Fat Cats & Democrats: The Role of the Big Rich in the Party of the Common Man

by G. William Domhoff

C. Wright Mills' idea of a power elite holding the country in thrall has generally been unpopular among academics. Domhoff, Psychology professor at Santa Cruz & author of Who Rules America? (1967), is a strident exception. His intention here is to dispel the popular delusion that Democrats are the party of the common man (does anyone still believe this?) & he does so with maximum abrasiveness, characterizing all the fat cats, angels & campaign donors as sinister & conspiratorial. Borrowing from Ferdinand Lundberg, he suggests there is only a single Property Party. Having written off Republicans as self-evidently motored by multimillionaire WASPs, he turns to the Democrats who get their dollars from an assortment of gold-plated Jewish Wall Street financiers, Texas oilmen & reactionary Southern planters & industrialists, who constitute a coast to coast network quietly making sure that the Big Rich will continue to enjoy oil depreciation allowances, agricultural subsidies & regressive tax structures. Besides providing loans & cash donations they provide other red-carpet services to chosen candidates. The collusion, depicted as all-powerful albeit shadowy, is difficult to document. Tho he provides both names & sums he relies heavily on guilt by association. The best chapter is on "limousine liberals"--those Guardians of the Left Gates who cluster in the ADA, the Southern Regional Conference, the New World Foundation et alia. They set the outer limits of dissidence by nipping radicalism in the bud, usually by subsidizing, then coopting it, & effectively block the rise of 3rd party movements. Far from offering a real alternative the fat cat liberal fringe performs a vital service for the Establishment by perpetuating illusions of meaningful reform. Despite the outraged tone, most of this is conventional wisdom among political muckrakers & there's no hint as to what can be done about it.--Kirkus (edited)

203 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

fascinating...