Lincoln's war, the North's attack on the South, took the life of 622,000 citizens and altered the government's structure. Marx and Engels watched the war from afar and applauded his efforts. The media and our government-controlled schools have presented a deceptive view of every historical event and have whitewashed the most scandalous political leaders and vilified leaders who have worked in the best interests of the people. Following Lincoln's precedent-setting war, we have been repeatedly lied into wars. Currently, our young men and women shed their blood in foreign lands while well-connected corporations make massive profits rebuilding the infrastructure that other corporations have demolished. Meanwhile, our politicians, possessing inside knowledge, grow richer through their investments and the bribes they accept from deep-pocketed lobbyists. They have not listened to their constituents for decades. CIA thugs, in behalf of the corporations, commit terrorist acts in other countries which the U.S. government and media blame on the so-called insurgents. In 2010, the Pentagon paid the following to the top five out of 100 (1) Lockheed Martin Corp. $16,700,588,328; (2) Northrop Grumman Corp. $11,145,533,497; (3) Boeing Co. $10,462,626,196; (4) Raytheon Co. $6,727,232,555; (5) Science Applications International Corp. $5,474,482,583. Yet, throughout the country, vital infrastructure is crumbling and politicians are selling taxpayer-funded public properties to private interests as a profitable venture. The new owners exploit the public by raising service rates while diminishing the services.
After World War II, a new community of elite emerged in Hungary, in spite of the communist principles espoused by the government. In Luxury and the Ruling Elite in Socialist Hungary, György Majtényi allows us a peek inside their affluence. Majtényi exposes the lavish standard of living that the higher echelon enjoyed, complete with pools, Persian rugs, extravagant furniture, servants, and groundskeepers. They shopped in private stores stocked with expensive meats and tropical fruits just for them. They benefited from access to everything from books, telephone lines, and international travel to hunting grounds, soccer games, and even the choicest cemetery plots. But Majtényi also reveals the underbelly of such society, particularly how these privileges were used as a way of maintaining power, initiating or denying entry to party members, and strengthening the very hierarchies that communism promised to abolish. Taking readers on a fascinating and often surprising look inside the manor homes and vacation villas of wealthy post–World War II Hungarians, Majtényi offers fresh insight into the realities of patriarchy, loyalty, gender, and class within the communist regime.
Michael Barr explores the complex and covert networks of power at work in one of the world's most prosperous countries - the city-state of Singapore. He argues that the contemporary networks of power are a deliberate project initiated and managed by Lee Kuan Yew - former prime minister and Singapore's 'founding father' - designed to empower himself and his family. Barr identifies the crucial institutions of power - including the country's sovereign wealth funds, and the government-linked companies - together with five critical features that form the key to understanding the nature of the networks. He provides an assessment of possible shifts of power within the elite in the wake of Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong, assuming power, and considers the possibility of a more fundamental democratic shift in Singapore's political system.
Influential minorities have existed in some form in all human societies. Throughout history', such elites have evoked varied responses--respeet. hos-tility, i'ear. envy, imitation, but never indifference. While certain elite groups have been of only passing historical importance, strategic elites, whose mem-bers are national and international leaders, today are ultimately responsible for the realization of social goals and for the continuity of the social order in a swiftly changing world. This volume, which first appeared in 1963. marked" a major advance in our theoretical understanding of these elites, why they are needed, how they operate, and what effect they have on society. Drawing upon the work of such classical writers as Saint-Simon. Marx. Durkheim. Mosca. Pareto. and Michels, and such modern scholars as Mann-heim. Lasswell, Aron. Mills, and Parsons, the author presents a challenging theory of elites that provides the framework for her examination of their co-existence, their social origins, and their rise and decline. The elites discussed here include political, diplomatic, economic, and military, as well as scientific, cultural, and religious ones. Systematically, the author surveys available em-pirical data concerning American society, and selected materials on Great Brit-ain. Germany, the Soviet Union, and the developing nations of Asia and Africa. Written with clarity and distinction. Ifayond the Ruling Class remains a thorough and provocative treatment, rich in empirical insights, of a subject that will compel the attention of political scientists, sociologists, and historians concerned with themes of power, influence, and leadership in national and international life. Her new introduction to Beyond the Ruling Class is at once an appraisal of the current status of elite studies and a careful self-evaluation of her efforts.
This is the first comprehensive examination of the Russian ruling elite and its political institutions during an important period of state building, from the emergence of Russia on the stage of world politics around 1700 to the consolidation of its position after the victory over Napoleon. Instead of focusing on the great rulers of the period--Peter, Catherine, and Alexander--the work examines the nobility which alone could make their power effective. LeDonne not only gives a full chronological account of the development of bureaucratic, military, economic, and political institutions in Russia during this period, but also skillfully analyzes the ways in which local agencies and the ruling class exercised control and shared power with the absolute monarchs.
