These old plutocratic families have also, whatever the original source of their wealth, usually diversified it, especially into finance but also into other sectors of the economy. They are also more transnational: they and their corporations have invested significant amounts overseas. Newer wealth is usually more concentrated in one industry, such as manufacturing or trade. Newer wealth also tends to be more locally and nationally based. The capitalist class also supports both the Democratic and Republican parties, with the newer, more localized rich more strongly supporting Republicans and the financialized old rich more balanced in their support for both “moderate” Democrats and “moderate” Republicans. But all sectors of the U.S. capitalist class organize their economic power through the corporate system, which they control, as families and as a class. If the modern corporation is one of the key locations in which the power of the capitalist class is institutionally crystallized, another central place of capitalist-class power is the Council on Foreign Relations and its larger network of associated organizations. The activities of the CFR are one important way that this class organizes itself, develops a generalized unity, and projects itself and its special class interests (portrayed by the Council, of course, as the general interest) upon the national and world stage. The CFR’s key role is to move the capitalist class from being a class in itself (the owners of the corporate-dominated economic system) to a class for itself (with consciousness, agency, and heightened power).
This chapter discusses the capitalist-class representation in the CFR during the 1976–2014 years. Since the Council has both individual and corporate membership categories, both individuals and corporate members are included. Professionals also appear, as they are important to the intellectual functioning of the Council, but it must be kept in mind that they are primarily present in an advisory role. Although many professionals may be on their way up the power and wealth ladder into the capitalist class, all final decisions are still reserved for their capitalist masters.
When examining the CFR leadership as a group, their close relationship to the federal government is striking. Many CFR leaders are “in-and-outers.” These individuals often have a primary career, typically in finance, business, law, politics, or academic life, but are appointed to high political office by a given U.S. president, serve a few years, then return to “private enterprise,” sometimes including nonprofit work. These individuals often are a kind of access entrepreneur, who use connections acquired in government service to afterward do business or advance professionally. They may also maintain influence with their former colleagues in government, especially the ones who are also members of the Council. As we shall see in this and future chapters, this is an important pattern both for the CFR’s top leadership and for the Council as an organization.
TOP LEADERSHIP
The Council on Foreign Relations is a corporation, and is organized in a top-down corporate fashion with a chairperson as the final decision maker, aided by the president and board of directors. The board of directors approve all new members and selects all of the top leaders. There is a pro-forma process set up for the membership to “elect” the board, but even the membership does not take the process very seriously, as almost all board members are chosen as a listed slate that the members vote for, so up to two-thirds of the members typically do not vote.
Between 1970 and 2007 there were only two chairs—David Rockefeller and Peter G. Peterson—and from 2007 to 2014 two co-chairs, Robert E. Rubin and Carla A. Hills. At the same time there have been seven vice chairs who served longer than one year: Rubin, Hills, Cyrus R. Vance, Douglas Dillon, Warren Christopher, Maurice R. Greenberg, Richard E. Salomon, and David M. Rubenstein. Through a discussion of these ten individuals, a detailed collective biography of the organization’s top leadership can be developed. Vast personal and family wealth, finance capital careers, top corporate connections, and cabinet-level government service are their main characteristics, and they exemplify the Council’s deep capitalist-class connections.
David Rockefeller, Chairman 1970–1985
David Rockefeller was born in 1915 into what is likely the richest family in human history (the European Rothschilds being their main rival for this title). His grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, at one time held an estimated inflation-adjusted equivalent of a hundred billion dollars or more in today’s values, far outdistancing even the richest individuals of our era. David grew up in the largest private home in New York City, surrounded by an army of working-class employees: butlers, valets, drivers, gardeners, nurses, cooks, and chambermaids. He also spent significant time in coastal Maine and the Hudson River Valley, where his family had enormous houses and estates. He was educated at Harvard and earned a Ph.D. at the Rockefeller-founded and funded University of Chicago. He is now, in 2014, the last Rockefeller of his generation, the grandchildren of John D. Rockefeller Sr.
As a man who has epitomized the Establishment, David Rockefeller is, fittingly, also one of the two most important leaders of the CFR during the 1976–2014 years. As this is written in 2014, David Rockefeller is revered as the still living legend linking the Council’s past with its present. It is difficult to exaggerate his importance in several areas, including as the CFR’s all-time leading financial contributor. Though exact amounts are not available, consider that during every single year since 1976, he was always ranked in the top group of contributors in the CFR’s Annual Report listings, and that he often gave special gifts, such as one for “$25 million and above” in 2007.43 This last contribution led to the renaming of the CFR’s study program as the “David Rockefeller Studies Program.”44 The 2007 Annual Report called Rockefeller “a guiding force in the Council for over half a century.” He first became a member in 1941, served as a board member from 1949 to 1985, and was Chairman from 1970 to 1985. Although he is now almost 100 years old, he remains, in 2014, the CFR’s Honorary Chairman.
At the beginning of the new century, David completed a full-length book on his life and times with a one-word title: Memoirs. Although he lists by name no less than ninety-five individuals—writers, researchers, archivists, and commentators—including twenty-five members of his “immediate staff,” who helped him research and write the book, it nevertheless appears to accurately reflect his thinking, his philosophy, and cultural preferences. As could be expected, a close reading of Memoirs reveals a person with a strong sense of class and personal entitlement, illustrated by Rockefeller’s recounting of his and his wife’s attempt to limit their household spending just after the Second World War, a time when they acquired “three rather large houses” in only one year. As he put it: “This presented a serious financial challenge since I had no capital of my own and was dependent on the income from the trust that Father had established for me in 1934, which in 1946 amounted to slightly more than $1 million before taxes.” “Making ends meet,” as this section of the book is titled, on that level of trust income was difficult, Rockefeller states, because taxes were quite high and they gave $153,000 to charity that year, leaving them with “less than $150,000 in discretionary income.” Since they wanted the furniture they purchased to be of “good quality,” they had a problem, solved by finding a dealer who “helped us buy many fine pieces of eighteenth-century English furniture at prices we could afford.” He was happy that his homes had “style and elegance” on an income level that was, in his opinion, “clearly modest.”45 Census data point out, however, that the average income of non-farm U.S. families was about $3,000 in 1946.
David points out he learned the neoliberal “free market” economic philosophy at an early date. The conservative Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek tutored him at the London School of Economics in the late 1930s. He later recounted: “I found myself largely in agreement with [von Hayek’s] basic economic philosophy.”46 This belief in the efficacy of the “invisible hand of the market” was later reinforced during his graduate work at the University of Chicago.47
Rockefeller often stresses his and the larger family tradition of “noblesse oblige,” or “philanthropy,” but this giving was tainted by the causes to which he donated to and the ruling-class aims of undercutting both the need for state intervention and
