Bell, The Power Elite-Reconsidered

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The Power Elite-ReconsideredAuthor(s): Daniel BellReviewed work(s):Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Nov., 1958), pp. 238-250Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2773191 .

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THE POWER ELITE-RECONSIDERED1DANIEL BELLABSTRACT

The Power Elite has had a wide emotional appeal because of its rhetoric and its tough-minded "un-masking" of naive, Populist illusions about democratic checks on power. But a detailed, textual analysisof the book shows a loose and confusing use of terminology. Its conceptual scheme draws from Europeanexperiences which do not apply in American life. Its method is static and ahistorical. Power, as Mills de-fines it, is violence, but this avoids more problems than it illuminates. The book fails to deal with the na-ture of interests or to define the character of political decisions.C. Wright Mills's The Power Elite is oneof those rare books in recent sociology thatdeals with the "world of causality" asagainst meredescription.Power is a difficultsubject; its effects aremore observable thanits causes. Even the power-wielders oftendo not know what factors shaped their de-cisions. By seeing power through a peculiarconfiguration of elites, Mills provides aframe to locate the sources of behavior. Itis, in addition, somnething lse: a politicalbook whoseloose texture and powerfulrhet-oric have allowed differentpeople to readtheir own emotions into it. For the youngneo-Marxists in England (vide the grouparound the Universities and Left Review)and the old, orthodox Marxists in Poland(vide the reception by Adam Schaff, theparty's officialphilosopher), it has becomea primerfor the understandingof Americanpolicy and motives. This is curious, sinceMills is not a Marxist, and, if anything, hismethod and conclusions are anti-Marxist.But because it is tough-minded and "un-

masks" the naive, Populist illusions aboutpower, it has won a ready responseamongradicals. Yet The PowerElite is not an em-pirical analysis of power in the UnitedStates, though many readershave mistakenits illustrations for such an analysis, but ascheme for the analysis of power; and aclose reading of its argument will show, Ithink, how confusingandunsatisfactorythisscheme is.

THE MOOD AND THE INTENTThe mood that pervadesMills'sbook,and

most of his work, providessome clue to theresponse. In writing about labor (The NewMen of Power), the white-collarclass, andnow the power elite, Mills is writing not awhole human comedy but one aspect of it,what Balzac called the etude de meurs,"the comedyof morals." Someof the Balzacmethod is there: Balzac sought to reconcilethe discoveries of science with poetry andto build up visual effects by the massingoffactual detail. Mills writes in vivid meta-phors and surrounds them with statisticafter statistic. But more than stylistic anal-ogy is involved. Balzac lived at a time verymuch like ours-a time of upheaval whenold mores were called into question, whenfor the first time individual social mobilitywas becoming possible, when Stendhal'sJulien Sorel, the young man from the prov-inces, could seek to move into the world ofthe upperclass. Balzac'sheroes, Louis Lam-bert, Rastignac, and, most of all, Vautrin(a lateral descendant of Macheath, fromJohn Gay's Beggar's Opera), begin as mo-bile men, seeking a place in society, but endby hating the bourgeois society they found.Their stance is that of the outsider, andtheirworld (Vautrin'sunderworld s a coun-tersociety to the upper world, as is BertBrecht'sThree Penny Opera) is built on thepremise that the public morality, its man-ners and ideals, is all a fraud. It is interest-

ing that Mills quoteswith approvalBalzac'sdictum, "Behind every fortune is a crime,"1 This is a revised version of a paper presented

before the Faculty Colloquium of the ColumbiaUniversity Sociology Department in May, 1958.238


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THE POWER ELITE-RECONSIDERED 239and sees it as a judgment which appliesequally today. Mills, too, is an outsider.But, whatever its initial impulse, Mills'sbook is molded by more direct intellectualprogenitors. These are Veblen, from whomthe rhetoricand irony is consciously copied;Weber, for the picture of social structure,not however of classes, but of vertical or-ders, or Standen; and, most crucially, Pa-reto, but not for the definition of elite,which is much different from Mills's, butthe method. From Pareto is drawn thescorn for ideas and the denial that ideologyhas any operative meaning in the exerciseof power. By seeing poweras an underlying"combinationof orders," Mills parallels inmethod what Pareto was doing in seeing so-cial groups as "combination of residues."This leads, I think, despite the dynamismin the rhetoric, to a static, ahistorical ap-proach.2

