The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills

[p034] THE POWER ELITE THE POWER ELITE by C. Wright Mills. (Oxford Univ. Press, 1956). The starting point for understanding politics and deve- loping a sound policy for labour’s po’itical action in the Uni- ted States today is an accurate knowledge of the real structure of American society. That society is composed of different classes ranging from wage workers in the factories and offices to shareholders of the corporations which own and operate them. Which class rules this country and how do its agents secure their domination over our economic, political and cultural life? This book is an attempt to answer these questions. Imagine an 18th century account such as the Duc de St. Simon gave of the Absolute Monarchy of Louis XIV of France, his states- men and generals, his bankers and bureaucrats, his courtiers and nobility, his entertainers and mistresses. Mills presents an analogous portrait of the more impersonal and hypocritical but no less tyrannical regime of King Capital and his entour- age in the United States today. Mills is a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Something of an “outsider” to the normal academician, who seldom strays far from the haven provided by his bourgeois patrons. He is a shrewd observer, an honest reporter and a scornful critic of monopoly capitalism. He is in the Ameri- can tradition set by Gustavus Myers, author of ‘The Great American Fortunesf’; Thorstein Veblen, author of “The Theory of the Leisure Class”; and the Ferdinand Lundberg of the 1930’s who wrote “America’s 60 Families.” This school of left liberal sociologists exposed the pretentions of the plutocrats and told many truths about them from the shady formation of their fortunes to the shoddy, imitative fabric of their culture. This is the third in Mills’s trilogy of studies concerning the most significant social strata in America. In The New Men of Power, Mil's analysed the union officialdom; in White Collar, he investigated the urban middle class. Now his lens is focussed upon the people who command the heights of American life. He gives a close-up view of the principal traits, private and public attitudes and modes of functioning of the ruling class in the U.S.A. He exposes the realities be- hind the masks which have been so skilfully prepared for them by the public relations experts and the press. A stream- lined Veblen, he uses the weapon of irony to pierce the hides of the sacred cows of the capitalist caste system, from the Brass Hats to the button-pressing, company big-business magnates. This is descriptive sociology at its best. Mills first sets out to demo'ish the fiction that there are no classes in the Marxist sense in American society. He views the population as divided into three strata, not in strict ac- cordance with their property relations and economic func- tions, but according to the measure of power they actually possess. These strata he calls the power-elite, the middle levels, and the mass. He then proceeds to demonstrate that the proclaimed equality of American democracy is a fraud. As a Colonial wit observed: “Men are born both free and equal, But differ greatly in the sequel.” There is a colossal, almost unbridgeable gap between the bulk of the population at the bottom and the rulers on top 31 in the possession, enjoyment and exercise of wealth, power, freedom and the good things of life. The ordinary American is powerless to infiuence those very decisions that most vitally shape his life. He is not consulted beforehand and often does not even know what these decisions are until their consequences hit him. The major decisions are made for him by people in key positions, by peop'e who have centralised the media for disseminating information and the power to make poicy into their own hands. Consequently “the men and women of the mass society . . . feel that they are without purpose in an epoch in which they are without power.” (P. 3) The power elite, on the other hand, are “in positions to make decisions having major consequences.... Their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act that is often of greater consequence than the decisions they do make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organisations of modern society. They rule the big corpora- tions. They run the machinery of the state and claim its pre- rogatives. They direct the military establishment. They oc- cupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centred the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.” (P. 4) The government, the armed forces, and the business cor- porations are the major institutional hierarchies. These are more important than any other institutions. “Families and churches and schools adapt to modern life; government and armies and corporations shape them, and, as they do so they turn these lesser institutions into means for their ends.” (P. 6) In a passage as searing in its truth as in its irony, Mills observes: “The life-fate of the modern individual depends not only upon the family into which he was born or which he enters by marriage, but increasingiy upon the corporation in which he spends the most alert hours of his best years; not only upon the school where he is educated as a child and adolescent, but also upon the state which touches him throughout his life; not only upon the church in which on occasion he hears the word of God, but also upon the ‘ army in which he is disciplined. “If the centralised state could not rely upon the in- culcation of nationalist loyalties in public and private schools, its leaders wou'd promptly seek to modify the de- centralised educational system. If the bankruptcy rate among the top five hundred corporations were as high as the general divorce rate among the thirty-seven million mar- ried couples, there would be economic catastrophe on an international scale. If members of armies gave to them no more of their lives than do believers to the churches to which they belong, there would be a military crisis.” P. 6-7) These three institutions have become so swollen and centralised that they overshadow and overwhelm all other de- partments of American life. _ “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 decentralised set of sev- eral dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralised, executive establishment which has taken up 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 con- text 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 umsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain.” The leading men in each of these three domains, the cor- poration chieftains, warlords and political directors, form the power elite. This interlocking directorate, “share decisions having at least national consequences”, and often determining world developments. The scope and effects of their operations make their power qualitatively superior to those lower in the social scale. “The owner of a roadside fruit stand does not have as much power in any area of social or economic or political decision as the head of a multi-million dollar fruit corporation; no lieutenant on the line is as powerful as the Chief of Staff in the Pentagon; no deputy sheriff carries as much authority as the President of the United States.” (P. 18)

