The question "Who runs things?" is a typically orthodox question. For until the industrial revolution there was little reason to ask it. Whether ruled by kings or shamans, war-lords, sun gods, or saints, people were seldom in doubt as to who held power over them. The ragged peasant, looking up from the fields, saw the palace or monastery looming in splendor on the horizon. He needed no political scientist or newspaper pundit to solve the riddle of power. Everyone knew who was in charge. Whenever the second wave swept in, however, a new kind of power emerged, diffuse and faceless. Those in power became the anonymous "they." Who were "they"?
Industrialism, as we have seen, broke society into thousands of interlocking parts- factories, churches, schools, trade unions, prisons, hospitals, and the like. It broke the line of command between church, state and individual. It broke knowledge into specialized disciplines. It broke jobs into fragments. It broke families into smaller units. In doing so, it shattered community life and culture. Somebody had to put things back together in a different form. This need to give rise to many new kinds of specialists whose basic task was integration. Calling themselves executives or administrators, commissars, coordinators, presidents, bureaucrats, or managers, they cropped up in every buisness, in every government and at every level of society. And they proved indispensable. They were the integrators.
Marx, in the mid nineteenths century, thought that whoever owned the tools and technology - the "means of production"- would control society. He argued that, because work was interdependent, workers could disrupt production and seize the tools from their bosses. Once they owned the tools, they would rule society. And yet it wasn't the owners of the "means of production" that came to power but in both capitalist and socialist nations, it was the integrators who rose to the top. It was not the ownership of the "means of production" that gave power. It was control of the "means of integration".
These technicians of power were themselves organized into hierarchies of elites and sub-elites. Every industry and branch of government soon gave birth to its own establishment, its own powerful "They."
Sports.. Religion.. Education.. Each had its own pyramid of power. A science establishment, a defense establishment, a cultural establishment sprang up. Power in this civilization was parceled out to scores, hundreds, even thousands of such specialized elites.
In turn, these specialized elites were themselves integrated by generalist elites whose membership cut across all the specializations. For example, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the Communist party had members in every field from aviation to music and steel manufacture. Communist party members served as a crucial grapevine carrying messages from one sub-elite to another. Because it had access to all information, it had enormous power to regulate the specialist sub-elites. In the capitalist countries, leading businessmen and lawyers, serving on civic committees or boards, performed similar functions in a less formal way, What we see, therefore, in all nations are specialized groups of integrators, bureaucrats, or executive, themselves integrated by generalist integrators.
Finally, at yet a higher level, integration was imposed by the "super-elites" in charge of investment allocation. Whether in finance or industry, in the Pentagon or in the Soviet planning bureaucracy, those who made the major investment allocations in industrial society set the limits within which the integrators themselves were compelled to function. Once a truly large-scale investment decision had been made, whether in Minneapolis or Moscow, it limited future options, Given a scarcity of resources, one could not casually tear out Bessermer furnaces or cracking plants or assembly lines until their cost hadbeen amortized. Once in place, therefore, this capital stock fixed the parameters within which future managers or integrators were confined. These groups of faceless decision-makers, controlling the levers of investment, formed the super-elite in all industrial societies.
In every society, consequently, a parallel architecture of elites sprang up. And with local variation this hidden hierarchy of power was born again after every crisis or political upheaval. Names, slogans, party labels and candidates might change, revolutions might come and go. New faces might appear behind big mahogany desks. But the basic architecture of power remained.
Time and again during the past three hundred years, in one country after another, rebels and reformers have attempted to storm the walls of power, to build a new society based on social justice and political equality. Temporarily, such movements have seized the emotions of millions with promises of freedom. Revolutionists have even managed, now and then, to topple a regime. Yet each time the ultimate outcome was the same. Each time the rebels re-created, under their own flag, a similar structure of sub-elites, elites, and super - elites. For this integrational structure and the technicians of power and who ruled it were as necessary to the civilization as factories, fossil fuels, or nuclear families. Industrialism and the full democracy it promised were, in fact, incompatible.
Industrial nations could be forced, through revolutionary action or otherwise, to move back and forth across the spectrum from free market to centrally planned. They could go from capitalist to socialist and vice versa. But like the much-cited leopard, they could not change their spots. They could not function without a powerful hierarchy of integrators.
Today, as the new wave of change begins to batter at this fortress of managerial power, the first fleeting cracks are appearing in the power system. Demands for participation in management, for shared decision-making, for worker, consumer, and citizen control, and for anticipatory democracy are welling up in nation after nation. New ways of organizing along less hierarchical and more ad-horatic lines are springing up in the most advanced industries. Pressures for decentralization of power intensify. And managers become more and more dependent upon information from below. Elites themselves, therefore, are becoming less permanent and secure. All these are merely early warnings, indicators of the coming upheaval in the political system.