THE ARGUMENTIf one seeks to relate sequence to argu-ment as it unfolds in Mills's opening chap-

ter (the others are largely uneven illustra-tions rather than development or demon-stration of the thesis), there is a perplexingshuttling back and forth on the key prob-lem of how power is wielded. One can onlyshow this by some detailed quotation, adifficult but necessary burden for exposi-tion.3Within American society, says Mills,major national power "now resides in theeconomic, political and military domains."The way to understand he power of theAmerican lite lies neither olelyin recognizing

the historical scale of events, nor in acceptingthe personal awareness reported by men of ap-parent decision. Behind such men and behindthe events of history, linking the two, are themajor institutions of modern society. Thesehierarchies of state and corporationand armyconstitute the means of power: as such, theyare now of a consequence not before equalledin human history-and at their summits, thereare now those command posts of modem soci-ety which offer us the sociological key to anunderstanding of the role of the higher circlesin America [p. 5].

This power, to be power, apparentlymeans control over the institutions ofpower:By the powerful, we mean, of course, thosewho are able to realize their will, even if othersresist it. No one, accordingly, can be trulypowerful unless he has access to the commandof major institutions, for it is over these insti-tutional means of power that the truly power-ful are, in the first instance, powerful [p. 9].

It is shared by only a few persons:By the power elite, we refer to those politicaland economic and military circles which as anintricate set of overlapping cliques share de-cisions having at least national consequences.Inisofar as national events are decided, thepower elite are those who decide them [p. 18].But these people are not the "historymakers" of the time. The "power elite" isnot, Mills says (p. 20), a theory of history.History is a complex net of intended andunintended decisions.The idea of the power elite implies nothing

about the process of decision-making as such:it is an attempt to delimit social areas withinwhich that process, whiatever ts character,goeson. It is a conception of who is involved in theprocess [p. 21].But decisions are made:In our time the pivotal moment does arise,and at that moment small circles do decide orfail to decide. In either case, they are an eliteof power . . . [p. 22].Does the elite then make history? Some-times it is role-determined, sometimes role-determining (pp. 24-2 5). But

2My own masters, in this respect, are Dewey andMarx: Dewey, for his insistence on beginning notwith structure but with problems; with the ques-tion of why something is called into question; whythings are in change and what people did; Marx,for the interplay of ideology and power; for theemphasis on history, on crises as transforming mo-ments, on politics as an activity rooted in concreteinterests and played out in determinable strategies.'All italics, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.They are intended to underline key statements. Allcitations are from C. Wright Mills, The PowerElite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956).


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240 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGYit was no historicalnecessity,but a man namedTruman,who witha few othermen, decided odropa bombon Hiroshima.t was no historicalnecessity,but anargument,n thena small cir-cle of men that defeated AdmiralRadford'sproposalto send troops to IndochinabeforeDienbienphuell [p. 25].

If all this has a residue,it is that a small-er number of men than ever before, holdingtop positions in government, economic life,and the military, have a set of responsibili-ties and decision-making powers that aremore consequential than ever before inUnited States history. This, in itself, doesnot tell us very much. But crucial to Mills'sanalysis are a set of operative terms-"in-stitutions" (with which are interchangedfreely "domains," "higher circles," and"top cliques"), "power,""commandposts,"and "big decisions"-and it is the rhetori-cal use of these terms that gives the bookits persuasiveness.These are the key modi-fiers of the term "elite." What do theymean?THE TERMS

a) Institutions, domains, etc.-In onlyone place, in a long footnote on page 366,amonghis notes, Mills tries to straightenoutthe confusions created by the profuse inter-change of terms. He says that he defineselite on the basis of "institutional position"rather than "statistics of selected values,""membership n clique-like sets of people,"or ''moralityof certain personality types."He wants to locate the structural powercenters in society.But, actually, the military, the economic,and the political, as Mills uses these terms,are not institutions, but sectors, or whatWeber calls "orders," or vertical heir-archies-each with their inclosedstrata-ofsociety. To say that this sector or orderis more important than that-that in somesocieties, for example, the religious o;rdersare more importantthan the political-is togive us large-scaleboundariesof knowledge.But surely we want and need more thanthat.Nor do we obtain any clear idea of what

