaining, accommodation, market competition, and government decision making, particularly through bureaucratic channels. A few more come to the surface through the legislative, judicial, or electoral processes. Coherence is provided not only through these procedures for conflict adjustment but also by large areas of partially shared interests, values, and ideologies.

It is constantly changing. E the Establishment were a mere defender of the status quo, it would be much weaker. While some of its members may resist many changes or even want to "turn the clock back," the dominant leaders know that change is essential to preserve, let alone, expand, power. "If we want things to stay as they are," the young nephew said to his uncle, the prince, in Lampedusa's The Leopard, "things have got to change. Do you understand?" Power holders may not understand this at once, but events drive the point home to them-or drive them out. Thus many of the changes occur in the membership of the Establishment which, at any point, may expand or contract. E the Establishment is a target, it is-in Leonard Silk's apt words for the "overall corporate government complex"-a "moving target." '

There is no single central conspiracy. I agree with Karl Popper when he says: "Conspiracies occur, it must be admitted. But the striking fact which, in spite of their occurrence, disproves the conspiracy theory is that few of these conspiracies are ultimately successful." Many of them have consequences entirely or partly unintended or unforeseen. Popper adds the observation that the successful ones rarely come to public attention and that there is usually a "situational logic" that transcends any conscious planning. When there is a fire in an auditorium, people do not get together to plan what to do. The logical response to the situation is "Get out." Some will do it in an orderly fashion; others might be rather rough toward people who get in their way. The Establishment often operates this way. Some of its most historic achievements have been forced on it by "fires" that break out suddenly, often unanticipated. The major advances in the welfare state, for example, have historical}y been opposed by most elements in capitalist establishments who were usually too stupid or nearsighted to realize that these measures would put a floor (or elevator) under market demand, thereby promoting the accumulation of corporate capital and taking the sting out of anticapitalist movements.

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The greatest difference between the Ultra-Rich and the rest of us is that most of them are addicted to sensory gratification on a grand scale. In part, as Ferdinand Lundberg has documented, this gratification takes the form of palatial estates, fabulously furnished town houses, private art collections, exclusive clubs, summer and winter resort on many continents, membership in social registers, birth and burial under distinctive conditions, etc. It also involves an array of services going far beyond the ordinary housekeepers, cooks, gardeners, masseurs, valets, chauffeurs, yacht captains, and pilots of the large fleet of rich people's private aircraft. But above all, the valets of the ultra-rich also include expert executives, managers, advisers, braintrusters, ghostwriters, entertainers, lawyers, accountants, and consultants. Most of their services are more expensive (and far more sophisticated) than those enjoyed by the emperors, emirs, and moguls of past centuries. Some are freely given in exchange for the privilege of approaching the throne and basking in the effulgent glory of accumulated wealth. Most are paid for by others-either being written off as tax deductions or appearing as expenses on accounts of various corporations, banks, foundations, universities, research institutes, or government agencies. These payments for modern valet service can be unbelievably high. Indeed, one of the earmarks of the Ultra-Rich in America is that they even have millionaires-most of them involved in big business -working for them.

Among the Ultra-Rich, of course, there are the so-called "beautiful people" who nourish their addiction merely by using a little of what accrues to them from fortunes managed by others. These are the "idle rich," the rentiers whose hardest work, beyond clipping coupons, is flitting from one form of entertainment to another. There are also a few deviants who betray their class by denouncing their addiction, getting along with small doses only, ore actively using their money to finance liberal or left wing causes. The great majority, however, seem to be stalwart conservatives who abstain from idleness by some form of "public service"-that is by holding the most prestigious institutions of philanthropy, higher education, health. culture. and art.

There are also those whose addiction is more powerful; they can satisfy it only by larger and larger doses of money or power. This can be done only by exercising directly or indirectly their roles as overseers, roles legitimized by their personal participation in the management of corporate property.

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Adam Smith
"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many."

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C. Wright Mills
"No one can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance, truly powerful ..."

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Richard Barber
"Their [a few immense corporations] incredible absolute size and commanding market positions make them the most exceptional man-made creatures of the twentieth century.... In terms of the size of their constituency, volume of receipts and expenditures, effective power, and prestige, they are more akin to nation-states than business enterprises of the classic variety."