This book examines why in AD 66 a revolt against Rome broke out in Judaea. It attempts to explain both the rebellion itself and its temporary success by discussing the role of the Jewish ruling class in the sixty years preceding the war and within the independent state which lasted until the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. The author seeks to show that the ultimate cause of the Revolt was a misunderstanding by Rome of the status criteria of Jewish society. The importance of the subject lies both in the significance of the history of Judaea in this period for the development of Judaism and early Christianity and in the light shed on Roman methods of provincial administration in general by an understanding of why Rome was unable to control a society with cultural values so different from its own.
The ruling class plays a major role in society. It makes possible what would otherwise be infeasible, by removing constraints that may stand in the way of long-term growth. Historically, economists devoted far less attention than sociologists to the study of ruling classes. Using the theoretical tools of economists, this volume provides an understanding of what drives the formation of a ruling class, and the relationship between politics and business firms. Focusing on Italy, it uses labour economics to analyse the selection of the ruling class, the labour market of politicians, the allocation of managers' time, and their incentives, remunerations, and career paths. It draws on contributions from two teams of leading scholars and on research undertaken by the Fondazione Rodolfo DeBenedetti. Part I focuses on the labour market of politicians. It uses detailed information on personal characteristics, incomes, performance in office, and career paths (both before and after the Parliamentary mandate) of all the politicians elected to the Italian Lower Chamber (Camera) between 1948 and 2008. This is the first time that this information has been gathered and summarized in key indicators. Part II is devoted to the managerial class. It includes cross-country surveys of managers across a sample of European countries, surveys carried out in cooperation with the largest union of managers in the service sector, social security records, and, for the first time, surveys on the allocation of time for top executives.
Providing a general overview of the accurate history of World War II-which was essentially a continuation of World War I with the same saber-rattling participants-The Ruling Elite describes the circumstances leading up to World War II. Author Deanna Spingola discusses how the diaspora-distributed international bankers living and prospering in Britain, France, and America influenced greedy, compromised, and complicit politicians in those nations. The Ruling Elite explains that through deceptive propaganda, those politicians persuaded naïve citizens to wage war against Germany, a peace-loving nation whose leaders were uncooperative with the bankers, which led to World War I. Following that war, German officials rejected the bankers and their money-lending scheme to save their nation and its citizens from the burden of debt. The aftermath of World War II-a deadly war that killed millions and imposed communism in numerous countries-impacted every banker-occupied country in various ways: culturally, morally, politically, and economically. Researched through historical documents and scholarly works, The Ruling Elite describes how warmongers regularly project their criminal activities onto others, frequently blaming the victim, whether an individual or a nation. Spingola offers an unbiased look at World War II beginning with Hitler and the rebirth of Germany through the aftermath of the war.
This book investigates Parliaments’ capacity to oversee government activities, policies and expenditures. Utilising a comparative approach, the book presents a new examination of oversight tools and discusses the conditions under which such tools are employed effectively. The result of a 9-year collaboration between the authors, this book draws from the findings of survey data collected by the World Bank Institute and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, analysing information from 120 parliaments. The book represents a rigorous attempt to test whether international organizations are correct in claiming that the quality of democracy and good governance can be improved by strengthening the oversight capacity of legislatures. It discusses the tools available to parliaments worldwide, and taking a comparative approach considers which tools are more or less common, how oversight capacity can be estimated, how oversight capacity is related to other institutional and constitutional factors, and above all what ensures that oversight tools are used effectively. This analysis reveals that while the quality of democracy and good governance benefit from effective oversight, oversight effectiveness cannot be reduced to oversight capacity. The book urges policy makers and reformers to change their approach from strengthening capacity to securing that the capacity is put to good use. Parliamentary Oversight Tools will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of legislative politics and governance.
The U.S. government, complicit with the well-connected corporations, since the so-called Civil War, continues to wage war and destruction. Lincoln's revolutionary war, supported by Marx and Engels, caused at least 618,222 and perhaps as many as 700,000 deaths, including about 50,000 Confederate civilians. Soldiers who were fighting, dying and killing during that war were in training for future wars. If Americans could kill fellow citizens, then they would use force against foreign citizens, in behalf of the government. That war foreshadowed the devastating global warfare that followed with the Spanish American War, two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War and the current wars in the Middle East. They do not include the bombings in the Baltic and elsewhere or the CIA's covert warfare wherein millions of people died. In the First World War, soldiers killed 9,911,000 people in action, and wounded 21,219,500 people, while 7,750,000 people were missing in action for a total of 38, 880,500. In the Second World War, there were over 24,000,000 military deaths and 49,000,000 civilian deaths totaling 73,000,000 deaths, not including the number of wounded or missing. That is 82,911,000 deaths in two world wars. The real question is WHY?
