The widening gap

The author of this US-based study quotes the figures showing gross and ever-increasing inequalities of income and wealth but comments that the rich are often "the best and the brightest who rise to the top because of their merits."

Having established his face-both-ways credentials, he can then take on the role of the prophet, warning of the danger to social stability if the accumulation of wealth and power falls into very few hands.

He frowns on the excessive rewards of three hedge-fund managers who each made over a billion dollars in 2006, although their companies did not produce anything as substantial as a paper clip.

He demonstrates how business, government and military groups are interlocked to form what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, with a "revolving door relationship" between members of the management teams of the large private equity firms and top government officers.

He does not reach the conclusion that the state serves corporate power, although he does quote a general of the early 20th century who described himself as a "high-class muscle man for big business."

The general said that he helped in the raping of half a dozen central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

"In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested," he said.

But the Iraq war is spared such scathing criticism. It was only "tragic" and "triggered widespread criticism for understandable reasons."

The top 500 companies get over half their revenues internationally. There is an international upper class of people whose economic interests have more in common with one another than with the majority of people sharing their nationality. Their global trade rules benefit most the countries and individuals who already have economic power.

Chile is cited as a case study of rule by a power elite, privatisation and market economics, with the gap between rich and poor even worse than in the Pinochet years.

But the author is apprehensive of the growing resistance to US-dominated globalisation under the leadership of the Venezuela-Bolivia-Cuba-Iran-Russia-Syria bloc.

He is afraid that more and more the world will see through the new clothes in which old Western imperialism is now dressed.

He also believes that privatisation of the military has gone too far. When he was writing, there were 170,000 US soldiers in Iraq and 125,000 mercenaries.

These "guns for hire," provided by private companies linked to arms firms, break the government monopoly of violence, operate in secrecy and could be a threat to state power.

All the author's critical points are pertinent to a study of wealth and power. Only his interpretation is inadequate. The rich and powerful may or may not be talented people, but their role is to boost profits and dividends on behalf of the capitalist class, under the pressure of competition from other big corporations.

It's the profit motive that impels them to try to rule the world with state force. It's imperialism, stupid.