ABSTRACT
If we said that a certain person were dominant, that would mean that his commands were usually obeyed; so far, so good. Again, a special interest group, like bankers or landowners, could also be called dominant, in that whenever its interests were affected, its members would be roughly agreed on what was to be done, and in a position to see that it was done. However, we should be very much surprised to find it said of a group like motorists, even if the motoring associations were always able to get their way. For motorists as such have no interest in important matters like food production, housing or education. It is only if a group has a wide range of common interests on most of the important matters that governments deal with, that one could say it was the dominant influence in the state. But just because an economic interest group tends to have such a wide range of common concerns, it would be quite intelligible to talk of such a group in this way. We should know very well what was meant if we were told that the landowners were the dominant influence in eighteenth century England, because qua landowners, they shared a common point of view on most of the important questions.