Mills means by an institution. Mills's usageof "the military,""thepolitical directorate,"etc., is extraordinarily loose. It would behard to characterize these as institutions.Institutions derive from particular, estab-lished codes of conduct, which shape thebehavior of particular groups of men whoimplicitly or otherwise have a loyalty tothat code and are subject to certain con-trols (anxiety, guilt, shame, expulsion, etc.)if they violate the norms. If the importantconsiderationsof power are what people dowith that power,then we have to have moreparticularizedways of identifyingthe group-ings than "institutionalized orders," "do-mains," "circles," etc.b) Power.-There is a curious lack ofdefinition all the way through the book ofthe word "power." Only twice, really, doesone find a set of limits to the word:

By the powerfulwe mean, of course, thosewho are able to realize heirwill, even if othersresist it [p. 9].All politics s a struggle or power: the ulti-mate kind of power s violence[p. 171].It is quite true that violence, as Weberhas said, is the ultimate sanction of power,and, in extremesituations (e.g., the SpanishCivil War, Iraq, etc.), control of the meansof violence may be decisive in seizing orholding power. But neither is power the in-exorable, implacable, granitic force thatMills and others make it to be. (Merriamonce said: "Rape is not evidence of irresist-ible power, either in politics or sex.") And

is it true to say that all politics is a strugglefor power? Are there not ideals as a goal?Andif ideals are realizablethroughpower-though not always-do they not tempertheviolence of politics?Power in Mills's terms is domination. Butwe do not need an elaborate discussion tosee that this view of power avoids moreproblemsthan it answers-particularly onceone moves away from the outer boundaryof power as violence to institutionalizedpower,with whichMills is concerned.Forinsociety, particularlyconstitutional regimes,and within associations, where violence is


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THE POWER ELITE-RECONSIDERED 241not the rule, we are in the realm of norms,values, traditions, legitimacy, concensus,leadership,and identification-all the modesand mechanisms of command and author-ity, their acceptanceor denial, which shapeaction in the day-to-day world withoutviolence. And these aspects of power Millshas eschewed.c) The command posts.-It is ratherstriking, too, given Mills's image of power,and politics, as violence, that the metaphorto describethe people of powerbe a militaryone. We can take this as a clue to Mills'simplicit scheme-that the military is forhim the model of power. But little morethan a metaphor, it still tells us little asto who has power.The men whohold power,he says, are those who run the organizationsor domains which have power. But how dowe know they have power or what powerthey have? This is taken simply as a postu-late: (1) the organization or institutionhas power; (2) position in it gives power.How do we know? Actually, we can onlyknow if powerexists by what people do withtheir power.What powerspeople have, what decisionsthey make, how they make them, whatfactors they have to take into account inmakingthem-all these comeinto the ques-tion of whether position can be transferredinto power.But Mills has said:

The idea of the power elite implies nothingabouttheprocessof decision-makings such-it is anattempt o delimit hesocialareaswith-in which that process,whatever ts character,goeson.It is a conception f whois involved nthe process p. 21].So we find ourselvesstymied. Who dependsupon position? But position, as I haveargued,is meaningfulonly if one can definethe character of the decisions made withsuch power. And this problem Mills es-chews.4Mills says furtherthat he wants to avoidthe problem of the self-awareness by thepower-holdersor the role of suchself-aware-ness in decisions: "The way to understandthe power of the elite lies neither in recog-nizing the historic scale of events or the

personal awarenessreportedby men of ap-parent decision behind the men and theinstitutions" (p. 15). But if the power eliteis not the history-maker (p. 20), as Millssometimesimplies, thenwhat is the meaningof their positions as members of the powerelite? Either they can make effective deci-sions or not. It is true that many men, likeChanticleer he Cock, crowand believe thatthey have caused the sun to rise; but, ifsuch power is only self-deception, that isan aspect, too, of the meaningof power.So far we have been accepting the terms"command posts" and "power elite" inMills's own usage. But now a difficultyen-ters: the question not only of who consti-tutes the power elite but of how cohesivethey are. Although Mills contends that hedoes not believe in a conspiracytheory, hisloose account of the centralization of poweramong the elite comes suspiciously closeto it. (It is much like Jack London's TheIron Heel-the picture of the Americanoligarchs-which so influenced Socialistimagery and thought before World War I.

