Towards A Science For The People

Thanks to Jody for this link to an old, but interesting article.

Concurrent with the weakening of Cold War ideology over the past 15 years has been the growing realization on the part of increasing numbers of Americans that a tiny minority of the population, through its wealth and power, controls the major decision-making institutions of our society. Research such as that of Mills (The Power Elite), Domhoff (Who Rules America), and Lundgren (The Rich and the Superrich) has exposed the existence of this minority to public scrutiny. Although the term "ruling class" may have an anachronistic ring to some, we still find it useful to describe that dominant minority that owns and controls the productive economic resources of our society. The means by which the American ruling class exerts control in our society and over much of the Third World has been described in such works as Baran and Sweezy's Monopoly Capital, Horowitz's The Free World Colossus, and Magdoff's The Age of Imperialism. These works argue that it is not conspiracy, but rather the logical outcome of corporate capitalism that a minority with wealth and power, functioning efficiently within the system to maintain its position, inevitably will oversee the oppression and exploitation of the majority of the people in this country, as well as the more extreme impoverishment and degradation of the people of the Third World. It is within the context of this political-economic system, a system that has produced the Military-Industrial complex as its highest expression, and that will use all the resources at its disposal to maintain its control, that is, within the context of the American Corporate state, that we must consider the role played by scientific work.

ARTICLE SECTION HEADINGS:
Science In Capitalist America
Science Is Political
What Is To Be Done?
Political Organizing In The Health Fields
postscript: Censorship by Science

Related current articles:
Politics & Science: Investigating the State of Science Under the Bush Administration

More information on corporate governance.