This New wave, already beginning to batter at these industrial structures, opens fantastic opportunities for social and political renovation. In the years just ahead startling new institutions will replace our unworkable, oppressive, and obsolete integrational structures. Before we turn to these new possibilities, we need to press our analysis of the dying system. We need to X-ray our obsolete political system to see how it fitted into the frame of the older civilization, how it served the industrial order and its elites. Only then can we understand why it is no longer appropriate or tolerable.
Industrialism, as we have seen, broke society into thousands of interlocking parts- factories, churches, schools, trade unions, prisons, hospitals, and the like. It broke the line of command between church, state and individual. It broke knowledge into specialized disciplines. It broke jobs into fragments. It broke families into smaller units. In doing so, it shattered community life and culture. Somebody had to put things back together in a different form. This need to give rise to many new kinds of specialists whose basic task was integration. Calling themselves executives or administrators, commissars, coordinators, presidents, bureaucrats, or managers, they cropped up in every buisness, in every government and at every level of society. And they proved indispensable. They were the integrators.
Marx, in the mid nineteenths century, thought that whoever owned the tools and technology - the "means of production"- would control society. He argued that, because work was interdependent, workers could disrupt production and seize the tools from their bosses. Once they owned the tools, they would rule society. And yet it wasn't the owners of the "means of production" that came to power but in both capitalist and socialist nations, it was the integrators who rose to the top. It was not the ownership of the "means of production" that gave power. It was control of the "means of integration".
These technicians of power were themselves organized into hierarchies of elites and sub-elites. Every industry and branch of government soon gave birth to its own establishment, its own powerful "They."
Sports.. Religion.. Education.. Each had its own pyramid of power. A science establishment, a defense establishment, a cultural establishment sprang up. Power in this civilization was parceled out to scores, hundreds, even thousands of such specialized elites.
In turn, these specialized elites were themselves integrated by generalist elites whose membership cut across all the specializations. For example, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the Communist party had members in every field from aviation to music and steel manufacture. Communist party members served as a crucial grapevine carrying messages from one sub-elite to another. Because it had access to all information, it had enormous power to regulate the specialist sub-elites. In the capitalist countries, leading businessmen and lawyers, serving on civic committees or boards, performed similar functions in a less formal way, What we see, therefore, in all nations are specialized groups of integrators, bureaucrats, or executive, themselves integrated by generalist integrators.
Finally, at yet a higher level, integration was imposed by the "super-elites" in charge of investment allocation. Whether in finance or industry, in the Pentagon or in the Soviet planning bureaucracy, those who made the major investment allocations in industrial society set the limits within which the integrators themselves were compelled to function. Once a truly large-scale investment decision had been made, whether in Minneapolis or Moscow, it limited future options, Given a scarcity of resources, one could not casually tear out Bessermer furnaces or cracking plants or assembly lines until their cost hadbeen amortized. Once in place, therefore, this capital stock fixed the parameters within which future managers or integrators were confined. These groups of faceless decision-makers, controlling the levers of investment, formed the super-elite in all industrial societies.
In every society, consequently, a parallel architecture of elites sprang up. And with local variation this hidden hierarchy of power was born again after every crisis or political upheaval. Names, slogans, party labels and candidates might change, revolutions might come and go. New faces might appear behind big mahogany desks. But the basic architecture of power remained.
Time and again during the past three hundred years, in one country after another, rebels and reformers have attempted to storm the walls of power, to build a new society based on social justice and political equality. Temporarily, such movements have seized the emotions of millions with promises of freedom. Revolutionists have even managed, now and then, to topple a regime. Yet each time the ultimate outcome was the same. Each time the rebels re-created, under their own flag, a similar structure of sub-elites, elites, and super - elites. For this integrational structure and the technicians of power and who ruled it were as necessary to the civilization as factories, fossil fuels, or nuclear families. Industrialism and the full democracy it promised were, in fact, incompatible.
Industrial nations could be forced, through revolutionary action or otherwise, to move back and forth across the spectrum from free market to centrally planned. They could go from capitalist to socialist and vice versa. But like the much-cited leopard, they could not change their spots. They could not function without a powerful hierarchy of integrators.
Today, as the new wave of change begins to batter at this fortress of managerial power, the first fleeting cracks are appearing in the power system. Demands for participation in management, for shared decision-making, for worker, consumer, and citizen control, and for anticipatory democracy are welling up in nation after nation. New ways of organizing along less hierarchical and more ad-horatic lines are springing up in the most advanced industries. Pressures for decentralization of power intensify. And managers become more and more dependent upon information from below. Elites themselves, therefore, are becoming less permanent and secure. All these are merely early warnings, indicators of the coming upheaval in the political system.
This New wave, already beginning to batter at these industrial structures, opens fantastic opportunities for social and political renovation. In the years just ahead startling new institutions will replace our unworkable, oppressive, and obsolete integrational structures. Before we turn to these new possibilities, we need to press our analysis of the dying system. We need to X-ray our obsolete political system to see how it fitted into the frame of the older civilization, how it served the industrial order and its elites. Only then can we understand why it is no longer appropriate or tolerable.
