DEMOCRACY VERSUS TOTALITARIANISM 37 recognized, they are continually violated and encroached upon by the 'power elites' who sometimes hide behind the skirts of state control and sometimes openly fill key posts with their own men. In so doing they are not averse to employing direct political suppression against their adversaries as numerous examples show every year in one capitalist state after another. Bourgeois sociologists have propounded the doctrine of'power diffusion5 under capitalism. Talcott Parsons, for example, postulates that there is a tendency to concentrate control of force in government hands. But that does not apply to power, for "...power should be regarded as a circulating medium that operates throughout the society wherever organizations in the sense of collectivities exist555. Parsons includes in such organizations, alongside the government, factories, unions and even families and friendly societies who also enjoy a certain amount oP power. Seymour Lipset continues the same line of thought in maintaining that in American society, all the conditions exist for 'a stable democracy5: Lower-class individuals, and groups that desire to change their social position need not be revolutionary. The dominant values of the society legitimize their aspirations. Consequently their political goals and methods are relatively moderate and even conservative. They attempt to make changes by playing according to the game8. In this scheme of things, democracy is portrayed as something ideal and pure: power is diffused among all organizations and units, and any social group may attain considerable power if it plays the game according to the rules. The only flaw in the idyll is that it is far removed from American reality. How is it, one might ask, that American democratic forces have played the game for many years and have not vet won full civil rights for the Negro people ? Why is it that the grand 'stable demo" cracv' lives cheek by jowl with rabid racism,with tendencies bordering on fascism, and terror in relation to democratic leaders and organizations ? The most appropriate description of dictatorship by the state-monoply oligarchy comes from the very heart of 'democratic' America—the "sick society". Crass Means of Political Control Parsons is right in saying that it is not force alone that distinguishes the role of the power elite in present-day bourgeois society. There has developed a constantly improving complex and flexible system of political control that safeguards the domination of capital. Parsons himself provides an entire gradation of political control methods: force is supplemented by coercion, inducement, persuasion and activation of commitments. Threats and warnings further serve to perpetuate political control as too does the creation of a person expressing discontent is deprived of certain benefits^ whereas gx cater benefits accrue if he behaves and is obedient. The key implements of policy formation lie in the hands of the state which is in turn controlled by the large-scale capital through a system of ramified ties. Not a single organization or social group can break this