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If better means more powerful, then the rich and the ultra-rich are truly better than most people. While you and I may work for major institutions, they are part of or close to (sometimes on top of) the cliques that control them. Their family life is also different. For ordinary people, family planning has something to do with control over the number and spacing of children. For the rich, family planning involves spawning trust funds and family foundations that hide wealth and augment control of corporate clusters and complexes. As a result of brilliant family planning, the formal institutions of corporate bureaucracy and high finance have not led to a withering away of the Morgans, Rockefellers, Harrimans, du Ponts, Weyerhausers, Mellons, and other oligarchic families of an earlier era. Nor have they prevented the rise of newer family networks such as the Kennedys. Rather, the nature of family wealth and operations has changed. "Rather than an Irenee du Pont exercising absolute domination, now the [du Pont] family fortune has been passed on to a number of heirs, even as the family's total wealth continues to grow. This splitting up of family stock blocks does not mean that capital no longer tends to accumulate. Just the opposite . . . du Pont wealth, and the power of their business class as a whole, is not diminishing, but growing."

The growth of familial power, paradoxically, has been made possible by the sharing of that power with nonfamily members who handle their affairs professionally and mediate inevitable intrafamily disputes. Many of the corporate institutions, moreover, have been built and are guided by people who are merely rich and are ultra-rich only in intent. Whether the heirs of old wealth or the creators of new wealth, they mingle with the ultra-rich in clubs and boardrooms and play an indispensable role in overseeing corporate affairs.

The role of overseer no longer requires total ownership-or even owning a majority of a company's stock. Most corporations are controlled by only a small minority of corporate stockholders. By usual Wall Street calculations, 5 percent stock ownership is enough to give total control; in a few cases, the figure may rise to 10 percent. The larger the number of stockholders, the smaller this percentage. This "internal pyramiding" is carried still further through chains of subsidiaries and holding companies. Thus, strategic control of a small block of holding company stock yields power over a vast network of accumulated power and capital. Many of these networks include both financial corporations and corporations in industry, utilities, communications, distribution, and transportation. Most of the overseers are what Herbert Gans called Unknowns. "How many

well-informed people," asks Robert Heilbroner, "can name even one of the chief executive officers-with the exception of Henry Ford II-of the top ten industrial companies: General Motors, Standard Oil (N.J.), Ford, General Electric, Socony, U.S. Steel, Chrysler, Texaco, Gulf, Western Electric? How many can name the top figures in the ten top utilities or banks-perhaps with the exception of David Rockefeller.''

While the names of chief executive officers are a matter of public record, the names of the top stockholders are not. Most wealthy individuals, as Richard Barber has shown, "are tending to withdraw from direct stock ownership to companies and to funnel their investments through institutions, especially pension funds and mutual funds. This latter development has substantially increased the power of institutions-pension funds, banks, insurance companies and mutual funds-in the affairs of even the largest corporations.

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As the takeoff toward a more perfect capitalism began after World War II, popular support of the system was assured in large part by the system's performance-more striking than ever before-in providing material payoffs and physical security. The record of over a third of a century has included the avoidance of mass depression or runaway inflation in any advanced capitalist country, expanded mass consumption, the maintenance or expansion of personal options, no near-war between any advanced capitalist countries and, above all, no world war.

Yet these achievements have depended upon a level of commitment among the elites at the Establishment's lower and middle levels that could scarcely have been forthcoming if either had seriously doubted the legitimacy of the evolving order. This legitimacy was fostered by a three-pronged ideological thrust.

The first prong has consisted of a sophisticated and passionate reiteration in a thousand variations of the simple proposition: communism and socialism are bad.

