''The Power Elite'' is a 1956 book by sociologist

C. Wright Mills Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962) was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills published widely in both popular and intellectual journals, and ...

, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

, corporate, and

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...

elements of

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soc ...

and suggests that the ordinary citizen in modern times is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those three entities.

Background

The book is something of a counterpart of Mills' 1951 work, '' White Collar: The American Middle Classes'', which examines the then-growing role of middle managers in American society. A main inspiration for the book was Franz Leopold Neumann's book '' Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism'' in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state like Germany. ''Behemoth'' had a major impact on Mills.

Summary

According to Mills, the eponymous "power elite" are those that occupy the dominant positions, in the three pillar institutions (state security, economic and political) of a dominant country. Their decisions (or lack thereof) have enormous consequences, not only for Americans but, "the underlying populations of the world." Mills posits that the institutions that they head are a triumvirate of groups that have inherited or succeeded weaker predecessors: # "two or three hundred giant corporations" which have replaced the traditional agrarian and craft economy, # a strong federal political order that has inherited power from "a decentralized set of several dozen states" and "now enters into each and every cranny of the social structure," and # the military establishment, formerly an object of "distrust fed by state militia," but now an entity with "all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain." Importantly and as distinct from modern American conspiracy theory, Mills explains that the elite themselves may not be aware of their status as an elite, noting that "often they are uncertain about their roles" and "without conscious effort, they absorb the aspiration to be... The Ones Who Decide." Nonetheless, he sees them as a quasi-hereditary caste. The members of the power elite, according to Mills, often enter into positions of societal prominence through educations obtained at eastern establishment universities like

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...

, and

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

. But, Mills notes, "Harvard or Yale or Princeton is not enough... the point is not Harvard, but which Harvard?" Mills identifies two classes of

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight school ...

alumni: those were initiated into an upper echelon fraternity such as the Harvard College social clubs of

Porcellian The Porcellian Club is an all-male final club at Harvard University, sometimes called the Porc or the P.C. The year of founding is usually given as 1791, when a group began meeting under the name "the Argonauts",, p. 171: source for 1791 origins a ...

or Fly Club, and those who were not. Those so initiated, Mills continues, receive their invitations based on social links first established in elite private preparatory academies, where they were enrolled as part of family traditions and family connections. In that manner, the mantle of the elite is generally passed down along familial lines over the generations. Joseph and Rose Kennedy 1940

The resulting elites, who control the three dominant institutions (military, economy and political system) can be generally grouped into one of six types, according to Mills: * the "Metropolitan 400:" members of historically-notable local families in the principal American cities who generally represented on the '' Social Register'' * "Celebrities:" prominent entertainers and media personalities * the "Chief Executives:" presidents and CEOs of the most important companies within each industrial sector * the "Corporate Rich:" major landowners and corporate shareholders * the "Warlords:" senior military officers, most importantly the

Joint Chiefs of Staff The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) is the body of the most senior uniformed leaders within the United States Department of Defense, that advises the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, the Homeland Security Council and the ...

* the "Political Directorate:" "fifty-odd men of the executive branch" of the U.S. federal government, including the senior leadership in the Executive Office of the President, who are sometimes variously drawn from elected officials of the Democratic and Republican parties but are usually professional government bureaucrats Mills formulated a very short summary of his book: "Who, after all, runs America? No one runs it altogether, but in so far as any group does, the power elite."

Reception and criticism

Commenting on ''The Power Elite'',

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a s ...

derisively said, "I look forward to the time when Mr. Mills hands back his prophet's robes and settles down to being a sociologist again."

Adolf Berle Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (; January 29, 1895 – February 17, 1971) was an American lawyer, educator, writer, and diplomat. He was the author of ''The Modern Corporation and Private Property'', a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, a prof ...

noted the book contained "an uncomfortable degree of truth", but Mills presented "an angry cartoon, not a serious picture". Dennis Wrong described ''The Power Elite'' as "an uneven blend of journalism, sociology, and moral indignation". A review of the book in the ''Louisiana Law Review'' bemoaned that the "practical danger of Mr. Mills' pessimistic interpretation of the current situation is that his readers will concentrate on answering his prejudicial assertions rather than ponder the results of his really formidable research". Consideration of the book has become moderately more favorable. In 2006,

G. William Domhoff George William "Bill" Domhoff (born August 6, 1936) is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and research professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a founding faculty member of UCSC's Cowell College. He i ...

wrote, "Mills looks even better than he did 50 years ago". Mills' biographer, John Summers, opined that book's historical value "seems assured".

In popular culture

In 2017, episode 5 of the

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

TV series '' Mindhunter'' contains a scene in which one of the main characters, a sociology PhD student Deborah "Debbie" Mitford, writes a paper on ''The Power Elite''. In the Noah Baumbach film '' While We're Young'', the protagonist Josh Schrebnick is a documentarian who cites Mills, and frequently cites the expertise of the subject of his documentary, Ira Mandelstam's views as they relate to ''The Power Elite''.

References

External links

C.W Mills, Structure of Power in American Society, British Journal of Socoiology, Vol.9.No.1 1958

* ttp://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm A Mills Revival? by S .Aronowitz
C.Wright Mills, On Intellectual Craftsmanship from ''The Sociological Imagination'', How ''Power Elite'' was made

* ttps://archive.today/20140222203333/http://www.thepowerelite.com/art Art inspired by ''The Power Elite'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Power Elite, The 1956 non-fiction books Books by C. Wright Mills Elite theory Military–industrial complex Sociology books Social class in the United States Political science theories Sociological theories Political science books Social status Income in the United States Books about economic inequality Social inequality Books about political power Oxford University Press books C. Wright Mills