¶ … Power Elite
Every country has its own powerful and influential groups that seem to control and literally run the state. These groups have unlimited powers and they seem to exert an unhindered and unobstructed influence on the economic, political and military decisions. Wright Mills was one of the pioneers in the field of power elite theorists who closely examined the nature and function of the elite and explained how the three powerful groups i.e. The economy, politics and military merge to dominate the state affairs and to certain extent even personal affairs of people. This is because this power elite enjoys the privileges to make major decisions that affect everything including life of the common man:
The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family, and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern. 'Great changes' are beyond their control, but affect their conduct and outlook nonetheless. (p.3)
Early in the book, in fact on the very first page of the very first chapter 'The Higher Circles' the author makes it absolutely clear what he means by power elite. He identifies some important characteristics of this group that he discusses in detail later in the book. Mills argues that the power elite has its influence grounded in centralization of information and power. The group that according to him, controls the major affairs in politics, military and economy is composed of people who enjoy unlimited access to the central base where power resides:
As the means of information and of power are centralized, some men come to occupy positions in American society from which they can look down upon, so to speak, and by their decisions mightily affect, the everyday worlds of ordinary' men and women. They are not made by their jobs; they set up and break down jobs for thousands of others; they are not confined by simple family responsibilities; they can escape. They may live in many hotels and houses, but they are bound by no one community. They need not merely 'meet the demands of the day and hour'; in some part, they create these demands, and cause others to meet them. Whether or not they profess their power, their technical and political experience of it far transcends that of the underlying population." (p. 3)
For those who are only interested in the central thesis of the book and can do without the details given later, the first chapter is all they need to read. It contains a lengthy description of the thesis that there exists something called power elite and that they "are not solitary rulers." The rest of the book only further expands upon the information provided in the first chapter but make for highly interesting even if slightly controversial reading.
According to Mills, the power elite refers to "those political, economic, and military circles, which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them" (p. 18) This group is interlinked and it is because of the interlocking of the three that power elite enjoy immense power. In other words, the author maintains that power elite is immensely influential mainly because of its access to centralized information, which means they have access to those institutions that can make or break the state and individuals. These institutions that can be called the powerhouses of any country are as follows:
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 slim decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized, executive establishment, which as taken into itself many powers previously scattered, and now enters into each and every cranny 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 sprawling bureaucratic domain (p. 7)
The book offers highly interesting and useful insight into the lives of the rich and powerful. The author has focused...
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