Before World War II there were many small, right-wing movements whose members were driven by nightmares of evil conspirators-usually communists, Jews, Catholics, "niggers" or "nigger lovers"-bent on destroying the "American way of life." During the immediate prewar period, their fears were expressed directly in the Dies Committee's crusade against "pinkos" in the Roosevelt administration. After World War II, these witch-hunting nightmares were transformed into dominant ideology. Professional antiradicalism became entrenched during the brief period of atomic monopoly. It grew stronger in the more frenetic period of nuclear confrontation after Russia acquired atomic bombs. With some toning down and fine tuning, it has maintained itself during the present and more complex period of conflict with socialism and communism. During each of these stages it meshed rather well with anti-capitalist ideology in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other communist countries, thereby providing an ideological balance to parallel the delicate balance of nuclear terror. More specifically, it has given the overall rationale for the extension of America's multicontinental frontiers. It has helped link together the many disparate elements in America's quasi-empire. In large measure, the unity of the NATO countries in Europe had depended on their fear of Soviet communism, and the allegiance of Japan to the United States on the fear of either Soviet or Chinese communism. American aid to "have-not" countries, in turn, has often varied with their ability to produce-or invent-a communist threat on or within their borders. At home, anti-communism has provided the justification needed by the ambitious leaders of the massive military establishment. As Colonel James A. Donovan wrote after retirement from the U.S. Marine Corps, "If there were no Communist bloc . . ., the defense establishment would have to invent one."

Above all, anti-communism has been a valuable instrument in containing pressures for a more rapid expansion of welfare-state measures as opposed to more generous forms of aid to business. In this sense, the ideology of anti-communism has also been anti-socialistic. Although favoring corporate and military socialism for the benefit of businessmen and military officers, the anti-communists have bitterly attacked the "creeping socialism" that aims to benefit the poor, the underorganized, and the ethnic minorities.

The power and the imaginative vigor of anti-communist and antisocialist ideology has stemmed from its many interlacing currents. At one extreme, there have been those like Senator Joseph McCarthy and Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, both of whom charged that Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and George Marshall were communist agents or dupes. In the middle, people like Acheson and Marshall themselves developed the more influential, mainstream version of anticommunist ideology. By deeds as well as words, they attempted to prove they were more anti-communist than their detractors. Toward the left, many brilliant intellectuals have done their own thing less stridently, demonstrating the inefficiency of communist and socialist practice and the stodginess of communist and socialist doctrine. Each of these currents have been invigorated by significant numbers of former communists and socialists, who have atoned for their former sins by capitalizing on their special knowledge of communist inequity or socialist futility. Each helped publicize many of the Soviet Union's hidden horrors-although the tendency has been less to understand the deformation of Soviet socialism (and its roots) and more to warn against the horrors that would result from any tinkering with the American system.

Thus, like a restaurant with a large and varied menu, anti-communist and anti-socialist ideology has been able to offer something for almost any taste. Each dish, moreover, is extremely cheap. A high price is paid only by those who refuse to select any variety, thus opening themselves to the charge of being "soft on communism." For over a quarter of a century there has been only a small minority-particularly in the realm of government service and academia-willing to pay the price. The result has been a rather widespread conformity with ritualistic anti-communism and anti-socialism and a powerful consensus on the virtues of the established order.

The second prong of the ideological thrust consists of even more sophisticated variations on an equally simple proposition: the capitalist order is good. Before World War II one of the weakest links in the established order was the image of the corporation. For its consumers, the corporation said, "The public be damned!" On matters of broad public policy-particularly during the depths of the Great Depression- corporate leaders often distinguished themselves by ignorance and incompetence. There was blatant evidence to support President Roosevelt's epithet "economic bourbons." Even during the 1950s Charles Wilson, a former General Motors president, as secretary of defense, was able to suggest that what's good for General Motors is good for the United States. In short, the large corporation-as the central symbol of capitalism-was selfish, venal, and mean.

To cope with this situation, huge investments were made in public relations campaigns. Some of these campaigns concentrated on the corporate image. Many of them set forth in excruciating detail the infinite blessings of private ownership and free, competitive private enterprise. An exhaustive analysis of the material appears in The American Business Creed, by a group of Harvard economists. The essence of this so-called creed (to which no serious corporate executives could possibly have given credence) was the ridiculous assumption that the market was mainly composed of small, powerless firms and that large, powerful corporations were controlled by huge numbers of small stockholders instead of a small minority of large stockholders, managers, or investment institutions.

