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Today the smallness of the ruling class means that other classes have more power in comparison. We have a working-class army, for example, that has a great deal of actual and potential power. Take the basic production of goods and services. Have you ever thought what a general strike would be like in New York City? Workers can take over this city in a matter of hours. Because workers run everything – the subways, the trucks that bring food, gas, light, heat – everything.

So you have to ask yourself, why is this power never realized politically? Why don’t they just kick the 30,000 out? The reason is simple. The mass of people are under illusions. Now let me repeat this because the whole strategy of the making a revolution in the U.S. is crucially dependent on understanding this. The 30,000 can rule only through maintaining illusions.

You see, if tomorrow, President Nixon called a press conference and said, “Okay, I’m going to let you in on it; there’s 30,000 of us who are running this country. We’re canceling all elections. We’re canceling freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and so on. So go back to work, back to the campus – and if there is any disturbance we’ll throw you all into concentration camps.” How long do you think the ruling class would stay in power? They couldn’t do it. Their power is already limited by a certain consciousness that exists in the mass of people. Their power is limited by the fact that the mass of the people believe in free speech, in free assembly and in democracy.
And this, by the way, is the thing that is least understood by the student movement. Many students believe that the ruling class has unlimited power. They think fascism and concentration camps are around the corner. Of course, we cannot be naïve about the ruling class. They will suppress opposition to them insofar as they can get away with it. And they will use the most brutal means available if it suits their needs. But they will try to keep the repression in the bounds of what they can get away with without waking up the mass of people, without destroying the illusions. Because, if the mass begins to wake up, that’s a big danger.

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The Entity Within