The power elite
by C. Wright Mills · first published 1956
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In 1956, sociologist C. Wright Mills published the classic book The Power Elite, which looked at how a narrow segment of the population with high positions in different institutions (legislators, corporations, the military) tended to make decisions for the population as a whole, with the consensus among these actors displacing authentic democracy. - Current Affairs
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…relatable to "the common man" whereas his opponent in the 1952 election was the opposite type. Anyhow I'm sure that you've seen many of my favorite sources on this but I'll point out both C. Wright Mills The Power Elite and the Tom Wolfe books The Pump House Gang and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Mills defies the reductivism of 2025 in that he says there is not just one power elite but multiple…
on “Testosterone in young men may shape generosity, self-worth” ↗This is such an old discourse... Back in the 1990s we used to say that the journalists were left-wing but the person who owned the paper was left-wing. C. Wright Mill's "Power Elite" is still worth reading https://www.thoughtco.com/c-wright-mills-power-elite-3026474 What I got out of it is that there is more than one kind of elite: there is the person who owns the trailer parks…
on “Elite” ↗Again, there doesn't need to be a conspiracy behind it (as Kanye believes) it's just what the market (and "the algorithm") selects for. As C. Wright Mills wrote in The Power Elite, "To accept either view -- of all history as conspiracy or all history as drift -- is to relax the effort to understand the facts of power and the ways of the powerful." The precise form of our situation…
on “Female teen depression at all time highs” ↗…concurrently tilting at the universal. I'd say "cool" captures Tom Wolfe's master status hierarchy.. Cool can be personal in the way God is, though.. (so "personal sky" as an alias makes complete sense.) The Power Elite looks interesting.. I'll let you know when something comes out of reading that..
on “Problematic alcohol use has become more common among older women” ↗Social class is astonishingly multidimensional as pointed out in the works of C. Wright Mills (Power Elite), Paul Fussel (Class), Tom Wolfe (The Pump House Gang), etc. In my extended family there are no college professors, but a lot of cops, even a lot of women that are cops. (There are some accountants,…
on “Classism in America” ↗…take absolute power, then the citizens become disposable, which is in essence what’s happened. There is a very callous indifference. “I mean, these people — and C. Wright Mills wrote about this in ‘The Power Elite’ — they’re utterly cut off. I mean, the only people they ever meet who are members of the working class are people who work for them–their gardeners or their chauffeurs. They live in self-encased bubbles.…
on “Elites Abandoned the Masses” ↗