During the same period, however, a more influential ideology for postwar capitalism was formulated by various groups of pragmatic intellectuals. Their problem was that many corporate managers and their truly conservative economists were traditionally rather blunt in stating that their job was moneymaking, period-no nonsense about social responsibility. Besides, even the most dedicated corporate lawyers often remembered Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's dictum on the subject: "The notion that a business is clothed with a public interest and has been devoted to the public use is little more than a fiction intended to beautify what is disagreeable to others." Nonetheless, the Advertising Council spent billions over the decades in creating fictional images of business "clothed with public interest." In this they were helped by uninhibited academics like Carl Kaysen, who stated that in the corporate world of Standard Oil, American Telephone and Telegraph, Du Pont, General Electric, and General Motors "there is no display of greed or graspiness: there is no attempt to push off onto the workers or the community at large part of the social costs of the enterprise. The modern Corporation is a soulful corporation". Others have pursued the soulful theme even further by suggesting that the executives of transnational corporations are the real "world citizens" whose efforts may soon usher in a new era of permanent peace.

The third prong in the ideological package is the tacit-but breathtaking-assertion or premise that capitalism no longer exists. "A research report of the United States Information Agency," C. L. Sulzberger revealed in a typically incisive column back in 1964, "has ruefully discovered that the more our propaganda advertises the virtues of 'capitalism' and attacks 'socialism' the less the world likes us . . . Most foreigners don't regard 'capitalism' as descriptive of an efficient economy or a safeguard of individual rights. To them it means little concern for the poor, unfair distribution of wealth, and undue influence of the rich." 37 But what the USIA allegedly needed a research report to discover concerning capitalism's image in other countries was already well understood by capitalism's major publicists and spokesmen at home. As far back as 1941, in his "American Century" editorial, Henry Luce used the well-established term "free economic system" instead of "capitalism." The international capitalist market protected by American hegemony became the "free world" and "freedom" became the code word for both domestic capitalism and capitalist empire. In Carl Kaysen's article on the soulful corporation, the nasty word "capitalism" makes not a single entry. Its use would have introduced a jarring note. It would also have violated a powerful norm among economists namely, that instead of trying to analyze the workings of modern capitalism, capitalism should be discussed mainly in the framework of criticizing Marxian economics or making passing references to the imperfections in Adam Smith's model of perfect competition. When Governor George Romney of Michigan announced that "Americans buried capitalism long ago, and moved on to consumerism," what was really being buried was the old-time conservative defense of capitalism as unadulterated self-interest as superior to socialistic altruism. True believers like Ayn Rand were of no avail in charging that "if the 'conservatives' do not stand for capitalism, they stand for and are nothing" and in proclaiming (like one of her characters in Atlas Shrugged) "We choose to wear the name 'Capitalism' printed on our foreheads boldly, as our badge of nobility." The most intelligent spokesmen for the changing capitalist order wear a variety of names on their foreheads.

The first term-and still the most appealing-has been "mixed economy." The persuasive power of this concept stems mainly from lip service to the perfect-competition model as defined in classical or neoclassical ideologies. If capitalism used to be what Adam Smith advocated, the reasoning goes, then capitalism has been replaced by a mixture of private and public enterprise-or even of capitalism and socialism. This mixture blends the (alleged) productive efficiency of the former with the social justice sought by the latter. At the same time, it preserves the beautiful equilibrium of the classical model by providing opportunities for all interests in society to organize in their own behalf. From this competition in both the political and economic marketplaces comes a peaceful resolution of conflicts through the negotiation, bargaining, pressure and counter-pressure, propaganda and counterpropaganda that underlie electoral campaigns and executive, legislative, and judicial decision making. From this confused but peaceful process of political competition among selfish interests there emerges-as though by some invisible guiding hand-the best possible satisfaction of the public interest. Granted, there may be some imperfections in this political marketplace, too much strength at some points and too much weakness at others. But then enlightened government, with the help of Ivy League professors, can come in as a balancing factor and restore the equilibrium.