[p035] The heads of these institutions fuse with the very rich to constitute the inner circ'e of the ruling groups which have ac- quired the consciousness, customs, connections and assurance of rulers. Although the smaller cities have hierarchies of their own, these are petty, provincial and subordinated to the najional institutions, the giant. business worporations, the federal government, and the military. The big shots in the little cities look to the commanders in the metropo'itan cen- tres for leadership. In passing, Mills gives a graphic dis- cription of the realities of small town life. He describes too the breeding grounds of the elite, se'ect circles of high society in the metropolis. He establishes the fact that the very rich did not get rich by saving their salaries or even by climbing rung by rung up the ladder of the company administration. In the main the rich have inherited their wealth and along with it their power, prestige and the other privileges of aristocracy. The very rich of 1956 are largely the descendants of the very rich of 1900. These forbears acquired their fortunes thanks to the right of private property, by corporate manipulations, by favourable tax legislation, by exploiting of other peoples’ in- ventions, bv “outright gifts out of the people’s domain”, and by war profiteering. “The very rich have used existing laws, they have circumvented and violated existing laws, and they have had laws created and enforced for their direct benefit.” (P. 99) Their immense incomes are derived from their ownership of the giant corporations. They are closely tied up in a thousand wavs with the Chief Executives of the monopolies. The rich alone are really free. At least they enjoy incom- parably more freedom than anyone e'se. Their wealth affords them unrestricted command over the solid labour of men and of labour’s products, wealth liberates them from the grim material necessities of the lower classes. “Money provides power and power provides freedom.” Mills points out that the plutocracy, the business execu- tives, military and political leaders are in the main drawn from the Protestant, urban, white and native-born sections of the population. The new note in this up to date study, compared to pre- vious portraits of America’s ruling class, is the ascendancy of the military. This is the most ominous aspect of the new phase in the degeneration of American democracy, resulting from the predominance of monopoly capitalism and its imperialist policies. The American Republic, born as a staunchly anti- militarist nation, has become transformed into the opposite since World War II. Professional army men, once regarded as potential oppressors and parasites, have now become the most exalted of untouchables. The Pentagon is their headquarters and monument; the occupation of the White House their prin- cipal domestic conquest to date. The military and political representatives of monopoly capitalism have no outlook other than maintaining the nation on a permanent war footing. They have saddled the country with a permanent and ever-growing military establishment which already dominates the economy through its expendi- tures, and the male youth through conscription, in addition to scientific research and development and higher educational institutions. Mills emphasises that permanent militarism means _per- manent war as an indispensable instrument of capitalist policy. As American politics have become more militarised, the military have become more political. As politics gets into the armv, the army gets into politics on the highest level. Senator McCarthy was bridled and gagged primarily because he tried to interfere with the Army High Command. The military men not only shuttle between the capitals of the world as diplomats but they increasingly staff the director- ates of big business corporations and enter the highest State posts from Secretary of State to the Presidency. The corpor- ate rich, the war-lords and the big politicians jointly develop and administer domestic and foreign policies. They have been amalgamated into a single force through the present Repub- lican “Cadillac cabinet.” “The three top policy-making posi- tions in the country (secretary of state, treasury and defence) are occupied by a New York representative of the leading law firm of the country, which does international business for the Morgan and Rockefeller interests; by a mid-west corporation executive who was a director of a complex of over 30 corporations; and by the former president of one of the three or four largest corporations and the largest pro- ducer of military equipment in the United States.” (P. 232) 32 Mills adds: “The mititary capitalism of private corpora- tions exists in a weakened and formal democratic system con- taining a military order already quite political in outlook and demeanor.” (P. 276) It would be hard to improve on this definition. Mills does not give much comfort to those who see any fundamental differences between the Republican and Demo- cratic Parties. He says: “During the New Deal, the corporate chieftains joined the political directorate; as of World War II, they have come to dominate it.” (P. 275) “More and more of the fundamental issues never come to any point of decision before the Congress or before its more powerful committees, much less before the electorate in campaigns.” (P. 255) Most important decisions are more and more made by a small, uncontrollable group centred around the President. Mills scornfully dismisses the notion that there is any “balance of powers” among the different sections of the popu- lation as a whole. Decisive power on decisive issues is con- centrated exclusivety in the top circles, centralised around the President. He says that a small amount of power is scattered around among the middle class, while the masses are deprived of any power whatsoever. Mills paints a sad, but faithful picture of the decadence of liberalism. “Post-war liberalism has been organisationally im- poverished: the pre-war years of liberalism-in-power de- vitalised independent liberal groups, drying up the grass roots, making older leaders dependent upon the federal centre and not training