PARTISAN REVIEW
459
thrown back on them because of a characteristic dilemma: he wishes
neither to apply traditional Marxist class terms, nor to concede that any
genuine popular sovereignty exists in American society.
He does recognize tha t ,the New Left has suffered "defeat" since
1968 and must now regroup. How should this be done ? The answer is
again vague, consisting of a grab-bag of possible strategies that are not
coherently related to each other. Some of the main suggestions are: tha t
the New
Left
should purge itself of anti-intellectualism and "pubertarian
revolt"; should develop "a new quality of life" ; should abandon the
hope of building a mass party and evade repression by decentralizing;
should build a long-term base in the universities and other potentially
hospitable institutions; should cultivate the "female" qualities of " ten–
derness, receptivity, sensuousness" ; should figlht against " the fe tishism
of the commodity world." Taken as a group, these proposals seem to me
less a response to defeat ,uhan a ratification of it.
Marcuse's vagueness about "who rules America?" - which is in
turn responsible for the vagueness of his suggested strategies for the left
- may be circumvented by posing a related question that
can
be an–
swered precisely: "who owns America?" We know, for example, tha t
the ric:hest 10 percent of family own 56 percent of American wealth,
whereas the poorer 50 percent of the population has a negligible share
(less than 5 percent ), and the poorest 10 percent have
negative
wealth
(i.e., their debts exceed their assets ) . These gross inequalities even under–
state the rea l concentration of economic power, because middle class
wealth holders own mostly real estate or other assets that produce littl e
income. Control of the means of production, and of the profits thereby
generated, lies with the owners of corporate stocks; of these, 86 percent
are held by the richest 5 percent of the population, and the riohes t 1 per–
cent alone hold nearly two-thirds. (Figures in this paragraph are taken
from "Who H as The Wealth In America?,"
Business Week, 197 2.)
For reasons too complicated to detail here, progressive t<Lxation is
no more
,than
an irritant to America's rich : their share of national
wealth has not been reduced over the last two generations, and may
even now be increasing. One would h ardly expect any other outcome,
since they control the machinery of government and have made it a
means of preserving and advancing their interest. To attack thier man–
agement of the state for its wastefulness and "irrationality," as Marcuse
does, is pointless, since they are in fac t ra tionally and skillfully engaged
in defending their own, rather than the general, welfare. The case against
them therefore cannot be "rational" or "scientific" in any abstract or
idealistic sense, for they can deploy equally "rational" arguments in
favor of their privileges ; this is precisely the function of the revival of
