A power elite, in political and sociological theory, is a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, and access to decision-making of global consequence. The term was coined by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 book, The Power Elite. The Power Elite describes the relationship between political, military, and economic elite (people at the pinnacles of these three institutions), noting that these people share a common world view. The U.S. power elite is described as consisting of members of the Business/Corporate Community, Academia, politicians, media editors, military service personnel, and high-profile journalists.
The phrase “Power Elite” captures the simplicity of other theorists:
1. Marx, with his overemphasis on the capitalist as the only holder of power 2. Liberals, who see the politician as the head of the system 3. Those, who view warlords as the dictators of the system. 4. Instead, the phrase “Power Elite” forces us to consider the union of the military, economic, and state power. (Mills Chapter 12)
1. He defends his critique of power elite as such:
1. They may be honorable people. However, honor is not universal. The question is not whether they are honorable or not. The key question is what their honor codes are. And of course, their honor codes will be those that support their own interests. 2. They do not, and cannot adapt to the necessities of their jobs as they rise in stature. They (i.e. no one) do not have such flexibility. They have certain personal and business interests and [whatever this really means] “to ask a man suddenly to divest himself of these interests and sensibilities is almost like asking a man to become a woman.” (Mills 258) 3. Like codes of honor, patriotism and its principles vary greatly. These too are rooted in one's personal history. 4. One cannot argue that they are doing their duties. In fact, they are the ones who are determining what those very duties are.
1. Even though the power elite itself as a ruling force is constant, the individuals who constitute it and occupy positions in the dominant hierarchies of the state, the economy, and the military is not. Even though these individuals know each other, there is not unified policy / ideology that ties them together or in one position. 2. The inner core of the power elite consists of those who interchange commanding roles in various dominant hierarchies (the “big three”) and the corporate lawyer and the financial banker, who play the role of the unifier between the big three. 3. The constant involvement of the nation in wars (and the making of crises as permanent and total) makes it possible for the power elite to use national security as a pretext for secrecy of intentions and in planning and execution.
The American power elite has gone through 4 stages, and is in a fifth stage as of Mills' writing.
1. From the Revolution through the administration of John Adams: as military, state and corporate entities were more or less united, power elite was able to move from one role to another. 2. During the early nineteenth cc: the power elite became a number of top groups, each of which loosely constructed and loosely overlapping. 3. From 1886 until the World War I: corporations acquired the rights of a person and received the initiative to govern (from the state). 4. The New Deal, from WWI till the end of WWII: competing (and balanced) centers of power within the power elite form in political and economic areas; corporate chiefs enter the political sphere. 5. Since the Second World War:
* 1. American democracy is now only a formality; State and Corporate entities became hardly distinguishable; democracy is being dominated by the corporate chiefs. 2. As the focus of the power elite “shifted their attention from domestic to international affairs” (read: from colonizing the Americas to colonizing all of it), warlords became very influential in US politics; State and Military became hardly distinguishable. 3. The economy is now both a war economy and a private corporate economy. Not the politicians but the warlords and the corporate chiefs decide about military actions.
(Mills Chapter 12)
Social structure
The power elite are able to shape economy and government by way of their higher wealth and social status. It stems from many groups that form into one. There is the Corporate Community, which includes rich corporations, banks and agribusinesses. And, there are the growth coalitions, which includes real estate, construction and land development companies.
The owners and managers of these large income producing properties hold a great share of all of the income and wealth in the US. This is more than any other industrial democracy (they are 1% of the entire U.S. population).
"The power elite are not solitary rulers. Advisers and consultants, spokesmen and opinion-makers are often the captains of their higher thought and decision. Immediately below the elite are the professional politicians of the middle levels of power, in the Congress and in the pressure groups, as well as among the new and old upper classes of town and city and region. Mingling with them, in curious ways which we shall explore, are those professional celebrities who live by being continually displayed but are never, so long as they remain celebrities, displayed enough If such celebrities are not at the head of any dominating hierarchy, they do often have the power to distract the attention of the public or afford sensations to the masses, or, more directly, to gain the ear of those who do occupy positions of direct power. More or less unattached, as critics of morality and technicians of power, as spokesmen of God and creators of mass sensibility, such celebrities and consultants are part of the immediate scene in which the drama of the elite is enacted. But that drama itself is centered in the command posts of the major institutional hierarchies." “The economy-once a great scatter of small productive units in autonomous balance-has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated, which together hold the keys to economic decisions. The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized, executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered, and now enters into each and every crany of the social structure. The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government, and, although well versed in smiling public relations, now has all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain.”(Mills 4)