Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

90 Chapter 2
of the class iceberg is also fraught with danger, though not of the physical sort.
Because of the taboo nature of class, few people venture below the waterline
of conventional social analysis. Down there, visibility is limited. The images
are murky. The dangers abound with miscommunication, misunderstanding,
and charges from “respectable quarters” that it is unproductive or even un-
American to make the trip: better to stick with the dream than explore the iceberg.
Even so, we’ll take our chances. We think the potential rewards are worth
the risks, and we invite you to join us.
The remainder of this book represents a tour of territory that for most Americans
is familiar and yet, in many ways, unknown. Our class-power-network
model serves as the basic map for exploring the hidden features of the new
class society. As we will see, the dominant power networks are not abstract,
ivory-tower inventions but real organizational webs of power that we encounter
daily. By tracking the interests, strategies, and activities of privilegedclass-dominated
organizations, the model helps us understand how this class
dominates organizations, public policies, programs, ideas, and social behavior
in the economic, political, and cultural arenas.
Like a magnifying glass, the model serves as a lens, bringing into focus the
details of the ways in which the dominant power networks have created, and
work to maintain and legitimate, the new class society. Using this lens, we
will discover how the web of power spun by the dominant power networks
attempts to control the production and enforcement of ideas about, debates
over, attention to, and enactment of class-relevant laws and public policies,
as well as the production and distribution of values and beliefs related to
personal fulfillment, the mass consumption of goods and services, and the
uses of work and leisure time. The cultural dimension of the dominant
power networks has become increasingly important to the legitimation
process. This is the case because the cultural network includes potent organizations
(e.g., the media and schools) that disseminate ideas, information,
and images that help legitimate the new class system and serve as vehicles
for distracting public attention away from the many inequalities of the system
(as we will see in chapters 5, 6, and 7).
The class-power-network model will also help us see and better understand
another important dimension of the class iceberg—the “underdogs” of class
conflict. The alternative-power-networks portion of the model provides us with
a map for understanding how dominant-power-network strategies, policies,
programs, and ideas favoring privileged-class interests are contested and challenged
in specific terms by real organizations and real people. These challenges
are grounded in an agenda emphasizing fair play, an end to arbitrary class inequalities,
and greater opportunities for all Americans to actually achieve the
American Dream and thereby bring about a class-iceberg meltdown.