The Relationship Between Political Power and Economic Elites in the UK
It is believed that those who hold powers in Britain are representatives that we elect to the parliament and who are responsible for making decisions on behalf of the state. We are convinced that politics and the daily running of the State are done by parliament in conjunction with the Office of Prime Minister and the cabinet.
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This is better said than done, the fact is that there is another group involved in the daily running of the country.
This is evidenced by the fact that all running of the country does not stop even when parliament closes down in preparation for elections. Indirectly, the government is run by those who are economically endowed and whose economic decisions affect society as a whole.
There are however people in the government who are very rich but do not form the majority who have an effect on the country as a whole. For example, there are those people who own massive corporations, and a decision to shut down one of them may leave thousands of people jobless or may have an impact on the economy of the State. Just as Stephen Bayer once described himself as a vehicle for hire, he tried to show the perfect relationship that the politician or the parliament and the said ruling class have. This is because MPs are told to serve in the best interest of the firms to prevent them from shifting to other places. This, therefore, denies them other options but to serve the interests of the capitalist state as they cannot do without them.
Most people argue that the ruling class is different from the power elites. Initially, this is normally the case but with time it refers to the same thing.
A minority group whose voice in politics matters and include such people as politicians, some hired groups, business people and influential militants. Marxists Political Economics define ruling class as the group of individuals who has the greatest share economically or economically control the nation and comes second in the political arena. According to Marxists, the ruling classes are the same as the capitalists and refer to them as the bourgeoisie. It is made up of those people who control the production of the given society and are in a suitable position to control the working class to get maximum labor from them to maximize their profits. This gives those more powers in such a way that political decisions made are in the interest of the group. This is so because they have influence and are able to control other groups of people and especially inferior groups.
In the years of 1960s and 1970s, many discussions were centered on the works of Ralph Miliband. It was realized that the State was working in favor of the ruling class. It was more so said that Miliband was undertaking decisions that were aimed at directly favoring the economically endowed group.
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He claimed that they did for three major reasons namely the empirical approach which states that the state officials come from similar social background, the second reason is that state is in itself capitalist thus need to protect it through encouraging the society to accumulate more resources. The final reason is that any capitalist nation treats the national interests with the same intensity as they treat the capital interests. The argument is that for a nation to be politically stable, it needs to grow economically as well. The economic groups more often contribute to negative veto through the restrictions they openly give to the government and thus inhibit major changes from occurring.
This is referred to as pluralist stagnation. In most cases, the two groups are left with little control over the activities around the nation and hence they just react to situations on which they have very little influence.
In conclusion, it is difficult to classify either classic pluralism theory or classic Marxism as most appropriate to describe the situation in Britain. The two theories make a great impact on the decision-making process in Britain. It is however clear that decision-making or power and economic growth are inseparable. The two go together and must therefore be handled tactfully to maintain a balance.