This pluralistic myth is often reinforced by statistical exercises suggesting that the unfair distribution of wealth and influence was on its way out and the majority of the population had attained "affluence." Thus the mere contemplation of the "objective data" carefully selected under his direction induced the usually self-contained Arthur Burns (later named chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the Federal Reserve Board) into the following orgasmic spasm of economic hyperbole: "The transformation in the distribution of our national income . . . may already be counted as one of the great social revolutions in history." 30 With such well-certified "evidence" coming across their desks, former Marxists or revolutionaries were able to explain their conversion to the existing order with something more convincing than diatribes (which often appeared in the form of Trotskyism) against Stalinism and more self-satisfying than the attacks on former comrades made by the former communists who converted to professional anticommunism. By 1960, Seymour Martin. Lipset was able to proclaim that "the fundamental political problems of the industrial revolution have been solved." 40 This viewpoint was enlarged by Daniel Bell's sadly joyous funeral oration over the end of socialist or communist ideology in the Western world: "For the radical intelligentsia, the old ideologies have lost their 'truth' and their power to persuade . . . there is a rough consensus among intellectuals on political issues: the acceptance of the Welfare State; the desirability of decentralized power; a system of mixed economy and political pluralism. In that sense, too, the ideological age has ended."

In continuation of the same argument, Bell has moved to replace the old ideologies of competing systems with a new end-of-ideology ideology, celebrating the new power of theory, theoreticians, and his best friends. With more wit, passion, and inventiveness than most competing sociologists, Bell has capitalized on the fact that both Western capitalism and Russian socialism have been forms of industrialism. In so doing he defines industrialism loosely as something that has to do with machines, almost completely glossing over the organizational and imperial aspects of industrial capitalism.

This allows him to proclaim the coming of something called "postindustrialism," which is characterized by the increasing relative importance of services as contrasted with goods, of white-collar employment, and of more technical and professional elites. The essence of this allegedly "post" industrialism is "the preeminence of the professional and technical class." This preeminence, in turn, is based on "the primacy of theoretical knowledge-the primacy of theory over empiricism and the codification of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols." The masters of the new theory and symbols are the "knowledge elites" and their domicile is the university, "the central institution of post-industrial society."

With equal wit and a larger audience, Galbraith propounded a similar theme when, in 1968, he claimed that power in the new industrial state has shifted from capital to the "organized intelligence" of the managerial and bureaucratic "technostructure."

For Bell, if the new knowledge elites do not make the ultimate decisions, it is because of a combination of old-fashioned politics and new cultural styles, particularly among younger people who tend to revolt against the rule of reason itself. If these obstacles can be overcome and if enough resources are channeled into R & D and the universities, then man's reason shall at last prevail and rational calculation and control will lead to stable progress. For Galbraith, the remedy was similar, since the system of industrial oligarchy "brings into existence, to serve its intellectual and scientific needs, the community that, hopefully, will reject its monopoly on social purpose." Galbraith's hope lay (at that time) in the wistful presumption that "the educational and scientific estate, with its allies in the larger intellectual community" might operate as a political force in its own right.

Although both Bell and Galbraith have been willing to concede the existence of capitalism (and Galbraith has more recently revealed himself as an advocate of public ownership of the one thousand corporate giants whom he describes as the "planning system," 44 most Establishment social scientists in both the Ivy League and the minor leagues seem to have adopted methodological premises that rule capitalism out of existence. Without the wit, wisdom, or vision of a Bell or Galbraith, they have busied themselves in efforts to provide technical solutions to political, moral and socio-economic problems. 'The problems they presume to solve-or in Daniel P. Moynihan's more modest terms, to cope with-are defined at the higher or middle levels of the Establishment where decisions are made on which research grants or contracts are to be approved and which professors are to be hired. They are carefully subdivided into categories that reflect the division of labor within the foundations and government contracting agencies.

In turn, the presumably independent "knowledge elites" of the educational, scientific, and intellectual estates-having usually abjured efforts to analyze the morality and political economy of the so-called "market system"-are now rated on their performance in the grant-contract market. The badges of achievement are the research proposals accepted by the Establishment, with the rank order determined by the amount of funds obtained. Alongside the older motto "Publish or perish" (which puts the fate of many younger people in the hands of establishment faithfuls on editorial boards), has risen an additional imperative: "Get a grant or contract and prosper." This imperative also applies to department heads, deans, and college presidents who-like professors-are expected to bring in the "soft money" to supplement the "hard money" in the regular college and university budgets. During the early 1960s the largest amounts of "soft money," came from the government agencies involved in the "hardware" and "software" needed by the military and outer-space agencies, and including the many programs of "area studies" focused on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Later, with the civil rights and antiwar movements, a minor avalanche of "soft money" was let loose for research, field work, and demonstration projects in the so-called "anti-poverty" and "model cities" programs. The word went quickly around among the new generation of academic hustlers that "Poverty is where the money is." Under these new circumstances, the serious applicant for funds was well advised to steer clear of root causes or systemic analysis. There was no prohibition against proposing research work or field organization designed to challenge the capitalist system, but no applicant has ever been known to openly propose anything so patently "unsound." Moreover, many of the wisest heads in the academic community-whether from profound inner disillusionment or in the heat of professional arrogance-openly advocated the treatment of symptoms only and inveighed against wasting time with the examination of systemic roots of poverty, unemployment, inflation, crime, or environmental degradation.

