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The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills
Free PDF The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills
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First published in 1956, The Power Elite stands as a contemporary classic of social science and social criticism. C. Wright Mills examines and critiques the organization of power in the United States, calling attention to three firmly interlocked prongs of power: the military, corporate, and political elite. The Power Elite can be read as a good account of what was taking place in America at the time it was written, but its underlying question of whether America is as democratic in practice as it is in theory continues to matter very much today.
What The Power Elite informed readers of in 1956 was how much the organization of power in America had changed during their lifetimes, and Alan Wolfe's astute afterword to this new edition brings us up to date, illustrating how much more has changed since then. Wolfe sorts out what is helpful in Mills' book and which of his predictions have not come to bear, laying out the radical changes in American capitalism, from intense global competition and the collapse of communism to rapid technological transformations and ever changing consumer tastes. The Power Elite has stimulated generations of readers to think about the kind of society they have and the kind of society they might want, and deserves to be read by every new generation.
- Sales Rank: #112277 in Books
- Brand: imusti
- Published on: 2000-02-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.30" h x 1.00" w x 8.00" l, .73 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 448 pages
- Oxford University Press USA
Review
"A classic...the first full-scale study of the structure and distribution of power in the Unites States by a sociologist using the full panoply of modern-day sociological theory and methods."--Contemporary Sociology
About the Author
The late C. Wright Mills, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, was a leading critic of modern American civilization. Alan Wolfe is University Professor and Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Boston University. He is the author or editor of more than ten books, including Marginalized in the Middle and One Nation, After All.
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
After the Afterword
By Clearpoint
Great read. What Mills wrote about in the 1950's is amazingly relevant today. The Afterword written in 2000 by Alan Wolfe provides a noteworthy example of failing to understand that the relevance of Mill's work was not limited to the 50's and 60's. In short, Wolfe dismissed Mill's work as irrelevant at the time of his writing, and concluded that the military-industrial complex had long since been killed off by capitalism. In the short-sightedness of the pre-911 world, Wolfe's analysis would stand unchallenged. But in the post-911 world we live in today, we have been thrown back into the world Mills wrote about, as if we had never left it. Apparently not much has change. The fall of the Berlin wall and the ensuing prosperity of the post-cold war years merely moved the military-industrial complex pot to simmer on the back burner; that is until the next crisis when the "warlords" (Mills's term for the uniting of the military, economic and political powers to be) could once again move it back to the front burner. 911 and the war on terror were that crisis.
If you want to find out why Congress seems so incredibly out of touch and useless today, read this book. If you want to find out why the policies of the uber-liberal Obama administration seem so similar to those of the neoconservative Bush administrations, read this book. If you want to find out why government bureaucracy continues to extend its reach deeper and deeper into our lives, regardless of the party in power, read this book. If you want to find out why changes of power at the election level result in such little change in policy, read this book. If you want to find out why today's liberalism seems limited to firey rhetoric and staged talking points, with both parties often using the same ones with only slight differences, read this book.
All this and more is what makes "The Power Elite" an amazingly relevant read today.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
"They do not gain a view of the structure of their society...
By John P. Jones III
...and of their role as a public within it." So says the author, in assessing the impact of the main stream media on the public they purportedly "serve." This book is an excellent act of remediation for the media's purposeful deficiencies. C. Wright Mills, a Texas populist of sorts, published this classic analysis of the power structure within American society in 1956, and it remains largely valid today. Of course, the names of the guilty have changed, and yes, it is an indictment of the small coterie of individuals who largely run things, and make the decisions... not so much so in the smoked-filled back rooms, but quietly, in the open, often on the golf courses, while the media serves as an immense distraction, filled with the meaningless doings of the latest "celebrities," and other manufactured "crisis." And that is just one of Mills' incisive observations. He left us far too young, at the age of 45, in 1962. This book was a "de rigueur" read of the `60's, which most regrettably I missed the first time around, for it explains so much. Influential? Carlos Fuentes, who wrote a novel which I consider to be the best history of Mexico, Death of Artemio Cruz dedicated his work to Mills, "the true voice of North America."
