G. William Domhoff - Who Rules America? The Corporate Rich, White Nationalist Republicans, and Inclusionary Democrats in the 2020s (Eighth Edition)

At this crucial moment in American history, when voting rights could be expanded to include all citizens, or legislatively limited, this significantly updated edition of Who Rules America? shows precisely how the top 0.5% of the population, who own a rapidly growing share of the nations wealth, and an increasing percentage of its yearly income, dominate governmental decision-making. They have created a corporate community and a policy-planning network, made up of foundations, think-tanks, and policy-discussion groups, to develop the policies that become law. Through a leadership group called the power elite, the corporate rich provide campaign donations and other gifts and favors to elected officials, serve on federal advisory committees, and receive appointments to key positions in government, all of which make it possible for the corporate rich and the power elite to rule the country, despite constant challenges from the inclusionary alliance and from the Democratic Party. The book explains the role of both benign and dark attempts to influence public opinion, the machinations of the climate-denial network, and how the Supreme Court came to have an ultraconservative majority, who serve as a backstop for the corporate community as well as a legitimator of restrictions on voting rights, union rights, and abortion rights, by ruling that individual states have the power to set such limits.

G. William (Bill) Domhoff is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In addition to previous editions of this book, he is the author or co-author of 16 other books on power and diversity in the United States, including The Higher Circles (1970), The Powers That Be (1979), Jews in the Protestant Establishment (1982, with Richard L. Zweigenhaft), The Power Elite and the State (1990), Blacks in the White Elite (2003, with Richard L. Zweigenhaft), The Leftmost City (2009, with Richard Gendron), Class and Power in the New Deal (2011, with Michael J. Webber), and Diversity in the Power Elite (2018, with Richard L. Zweigenhaft). Most recently, he searched over two dozen archives to write The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century (2020).

The Corporate Rich, White Nationalist Republicans, and Inclusionary Democrats in the 2020s

G. William Domhoff

Eighth Edition

Cover images: top: Getty Images; bottom: Shutterstock.

Eighth edition published 2022

by Routledge

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2022 Taylor & Francis

The right of G. William Domhoff to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published by Prentice-Hall 1967

Seventh edition published by McGraw-Hill Education 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Domhoff, G. William, author.

Title: Who rules America?: the corporate rich, white nationalist republicans, and inclusionary democrats in the 2020s / G. William Domhoff.

Description: 8th edition. | New York, NY: Routledge, 2022.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021026679 | ISBN 9781032139036 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032139029 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003231400 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Elite (Social sciences)United States. | Power (Social sciences)United States. | Social classesUnited States. | CorporationsPolitical activityUnited States. | United StatesPolitics and government.

Classification: LCC HN90.E4 D652 2022 | DDC 305.5/20973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026679

ISBN: 9781032139036 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032139029 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781003231400 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231400

Typeset in Garamond

by codeMantra

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231400-1

The United States is walking on a razors edge in the 2020s. The country could become more democratic and inclusionary if the Democratic Party can continue to benefit from higher turnout within communities of color and from younger voters, increase its rising support from women voters, and hold on to the 4244% of the white vote it needs to succeed. In addition, a wide range of egalitarian and inclusionary activist groups can benefit the Democrats if they can continue to organize sustained political challenges to the many conservative legislative initiatives they oppose.

On the other hand, ultraconservative white nationalist dominance could continue. The Republican Party has strongholds in 14 of the 17 former slave states, most of which are in the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma (a slave territory when the Civil War broke out), South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia (which was part of Virginia until 1863). All of these states had laws requiring school segregation until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in 1954, and they also had laws against marriage between whites and African Americans until 1967.

Those 14 Southern states are joined by nine white nationalist-leaning states in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains: Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. All but two of these states banned interracial marriage until at least the mid-1950s; they also had exclusionary laws directed toward Native Americans, who were forced to live on reservations, and toward Chinese immigrants and Mexican-Americans. In other states, the Republican Party has the ability to win over many white voters by focusing on contentious social issues related to abortion, immigration, sexuality, race, and ethnicity.

Whichever way the country turns in terms of inclusion and exclusion, it is very likely that the wealthiest Americans, who make up 0.5% of the population at most, will continue to be the most powerful group in the country. The direction taken by a majority of these few exceptionally wealthy people may play a part in shaping the outcome of the conflict between conservative white dominance and a more inclusionary democracy. But it is beyond their power to determine the final results; the other 99.5% of Americans will decide the direction the country takes in the 2020s.

The wealthiest Americans are primarily the owners and managers of a few thousand large banks, corporations, real estate companies, and agribusinesses. They have dominated the United States on major policy issues for the past 13040 years through a complex, but completely visible network of for-profit and nonprofit organizations that is easier to study than many people may realize. The wealthy few have been successful in their efforts to win and retain power because the rights and privileges of ownership, along with their capacity to create policy-planning and opinion-shaping organizations, make it possible for them to shape government policy.