• Elite-serving systems of cooperation.

• Elite-serving systems of cooperation.
Systems of cooperation that serve the people are very expensive in time and skill-- think of all the meetings we have to sit through to come up with a decision. Elite-serving systems have their own costs: beating and brainwashing the servants, and maintaining a high level of conflict among the lower orders while keeping the lid on revolution. Money is the most effective means to enforce cooperation, because, as an almost universal translator, it can be used to coordinate very different interests. I just want to pay the rent; the investors who own my company might want to purchase a Senator or 3. Since I can't afford a Senator, I have to do it the hard way: democratic action. The investors have several strategies to prevent that.

# Clientelism. One common way we structure shared interests is through patron-client relationships. I first read about them in history and anthropology classes. Long before countries or corporations, someone invented chiefdoms, in which a guy --usually a guy-- gains a following by his ability to redistribute wealth and opportunity. Later chiefs were replaced by lords and kings: serfs bow down to lords, lords bow down to bigger lords or kings. At one time much of China was organized by clans-- extended families in which an older guy organized the work of scores of relatives plus assorted servants or slaves. Caciquismo in Latin America is a blend of Spanish and Native traditions; for centuries it's meant unstable and bloody competitions among elites and their networks, none of whom is strong enough to dominate for very long (largely because so much power rests outside the region, in the military and financial centers of the U.S. and Europe).

There are lots of variations, but the basic pattern is a boss ("patron"), dependents ("clients"), and a two-way but unequal flow of goods and services between them. Thus a knight might promise to protect a serf from Viking raiders, in return for the serf's backbreaking farm labor. Or the big landowner might provide seed, tools, and a mule to his tenants in return for half the crop. Countries with one-party rule, like the old Soviet Union, are set-ups for patronage networks because they forbid more open political competition. In countries not too long removed from colonialism, patronage networks underly more "modern" forms of organizing, as when the a few families dominate political parties. In the 1960s, the powerful communist party of Indonesia operated at times as a patronage network allowing peasants to access urban and government resources.

Clientelism is a bit more exclusive and continuous than getting stock tips or a summer job at the country club for the kid from your golfing partner or your old college roommate. Patrons provide a range of goods and services in return for the clients' long-term loyalty and obedience. The old Tammany Hall organization and other big-city political machines are classic examples of patronage, offering jobs, emergency loans, bail, and other services of great value to immigrants with little other access to opportunity. What bosses get in return are the votes that win the offices that allow them to loot the public treasury and tax local organized crime. I'm not sure American gangsters ever operated in the paternal way portrayed in the Godfather movies, but apparently they did in Sicily and other parts of the world.

As a midclass white boy I never imagined clientelism had much to do with the USA in my lifetime until I began to figure out how much we have to lose by any sort of disobedience. We risk jobs, sure, but all sorts of other benefits, too, like a place to stay when the romance gets a bit too violent, extra hands to take care of the baby, a car to borrow, cheap drugs, trash pickups, business permits and contracts, or a slot for mom in the nursing home, in situations where these are hard to come by.

Patronage is a central organizing principal any place jobs and money are in short supply. People in rural areas, or with few skills, or with dependents of their own, are especially vulnerable because they have so few options. Where the mine operators and rural school systems are the major employers, their bosses control many dependents. But I read about very similar patterns in agencies and industries in New York City, not all of it run by organized crime. Unequal sex relationships may be the most common kind of clientelism.

Where I live, favoritism hides just below the surface in many parts of the government. We don't have a city-wide machine like Memphis used to have, but our current Republican mayor, heir to an oil company, had no trouble mobilizing local office-holding Democrats against the Democratic mayoral candidate. For many years several of our county commissioners got county paychecks, and when they were term-limited out of office, appointed their own sons and wives as successors.

In such an environment, it comes as no surprise that many movement organizations are also run on this basis. Our groups are another zone of contact among people with lots of resources (grant money, technical skills, friends in high places) and those with much less, and it’s easy for our ordinary impulses of generosity and gratitude to turn political work into charity. The results can be pretty ugly, when fawning followers don’t demand accountability from their benefactors, and normal internal disputes become bitter battles of opposing client networks; Montagues and Capulets all over again (see “The National Toxics Campaign: Some reflections, thoughts for the movement.” 1993). Maybe that’s what Geo. Washington had in mind when he warned against the perils of faction.