This edition has an excellent cover, which pictorially depicts Mills central thesis. There are three principal interlocking directorates that make the essential decisions for Americans... and nowadays, as I am reminded by my non-American friends, for them as well. The three directorates are the economic, the political and the military, symbolized by Wall Street, the Pentagon and the White House. Mills is a sociologist by training, and he buttresses his thesis with the hard numbers on wealth and social mobility. Mills examines the historical movement from the days of America's agrarian past, with slower modes of communications, when power was much more diffusely spread throughout the populace through the first concentrations after the Civil War, by the "Robber Baron's," which were joined in the next half century by the political elites and finally, after the Second World War, by the military, which Mills rather goadingly calls "the warlords."
Mills impressively debunks the enduring myth of "Horatio Alger." Yes, there are always the few that are truly "self-made men," who grab "the good chance," but, by in large, membership in the power elite is hereditary, buttressed by advantageous marriages. Attending the "right schools" is the largest single factor that distinguishes "the power elite." America has its own Eton's and "Oxbridge." Though I haven't seen the two colleges combined yet in a single word, currently ALL the Supreme Court judges are graduates of either Harvard or Yale. Early on in his book, Mills references the work of Floyd Hunter, who wrote Community Power Structure in 1953. Hunter's work examines the power structure of Atlanta, Georgia, and claims that all the important decisions concerning civic life were made by 50 men (yes, with the emphasis on the male) who, by and large, were members of the Piedmont Club.
I've greatly appreciated the work of David Riesman, who wrote another sociological classic, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (A Yale Paperbound, Y-41). Mills critique of Riesman's work is impressive, and I have come to the conclusion that perhaps both are right, in the sense that both "classical physics" and quantum mechanics are right: it all just depends on the size of the physical phenomenon being examined. Riesman postulates in American society, conflicting interest groups balance each other out, and thus no one is really in charge. Mills says that is largely true of the middle layer of power in America, and he lumps Congressmen into this category. By like Floyd Hunter, he says that the very top decisions, like deciding to make an Atomic bomb... and to drop it... are made by only a very few individuals.
Mills' work is replete with bon mots and pithy and incisive observations. Considering his own profession: "One continual weakness of American `social science,' since it became ever so empirical, has been its assumption that a mere enumeration of a plurality of causes is the wise and scientific way of going about understanding modern society, Of course, it is nothing of the sort: it is a paste-pot eclecticism which avoids the real task of social analysis..." As to the power of the media: "Most of `the pictures in our heads' we have gained from these media- even to the point where we often do not really believe what we see before us until we read about it in the paper..." Imagine this observation from 1956, on the distractive power of the media: In the sense that the volume of publicity and acclaim is mainly and continuously upon those professional celebrities, it is not upon the power elite." Like other astute observers of American society, Mills bemoans the loss of community that small towns and more "holistic individuals" provided and even quotes Albert Einstein who says that if he were a young man again he would not try to be a scientist or a scholar or teacher by rather a plumber or peddler "...in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available..."
In this edition there is an Afterword by Alan Wolfe which critiques some of the issues that he feels Mills got wrong. One was the decline in military expenditures, proving that the "warlords" really were not that influential...Wolfe wrote this in the year 2000, one year before the so-called War on Terror sharply increased military expenditures and hence the military's influence, once again.
Yes, Virginia, there really is a "they" who run things, but "they" continue to prefer to do so discreetly, and use mechanisms like the distractions of celebrities and abstract formulations like "market forces" to disguise their decisions. Mills work endures. 6-stars.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Mills' book, once widely read in the mid-twentieth century ...
By Richard
Mills' book, once widely read in the mid-twentieth century, is now a dusty seldom used reference. But what Mills described and warned of the influence of the shadowy Power Elite upon the elected government has come to fruition in America as chronicled in a different work, The Deep State by Mike Lofgren. Terms and definitions of the newer work are tossed about with reckless abandon and I seriously doubt if any in the media or elected government knows the root of its meaning for America - as previously defined in grand accurate terms in The Power Elite.
The Power Elite provides that root knowledge to the reader. Power does not emanate from a vacuum and people who wield it do not pop out of thin air. The Power Elite provides the structure a reader needs to understand where the people and organizations originated and how their power grew to influence elected government in shadowy ways.
This is required reading and most certainly NOT a conspiracy theory. It is a sociological approach to real events and people and trends that led us to where we are today. Those that ignore history are doomed to relive it. It is our doom that The Power Elite was not taken seriously by the general population. It still isn't, but it ought to be. The result is our Deep State which has made the elected government subservient to its will.
Read both......
and that's me, hollering from the choir loft...
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