The American Ruling Class

Lewis Lapham counsels Yale graduates

Among the pleasures of John Kirby’s 2005 documentary “The American Ruling Class” is watching Doug Henwood coolly dissect a hedge fund manager in his own office. Since the movie was written by and features blue-blood Lewis Lapham as a kind of Virgil escorting two fictional recent Yale graduates into the hell of class society, it has access to the separate worlds that the two major social classes live in. From the corporate offices of the NY Times and Goldman-Sachs to the pancake house that employs interviewee Barbara Ehrenreich, you get to see all sides of a system that Lapham has condemned for decades in the pages of “Harper’s” despite his patrician roots. Like Gore Vidal, Lapham is distinguished by his hatred for the injustices of a society that his upper crust peers take for granted.

In some ways, “The American Ruling Class” is a mockumentary since the two Yale graduates who accompany Lapham in his peregrinations as he tries to get to the bottom of the question of whether there is a ruling class are fictional. One named Jack Bellamy (Caton Burwell) is from a wealthy family and is about to start work at Goldman-Sachs, a prospect for many Yalies in 2005 that is equivalent to winning the American Idol contest. The other Yalie is Mike Vanzetti (Paul Cantagallo), who comes from a more modest background, like fellow Yalie Doug Henwood’s in fact. And just like Doug, Mike Vanzetti’s main goal is to make a career as a writer and make America a better place to live. He is willing to take low-end jobs to allow him to concentrate on the important things.

Most of the movie consists of Bellamy trying to persuade Vanzetti to join him at Goldman-Sachs where their earnings could help fund worthwhile projects in an old-fashioned philanthropic manner. Lapham accompanies Bellamy and Vanzetti as they try to sort out the issues surrounding the philosophy of “doing good by doing well”, the excuse that many Yalies made to themselves when they went to work for Goldman (my former employee in the late 1980s.) These are issues that Doug himself had to contend with as a Yale graduate and steadfast Marxist. When some of our more deranged Marxism list subscribers in years past-particularly the Alternative Orange Collective from Syracuse University-would accuse Doug of “selling out” because he did not share their catastrophist outlook, he would remind them that he sacrificed millions by not taking a job at a place like Goldman-Sachs. Meanwhile, Doug is still going strong while the Oranges have scattered to the four winds.

With his connections to old money, Lapham was able to recruit a number of fascinating bourgeois figures to take part in the documentary. Vartan Gregorian, who has had a long career in the nonprofit and philanthropic world, defends the “doing good by doing well” philosophy by explaining that capitalist funding is beneficial no matter how it the money was earned:

“As my friend Mrs. Astor said, ‘Wealth is accumulated manure. If it’s collected, it stinks, so you have to spread it around.’ And there is nothing wrong with philanthropy, spreading it around.”

Among the more remarkable interviews is with former Senator Bill Bradley who is visibly discomfited by Lapham digging up a rather radical-sounding statement from when Bradley was an idealistic student in the 1960s. It is a little bit like John Kerry being reminded of his statements about US war crimes in Vietnam when he was a presidential candidate in 2004. Nowadays Bradley, an establishment figure if there ever was one, believes:

The most important power lies in the human spirit, quite frankly.

Some [corporations] are very responsible corporate leaders who think about their people and who try to use their corporation as an agent of change. I know corporations like that. There are obviously others that are more exploitative.

Frankly, I found this kind of self-serving double-talk far more offensive than what came out of the mouth of James A. Baker III, another interviewee who is much more open about the right of American corporations and the military to rule the world.

The most important idea that Lapham and director John Kirby are trying to get across in this remarkable film is that the American ruling class is relatively fluid. If you are particularly talented and particularly unscrupulous you can go very far. Some of the interviewees are quite candid about how the system works after this fashion, particularly former TV newsman Walter Cronkite:

The ruling class is the rich, who really command our industry, our commerce, and our finance. And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy, that they really control the democracy, I feel.

The more sensitive to our democratic needs who join the ruling class, the more successful our democracy will be and the more likely its survival.

The irony of course is that in 4 short years the moral dilemmas presented in Kirby’s movie no longer exist. While Wall Street investment banks were all too happy to open their doors to a young Ivy League graduate in 2005, nowadays they no longer exist (Bear-Stearns; Lehman Brothers) or are in such bad straits that they are not even hiring. And for those who remain, the bonuses are piddling compared to the good old days.

Given the realities of the commercial movie-making industry, I am not surprised that the distribution and publicity for “The American Ruling Class” were less than zero when it premiered. Fortunately, thanks to the Internet, you can now watch it for free:

http://snagfilms.com/films/title/american_ruling_class/

Enjoy!

Official Film Website (The DVD can be purchased for a very reasonable price here, which I encourage people to do. The director needs funding to continue with worthy projects such as these.)