Clientelism gets its power from the elements of choice and reciprocity. Above I wrote about the importance of dignity. We don’t consider legitimate systems that do not offer at least a token recognition of our ability to choose. Recall, too, that we don't take responsibility for our actions unless we feel we have a choice. So a commitment to a boss requires some sense of having chosen freely, and that's what a patronage system offers. In times of crisis the godfather may force us to join his gang, but in peacetime he’s got plenty of followers, perhaps more than he can put to good use; and he'd be perfectly content to let any single civilian try to scratch out a living on her own, with no protection against predators and catastrophes.

If we do join the entourage, every so often the jolly old fellow will show us signs of his favor and affection-- a pat on the head, a signed photo to hang on the wall, Scrooge’s turkey at Christmas, as well as help when we're in trouble. Not too much-- as the psychologists say, irregular rewards are far more effective than paybacks you can always count on, because they make us try that much harder. We do have some expectations, though; a patron / client relationship does bind the patron at least a little bit.

Portelli gives us examples for how it works among Kentucky miners:

The subordinate subjects of a paternalistic relationship have no rights, but they may receive gifts. The exchange of the right to a safe mine with the gift of a sack of flour paralleled the prizes for the better-kept gardens awarded to families who could be evicted any moment at the company’s will. This strategy promoted gratitude to management and competition among employees. Besides the immediate gain, recipients were made to feel that they had been recognized; since the only prize went to a chosen few, it gave them the pride of feeling somewhat special, in management’s eyes and in their own (207-8).

Not surprisingly, the privileges and apparent choices we are granted may change our attitudes not only with respect to the particular patron, but towards the system in general.

Many women do not join organized resistance against sexism precisely because sexism has not meant an absolute lack of choices. They may know they are discriminated against on the basis of sex, but they do not equate this with oppression. Under capitalism, patriarchy is structured so that sexism restricts women's behavior in some realms even as freedom from limitations is allowed in other spheres. The absence of extreme restrictions leads many women to ignore the areas in which they are exploited or discriminated against; it may even lead them to imagine that no women are oppressed (hooks 1995 p. 273).

Scott writes that resistance is harder in societies where women and workers do have some rights and options: "Both cases illustrate how essential the existence of some choice is in raising the possibility of hegemonic incorporation . . . " (1990 p. 22).

Dependents can influence the boss as well as the other way around, and that too makes it feel like we have some choice. The boss' personality offers a kind of knowable landscape that offers some bit of stability to our chaotic world. The lord might be cruel and capricious, but he offers a field of study that we can hope to master and manipulate. The most perceptive can learn just what form of toadying will most effectively earn us a secure if humble place in the master's entourage.

Patronage systems aren't designed to operate where the bosses have all the power, because then they don't have to give anything back in order to compel obedience. But there's no perfect domination; and so to supplement their whips and guns, the parasites need to offer favoritism and protection even among slaves, convicts, and POWs.

Another place we might not expect to find patron-client relationships is in some "populist" campaigns. In these cases there's a lot of talk about soaking the rich and saving the Little Guy, but all benefits flow from and all power flows to a politician rather than a grassroots organization. Huey Long's career in Louisiana offers a good example; can you think of others nowadays? Because these politicos can't help most people in any significant way, they often end up relying on racism or other family values to keep control of their base.

We also contribute to clientelism with creepy models of grassroots leadership, as when we define “leaders” as people who have followers, and in general when we sit at the feet of movement gurus. The left’s distance from almost all institutional power, except a few foundations and university departments, has so far limited our own impulse to set up patronage networks; but we’ll get in trouble if ever we acquire enough resources to pass around (see “The National Toxics Campaign: Some reflections, thoughts for the movement” 1993).


Clientelism sets the terms of exchange between the boss and the little guy, but also orders relationships among the little guys. We are supposed to compete with each other for the boss' favor, and the guy who loses out maybe starves. If we see any threat to the big boss --someone taking food without permission, say, or even making a disrespectful joke-- we remove it ourselves or at least report it right away.