On a broader scale, methodology became the "name of the game." A new generation of methodologists learned that with unspoken constraints upon the purpose and content of research and theory, greater importance must be attached to means and form. Younger people who scorned the catch-as-catch-can methodologies of a Bell, Galbraith, or Moynihan- and were embarrassed by their unseemly interest in turning a good phrase -became the new ideologues of scientific methods. On the one hand, "abstracted empiricists" (as C. Wright Mills called them) became frenetic data-chasers eager to produce reams of computer printouts. On the other hand, enthusiastic model-builders erected pretty paradigms from which hypotheses might be deduced. Both sought verification through the application of methods long proven useful in the natural sciences. In this process, they had the aid and participation of many natural scientists perfectly willing to accept admiration from those naive enough to think that their skills in physics, biology, engineering or mathematics were readily transferable to the analysis of social problems. They also enjoyed the guidance or blessings of old-time radicals who-scorched by the heat of the purges or disillusioned by Stalinism-were eager to build a new God in the image of so-called scientific method. These activities became intensely competitive, with ever-changing cliques and currents providing endless opportunities for innovative nuances in the production of iconoclastic conformity and irrelevant relevance.

Occasionally, the existence of capitalist society has been allowed to enter into the frame of reference-but only marginally. Thus, it has become fashionable for many social science departments to have a well-behaved "Marxist" in residence: an element of good behavior, of course, is to accept the subdivision of mental labor and be a "Marxist" economist, socialist, or political scientist rather than dealing with capitalist society as a whole. A more widespread form of marginal acceptance of capitalist reality is the idea of "putting the profit motive to use in achieving social purposes." The reiteration of this imperative in every area from narcotics control to education has become one of the most effective methods of pledging allegiance to the undescribed and unexamined capitalist order.

Although these many establishment ideologies have not produced any dedicated loyalty or deep commitment to modern capitalism, they have nonetheless been a major factor in the purification process. They have made it possible for purges and induced conversions of dissidents to be reduced in relative significance and conducted on a low-key, routine basis. They have helped absorb some of the activists of the old "New Left" of the 1960s into the Establishment, purify thoughts and behavior during the 1970s, and channel into harmless-if not profitable-ways the resentments and grievances fed by the many crises and traumas of a more perfect capitalism.

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During the so-called "Hundred Year Peace" (1815-1914), all wars among the Great Powers were minor, short, or localized. General peace was preserved in an environment of unending limited war.

The period since 1945 has also been one of limited war. Whatever military action has taken place-whether in Korea, Indochina, the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America-has been geographically limited. Although the devastation has been ghastly, no nuclear weapons have been used.

But limited war has created a baffling problem for the leading capitalist powers, particularly the United States: A reduction in military stimulants to economic expansion and capital accumulation. The present condition of the American industrial establishment, writes David Bazelon, "is unthinkable without the benefit of the capacity-building expenditures of the past twenty years induced by war and preparedness measures." The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency has thought about this in terms that are themselves unthinkable to most Establishment economists: "It is generally agreed that the great expanded public sector since World War II, resulting from heavy defense expenditures, has provided additional protection against depression, since this sector is not responsible to contraction in the private sector and has provided a sort of buffer or balance wheel in the economy."

Strangely enough, the use of military-growth stimulants in the United States also served to stimulate growth in the two major capitalist societies with relatively small military budgets: Japan and West Germany. An important part of U.S. military expenditures spilled over into both Japan and West Germany in the form of both procurement of supplies and payments for the maintenance of U.S. installments. More indirectly, the U.S. concentration of war-related technology (which includes advanced computerization, communication systems, and electronic controls) gave the largest corporations in other leading countries of the "Free World," particularly Japan and West Germany, an opportunity to catch up with, or plunge ahead of, the United States in civilian technologies and thereby make spectacular advances in world trade.