new leaders round the country. The New Deal left no Jiberal organisation to carry on any liberal programme; rather than a new party, its instru- ment was a loose coalition inside an old one, which quickly fell apart so far as liberal! ideas are concerned. Moreover, the New Deal used up the heritage of liberal ideas, made them banal as it put them into law; turned liberalism into a set of administrative routines to defend rather than a programme to fight for. “In their moral fright, post-war liberals have not de- fended any left or even any militantly liberal position; their defensive posture has, first of all, led them to cele- brate the ‘civil liberties’, in contrast with their absence from Soviet Russia. In fact, many have been so busy cele- brating the civil liberties that they have had less time to defend them; and, more importantly, most have been so busy defending civil liberties that they have had neither the time nor the inclination to use them. ‘In the old days,’ Archibald MacLeish remarked at the end of the ‘forties, freedom was ‘something you used... (it) has now become something you save—something you put away and protect like your other possessions—like a deed or a bond in the bank’.” (Pp. 333-334) If liberalism has collapsed as an influential force, the intellectuals as a whole have surrendered their roles as in- dependent opinion-mou'’ders and enlighteners of the people. The field has been left free for the unchallenged supremacy of the monopolist advocates of “The American Century.” Mills does not have any higher appraisal of the qualifica- tions and objectives of the union bureaucracy. The labour leaders are today “well below the top councils; they are of the middle levels of power.” But they are striving for higher stakes among the “national power elite.” In. pursuing “the strategy of maximum adaptation,” they encounter obstacles both from above and from below. “They feel a tension be- tween their public: their union members—before whom it is politically dangerous to be too big a ‘big-shot’ or too closely associated with inherited enemies—and their newly found companions and routines of life.” (P. 263) As a result, they occupy very uneasy positions between their business associ- ates and the union ranks. Mills ends his survey of the power elite with this indict- ment. The present day monopolists of power have no respon- sibility either to the people or to anyone else. Within the ex- isting social framework they are both uncontrolled and uncontrollable. They profit enormously from this condition of irresponsibility. The possessors of power are divided from and opposed to the possessors of knowledge. He terms their irresponsibility the “higher immorality.” “Commanders of power, unequalled in human history, they have succeeded eae American system of organised irresponsibility.” (P.

[p036] Lenin wrote his classic analysis of world imperialism in 1916 based on material provided by the Englishman Hobson and the German Hilferding. In the forty years since then, enormous changes have affected imperialism as a world sys- tem, and especially the position of the U.S. within it. The imperialist system, which was then at its peak, is crumbling before our eyes and instead of a network of comparatively equal competitive states, it has tended to become centralised in the American Colossus. Equally important modifications have been introduced in- to the internal organisation of U.S. monopoly capitalism. The Mills study is valuab‘e in its analysis of some of the psycho- logical and cultural superstructure of American imperialism. It is plain that American monopoly capitalism has passed into a higher stage of its deve’opment. In place of the more or less automatic operation of capitalism, the Federal govern- ment and its military component has today become the principal prop of the economy. Whole industries such as aircraft. and the national prosperity, directly depend upon the federal expenditures made possible by heavy taxation. As the monopolists have become more dependent upon the state power, the government has become more openly dependent upon them. “The invisible government” that the progressive demo- crats some years ago sought to disclose, has become not only visible but insolent. The monopolists hold the reins of gov- ernment tightly in their hands. The ripe fruits of capitalist evolution, as Mills describes them, are vast inequalities of wealth and of power, plutocracy in the place of democracy, and a disastrously expensive and expanding militarism. In some countries, such a militarised state monopoly capi- talism has taken on fascist or openly dictatorial forms—but not yet in the U.S.A. Thanks to its historical privileges. im- mense wealth and the under-development of class conflicts, the U.S. capitalists have not been compelled to discard the old democratic forms, even though they have severely cur- tailed them. But the ever-present danger of extreme reaction, as evidenced in the shapes of McCarthyism and militarism, remain lodged in the inner structure and inescapable tenden- cies of the system. Mills exhibits both the strong and the weak points of his school of sociology, which owe3 more to the German socio- logists Karl Marnheim and Weber than to Marxism. He ex- cels in the generalised description of the outstanding traits of social groupings. He often stumbies and falls down, how- ever, in dealing with the fundamental nature and relations of the class forces in our society. For example, he takes excep- tion to two fundamental propositions of historical material- ism. He claims that “the American government is not...a committee of the ruling class” (P. 170) and refuses to acknow- jedge that there is any single ruling class in this country. These, he says, are over-simplified Marxist theses. His contention that the American government is not a committee of the ruling class is based upon his own special conception of the power elite. He says that there are three sides of the triangle of power—the big business rich, the brass-hats and the politicians. Which of these is predominant and which subordinate? Which is the master and which the servants? It is instructive to note that Mills, who is so scrupulous about defining inequalities in other segments of the social structure, places all three forces on an equal footing. He does so on the ground that every one of them exercises a portion of power. But does this dispose of the basic issue? Of course not. In whose interests do they wield their power? The facts which he himself amasses demonstrate that the military and the politicians, while feathering their own nests all right act primari'y in promoting the requirements of the billionaires. (To be continued: next issue) WILLIAM F. WARDE.