Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

84 Chapter 2
BENEATH THE WATERLINE:
CLASS MAINTENANCE AND LEGITIMATION
To maintain their power and privilege, elites have learned to . . . exploit
nonelites without their realizing they are being exploited.
—Harold R. Kerbo, Social Stratification and Inequality, 2006
The second hidden dimension of the class iceberg involves the structures
and processes that maintain and legitimate the new class society. Of course,
elite classes in stratified societies have always devoted a portion of their considerable
resources to legitimating and reinforcing the class system, thereby ensuring
their continued possession of disproportionate levels of wealth, power,
and privilege. However, the problems of maintaining and legitimating the
emerging new class society have been rendered more complex by the extreme
inequalities of the system and the tension between these class realities and the
relentless, media-driven promotion of the American Dream as a cultural ideal
(see the box at the end of this chapter, “Class Issues in the Media: The American
Dream”). Thus, the current class-maintenance and -legitimation strategies,
structures, and policies combine sophisticated extensions of approaches used
in the past with emerging, innovative forms of control and distraction.
The Class-Power-Network Model
Our perspective on how the new class system is maintained and legitimated
is based on an organizational model of class interests and power. It views large
firms as repositories of superclass resources and also as dominant sources of
power in virtually all sectors of society. According to this approach, privilegedclass
leaders use corporate-based resources to create, fund, and control extensive,
overlapping organizational networks within the economic, political, and
cultural social arenas. These networks consist of organizations linked by various
connections, such as interlocked board members, shared public policy interests,
and common goals, including the maintenance and legitimation of
concentrated privileged-class power and wealth.
In the economic arena, network examples include superclass-controlled
trade associations and peak corporate groups, such as the Business Roundtable.
Superclass-funded public policy “think tanks,” lobbying organizations,
and PACs are examples of organizational networks within the political arena.
In the cultural arena, network examples include superclass-funded foundations,
civic and cultural organizations, and elite university boards of trustees.
We view these interlocked organizational networks as directed by privilegedclass
leaders who use them to pursue strategies and objectives that reinforce
the shared economic, political, and cultural interests of their class. These include
legitimating corporate autonomy, power, and profit maximization, as
well as maintaining the organizational structure of the new class system so as