As the United States began its slow withdrawal from Indochina in 1969, military expenditures began to level off and then-while prices for military goods were still rising-to fall by almost $4 billion from 1969 to 1972. As a proportion of total GNP, military spending fell even more drastically-from 9.1 percent in 1967 and 1968 to around 6 percent in 1979. Expenditures for "international affairs" (closely related to military expenditures) also declined. The size of the U.S. armed forces fell from over 3.5 million in 1968 to 2.1 million in 1979. In other words, the military slowdown under conditions of de-escalation and détente deprived the American economy of a defense against recession that had been provided during the 1960s. This was one of the factors in the recessions that began in 1970, 1974, and 1979. In each case unemployment rose. In 1975, the total end to the hugely destructive war in Indochina was a retrogressive economic force, as unemployment in the United States and other capitalist countries rose to the highest levels since the Great Depression.

The response of the industrial-military portion of the Establishment has been prompt, publicly warning against the great perils of becoming weaker than the communist enemy and privately warning against the disastrous economic effects of the slowdown. The positive action has been in two directions: the expansion of new and costly weapons systems and the sale of arms to other countries. Under conditions of détente, however, the two of these together were insufficient to restore defense spending to the proportions of GNP reached during Indochinese wars. Thus the American industrial establishment was subjected to a slow withdrawal of the stimulus to which it had become accustomed. The NATO countries were subjected to a sharp decline in the vigor of the Soviet "threat," which was the official raison d'être for NATO's existence. The capitalist world was subjected for a while to the "threat" of a peaceful coexistence in which the economic stimulus of war and preparedness would no longer be available at the level to which it had become accustomed. With any decline in détente, of course, these conditions change.

UNLIMITED OVERKILL

The dominant logic of "Free World" militarism in a period of limited warfare has been slowly developing during the 1970s. If unlimited warfare is "dysfunctional," then two lines of operation are indicated.

The first has been to channel a larger portion of military resources into weapons systems produced by the largest military contractors, even though this means a dwindling number of people in the armed services. The result has been a continuous increase in "overkill" capabilities whose actual use would surely destroy capitalism itself, but whose production and deployment contribute to the maintenance of a capital accumulation. Overkill itself is matched by various forms of "overdelivery": globe-circling missiles in addition to bombers; multiple warheads on a single missile (MIRVs); launchings from roving submarines, ocean-floor emplacements and eventually satellite space stations; ocean explosions to produce tsunamis (tidal waves); antiballistic missiles that would themselves emit vast radiation dosages over the territory presumably defended; and, more recently, cruise missiles that could be launched from submarines, planes, or ships, fly at radar-eluding altitudes, and maneuver around defensive fire. Less publicized, and often excluded from official estimates of nuclear megatonnage, is the armory of "tactical" nuclear weapons. These include huge numbers of air-to-ground, ground-to-air, and ground-to-ground missiles, of which over seven-thousand are stationed in Europe for use by NATO forces. The average yield of these weapons, according to Robert McNamara as far back as 1964, was about 100 kilotons, about five times greater than the strength of Hiroshima's Little Boy. Moreover, considerable "progress" has been made in developing the biological, chemical, physiological, and nuclear instrumentalities that could offer the prospect, in the words of a high U.S. Navy official, of attaining "victory without shattering cities, industries and other physical assets." The extent of this progress was revealed by the announcement in 1977 of the "neutron bomb" and its promotion for NATO use.

The second has been a massive escalation of arms sales and government-subsidized arms gifts to Third World countries. In the United States, this program-which represents a huge stimulus to American industry-reached $11.2 billion in fiscal year 1977, and then, under the Carter administration rose to $13.5 billion in fiscal 1979. This activity has been paralleled by similar arms exports from other "First World" countries. A large part of these exports has gone to the Middle East, thereby recycling "petrodollars" for such countries as Iran and Saudi Arabia. A considerable part of the U.S. exports, in contrast to those from most other First World countries, have gone to Israel, as well as to Third World regimes threatened by domestic upheaval.

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