We wonder whether Guardian readers know this

We know that Guardian readers are being told this - look, it’s right there in the newspaper - but whether they’ll make that mental leap to know it is unknown. Actually, whether the writer of the piece has managed to make that leap is an interesting issue:

That period’s patterns are telling: American business, given the weakness of its coordinating institutions, is essentially incapable of coordinating significant challenges to the Republican party’s governance. A previous generation of corporate leadership might have met a shock of Wednesday’s magnitude with a coordinated response felt at all levels of American society – whether through lobbying efforts in Washington or advertisements in local newspapers. But American business is too disunited to mount similar campaigns today. “The pursuit of individual self-interests,” as Zhang noted in 2020, “left none to defend the public goods associated with a free and open market between the US and China.”

American business, the capitalists, their professional acolytes in the corporate haute bourgoisie - they do not have power over American politics or society.

We think that’s good to know and of course who could doubt it from such a source? But we do wonder how long that knowledge is going to last - if it even seeps through - for it’s not the usual analysis of economic power generally found in The Guardian now, is it?

Tim Worstall