C. Wright Mills: The Power Elite

C. Wright Mills wrote one of his most famous works, The Power Elite, at a time when the power structure of Post-World War II America was in a state of total flux. Having had a great interest in the writings of Karl Marx and Max Weber Mills expanded on their ideas of the growing unbalance of social stratification and rapid change. His Power Elite Model states that a powerful and unknown group that hold leading positions in military, business, and government make the important decisions, even in societies with seemingly democratic ideals. Although this was not a new idea it is interesting that Mills is the first credible academician to propose such a connection between, what he called, “Public Issues” and “Personal Troubles“.
In 1864, a French satirist named Maurice Joly published a pamphlet called Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu in which he attacked Napoleon III. The plot of this story revolves around a fictitious demonic plot meant to represent the danger that the ruling class of France posed toward the people. Although probably plagiarized from other sources, Joly’s work is considered, by some, as the origins of an awful pamphlet used to justify some of the worst crimes of the 20th century, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This wholly anti-Semitic and fictitious pamphlet has surfaced and resurfaced all over the world, at various times, to scare people into scapegoating the Jewish populations, from Russia, to Germany, to a recent publication in the United States by industrialist Henry Ford between WWI and WWII. Although the myths surrounding the Protocols origins link it to any number of names in the conspiracy theorists notebook, such as the Knights Templar, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Jesuits, and the Masons, what is interesting to note is that any reference to Jews in it can be replaced by any of the above mentioned sources and it would lose none of its hateful impact.
The Protocols “reveal” a sinister plot by powerful people to subjugate and subvert the populace by infiltrating their political, social, military, academic and financial institutions. The very existence of such propaganda reveals a deep fear which seems to have gone hand in hand with the Age of Revolution: a growing fear and distrust of the rich and the powerful ruling classes.
Mills’ view that this Power Elite operates beyond the democratic process, are members of the same social class, with similar backgrounds, educations, and goals brings up the suddenly very real possibility that a small and secretive group of people can hold an unbalanced amount of power over everyone else to their own unknown ends.
This takes on a darker significance when one looks at the events transpiring in the world, both at home and abroad, such as the Halliburton scandal, the connection with the Reagan administration and Iraq and the Taliban, and how so many of our own leaders, agencies, industrialists, scholars, financiers, and so on, are connected with groups which conspiracy watchers find recur again and again in different places and with different agendas but all with the same goal: Power.
Mills was very critical with his contemporaries and peers because they did not take a more active role in helping bring about social change. He recognized that the emergence of new ways to control peoples beliefs, lifestyles and actions could very well threaten to chip away at the democratic freedoms in the United States and lead people into social and political indifference. For conspiracy watchers, this has already happened and so long as it continues the Power Elite will continue to hold the fate of our country, if not the world in their hands