Beyond that, I'm not sure how the client system so effectively encourages subordinates to fight among themselves. Take for instance the way some homemaking moms talk about women with paid jobs:

. . . the Chicago Homemakers . . . harshly indicted working mothers for not ordering their priorities, and for shortchanging and damaging their children.
‘If they work, they feel they have a right to say what they want to say. They’re not really staying home to take care of the children and spend time with them.’
“This finger-wagging group criticized young mothers for a myriad of maternal malfeasances. Here’s a widow, regretting that children see so little of their mothers-- and it’s all because ‘women lost their rights to stay home’ (Henry 127).

. . . our youngest Homemakers . . . . thought ‘those career women’ were past understanding, and vented their disdain even on friends and relatives whom they considered self-indulgent, irresponsible, and materialistic (128).

In this case, the women were talking with other women, so they had nothing to gain from their husbands. Even should they repeat these complaints to their husbands, it's not clear what they'd get out of it. Clearly these women fear that the basis of their privilege as moms is undermined by the newly legitimate option to work for pay. And perhaps they are so committed to the whole system of patriarchy that they recognize and fight threats to it regardless of whether or not they feel threatened directly.


We find it easy to fall into client relationships because in some ways they imitate the benevolent dictatorships of families with kids. "For on the one hand the leader has --like the pharaoh and many another 'divine king'-- all the attributes of an ideal father: he is perfectly wise, he is perfectly just, he protects the weak. But on the other hand he is also the son whose task it is to transform the world, the Messiah who is to establish a new heaven and earth and who can say of himself, 'Behold, I make all things new!'" (Cohn 84).

The main difference is that it's the parents' job to help their children become broadly interdependent, rather than more infantile, servile, and dependent. But the Father Knows Best experience, invented or airbrushed by the family values crowd, powerfully disposes us to see the boss in the same light. This can be true even or especially when Daddy takes on the role of well-meaning bungler, needing to be protected. I remember how the women in one office babied the boss. They didn't like a lot of his decisions, but they followed them. Nevertheless, they seemed to feel they'd gained some sort of upper hand by birthday presents and a hundred little maternal attentions they offered him. One woman described her husband in a similar way. He thinks he makes the decisions, she told me, but I know how to coax him into doing what I want. She was proud of her skills of hidden manipulation (though perhaps not so hidden as she imagined).

Some of the women Henry talked to specifically equated this "power" with formal subordination:

When women stood up for themselves and demanded inequality-- what happened? Women lost a lot, because we wanted to be equal to men, and that will never happen. . . . Women are always more intelligent than men. If a woman is intelligent enough, she knows how to handle the man. Never show yourself competing against him-- no. With tenderness and by talking things out, one can accomplish more than by saying, “I am equal to you, and I can go out anytime I wish, just like you”-- no' (193).

Collective efforts to renegotiate status and benefits infuriate some clients:

"‘I can’t stand to hear feminists talk,’ Jackie said dismissively. ‘All I hear are a bunch of rich white mothers talking about how angry they are. Why are they so angry? They’ve coasted all their lives. They’ll never be satisfied. They want the government to solve all their problems" (Burkett 48-9).

Maybe they’re afraid that rocking the boat will jeopardize their own positions, however marginal they might be.

Men like myself employ sometimes different but just as effective forms of sucking up. Upton Sinclair’s Babbit has some hilarious scenes of groveling amongst the hale-fellows-well-met party atmosphere of the mythical Zenith business set.


The thing is, clientelism is not just a kind of power relationship, it's also a way of life and a way of thinking. Scott says we can't judge a person's thoughts by the outer deference he might show to a boss; that inside that person might hate, despise or laugh at the boss (1976 p.173). This is true. It's also true that, because of our need to reduce the contradictions in our lives, we internalize some of what we practice in public. When organizers encourage folks to run meetings or make speeches it's because they believe that's how we learn both the skills and the attitudes to build democracy: education through action. The same applies to the skills and attitudes needed to be dominated: they take practice. One part of the story has to be about the boss-- that I don't mind sucking up because he's such a nice guy. Another part of the story has to be about our fellow workers, how they don't deserve the boss' favor the way I do, obstinate ingrates that they are (otherwise, how could I compete with them for the boss' favor?). The third story is about me: how important I am to the boss, how much he cares about me (even if he can't show it all the time, 'cause of all the important things he has to do), how noble is the work that he and I are engaged in. His success is my success; I bask in his reflected glory. These stories make it very difficult to develop democratic stories about collective power and resisting abuse.