Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making

I was drawn to this book by the lavish endorsements on its back cover. If eminent persons such as a former head of state, a top government official, a senior business leader, a Nobel-prize winner in economics, and the head of an influential think-tank in Washington could extend such praise to a book that is basically a book about themselves, then I needed no further proof that the book was relevant to the topic it was addressing.But reading David Rothkopf' Superclass was, in the end, a disappointment, and the book fell short of my expectations. To be sure, the author is well connected, he has done some research on the who's who in international affairs, and he writes in an engaging, easy-to-read style. But he does not strike the right balance between critical distance and adherence to his subject-matter, and he remains either too close or too disengaged from the world that he is describing.Rothkopf has neither the broad perspective of an academic who puts his subject into context and adopts critical lenses to assess its social and political implications, nor the narrow focus of a practitioner who would draw practical lessons from his analysis to address pressing global problems. Neither insider nor outsider, he is more like the devoted fan who came to the party to see the celebrities and who is happy with rubbing shoulders and exchanging a few words with famous people.The author quotes many interviews that he had with members of the global power elite. These interviews add a cachet of exclusivity to the book and prove that the author has had access to a wide array of powerful people (it is not clear whether the interviews were made in the process of researching the book or as news articles published in the several magazines that the author edited.) But these quotations, reproduced in oral style and narrowly framed by the author's questions, are often dumbed down versions of what the same people have stated more eloquently in books, articles, or lectures.The book, which quotes many sources, could also have benefited from more references to scholarly debates. The academic studies that are mentioned, such as research on the increase in top income concentration and wealth inequalities, are presented in a very concise manner and some important contributions, such as recent research on CEO compensation, are not mentioned at all. A little bit of editing could also have eliminated some egregious mistakes and overstatements: who would believe, for instance, that the so-called Ten Commandments for Drivers promulgated in 2007 by the Vatican have the effect of law on the daily lives of more than one billion Catholics in the world, as is alleged on p. 41?Perhaps the biggest revelation in the book is that there is no big secret, no hidden conspiracy or world-wide shadow organization running the show. As Rothkopf concludes, "the individuals who take part in these institutions and who participate in certain elite events, clubs and conferences and casual dinners, probably do not have secret designs for world domination, but most likely do have common interests." They are agenda-setters, not conspirators, and power remains elusive. The most amusing quote I found was the remark of a disgruntled Davos participant who, like the teenager complaining that the really cool party must be someplace else, noted: "you always feel like you are in the wrong place in Davos, like there is some better meeting going on elsewhere in one of the hotels that you really ought to be at. Like the real Davos is happening in secret somewhere."

I admit it; I stopped reading this afternoon at page 224 because I was tired of Rothkopf's interminable encyclopaedic writing. There can be no question that the guy knows his way around the movers and shakers on our poor little rock but my brain is too small to deal with so much information, the significance of which I cannot determine. Yes Rothkopf told me innumerable bits of information but the stitching together of those bits was not as good as I thought they would be when I first opened the book.I had the feeling during my days of reading that the author had a schizophrenic outlook on the world's elites, the 6 000 at the top of the pyramid. He takes paragraphs of writing to tell us about these people and the money and power that they control and then a few pages later he talks about the disproportionate distribution of the world's wealth. On the one hand he seems truly to be concerned about the people that are producing the wealth for these few and then he talks about these elites seeming importance in the world and he falls into that old Kissinger thought pocket about how the elites are so deserving. A reader is taken on a rollercoaster of attitudinal changes; if it were not for the author's professional work-life I could almost believe that he really understood the plight of the people producing the wealth for the 6 000.Rothkoph has given us a thorough examination of the nature of these elites (probably too much for this reader) and I guess this examination is ultimately worth the read. I started the book to try to more fully understand how the contemporary world works and I must admit that Superclass has put together many of the puzzle pieces on the table. Why then am I dissatisfied? I guess I wanted a book that could not be written, one that offered me more reason as to why events occur. Yes I am sure that I should do the extrapolation of facts for myself rather than relying on the author to do it for me. I feel, however, that I wanted the author to give me a book that was less descriptive and more speculative. As a reader, however, I should not fall into the trap of criticizing a book because it was not the one I wanted to read; I should have been more selective in the beginning.

This book is a slow read and rather difficult. His encounters with members of the global "superclass" as he calls it, are the most interesting part. Of course, personal anecdotes are always great book fare. Unfortunately, these are just a small percentage of the book. The rest is the research he's done or the conclusions he's reached on the phenomenon of the power elites being globalized, not really working within borders, not constrained by borders. He covers the pros and cons of this. But largely he is a cheerleader for globalization. The last part of the book assumes that the globe MUST be managed or governed. But the case for this is weak.He spends a good deal of time on the inequalities between the ultra rich and the ultra poor; how this seems to be widening. What he does not seem to understand or address is the nature of currency itself. As Jefferson and Andrew Jackson understood, printed paper bank notes bring about much more evil than they solve. They cause (or can cause) rampant inflation, controlled in the hands of those who are getting richer and richer. Of course, the potential for political corruption of the worst kind is also implicit with it. The writer (Rothkopf) also seems to accept the notion that government intervention ("funded" largely by the printing press), in some cases can actually solve this problem with social programs. By now we should understand that this approach does not work. Instead he gets into some deep introspection and some discussions with members of the superclass on the topic. But to look at and question the nature of currency itself is off-limits. Not seen here.

He writes about his exposure to the billionaires and top government officials in the US and how they are really quite reasonable and lovable chaps doing good things... somehow a bit embarrassing- not that I'm an eat the rich person- but he just can't seem to get on the ride side of the fence with the issues he explains and there's obviously no conspiracy, that's for nutters! I didn't quite manage to finish the book because I just felt it was an insider who had been given the job of reporting on the Superglass from an insiders perspective without revealing too much information to make reader really know what is going on.

This book tells us how the elite think. Only someone who belongs to this elite would get access to these people and how they think, how they justify what they do. Therefore, one cannot expect a radical, no-holds-barred analysis of neoliberal globalization from this author. His account of how the 'Chicago boys' were responsible for the success of the Chilean economy is laughable and needs to be contrasted with Naomi Klein's (Shock Doctrine) devastating dissection of what really occurred. However, his meditations, his worries and his fears, how he draws people with immense power into revealing their version of reality is fascinating and very readable. There is also a wealth of information and research in the book. Perhaps what is most valuable is extent of the network of interconnections between seemingly disparate sectors - such as art and private equity - that he and his researchers reveal, and to his credit he is very honest about the contributions other people made to the book. Definitely worth having in my bookcase.

Plus de 21 jours pour faire la distance de Chicago jusqu'à Toronto, sans blague! Ça vous a coûté votre 5ième étoile...

Easy to read, only about 20% boring, learn a lot, lot to remember

I thought I ordered Superclass as a book, but found to my dismay that it consists of a number of CD's, which I have no use for.