We can only evaluate the meaningof anycentralizationof poweron the basis of whatpeople do with their power. What unitesthem? What divides them? And this in-' In his extraordinary story of policy conflictsbetween the Army, Air Force, and Navy on strate-gic concepts-policy issues such as reliance onheavy military bombers and all-out retaliation,against tactical nuclear weapons and conventionalground forces for limited wars, issues which deeplyaffect the balance of power within the military es-

tablishment-General James Gavin provides astriking example of the helplessness of some of thetop Army brass against the intrenched bureaucracywithin the Department of Defense. "With the es-tablishment of the Department of Defense in 1947,"he writes, "an additional layer of civilian manage-ment was placed above the services. Furthermore,by the law, military officers were forbidden tohold executive positions in the Department of De-fense. As a result the Assistant Secretaries of De-fense relied heavily on hundreds of civil service em-ployees, who probably have more impact on de-cision-making in the Department of Defense thanany other group of individuals, military or civilian"(War and Peace in the Space Age [New York:Harper & Bros., 1958], reprinted in Life, August 4,1958, pp. 81-82).


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242 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGYvolves a definition of interests. To say, asMills does, that "all means of power tendto become ends to an elite that is in com-mand of them. And that is why we maydefine the power elite in terms of power-as those who occupy the command posts"(p. 23)-is circular.What does it mean to say that power isan end in itself for the power elite? If theelite is cohesive, and facing another powergroup, the maintenanceof power may be anend in itself. But is the elite cohesive? Wedo not know without first coming back tothe question of interests. And the natureof interests implies a selection of values bya group, or part of a group, over againstothers, and this leads to a definition of thepriorities of importance of values, of thedistribution of particular privileges, etc.Certainly,one cannot have a power elite,or a ruling class, without community of in-terests. Mills implies one: the interest ofthe elite is in the maintenance of the capi-talist system as a system. But this is neverreally discussed or analyzed in terms of themeaning of capitalism, the impact of po-litical controls on the society, or the changesin capitalism in the last twenty-five years.But, even if the interest be as broad asMills implies, one still has the responsibilityof identifying the conditions for the main-tenance of the system and the issues and in-terests which attend these. Further, one hasto see whether there is or has been a con-tinuity of interests, in order to chart thecohesivenessorthe riseand fall of particulargroups.One of the mainargumentsabout the im-portanceof the commandposts is the grow-ing centralization of power which wouldimply something about the nature of in-terests. Yet there is almost no sustaineddiscussion of the forces leading to centrali-zation. These are somewhat assumed, andhover over the book, but are never madeexplicit. Yet only a sustained discussion ofthese tendencieswould, it seems to me, un-cover the locales of power and their shifts.For example: (a) the role of technologyandincreasing capital costs as a chief factor in

the size of enterprise; (b) the need forregulation and planning on a national scalebecause of increased communication,com-plexity of living, social and military serv-ices, and the managing of the economy asforces in the federalization of power; and(c) the role of foreign affairs. (Curiously,Soviet Russia is not even mentionedin thebook, although so much of our posture hasbeen dictated by Russian behavior.)Since his focus is on who has power,Mills spends considerable effort in tracingthe social origins of the men at the top.But, in a disclaimer toward the end of thebook (pp. 280-87), he says that the con-ception of the power elite does not restupon commonsocial origins (a themewhichunderlies, say, Schumpeter's notion of therise and fall of classes) or upon personalfriendship but (although the presumptionis not made explicit) upon their "insti-tutional position." But such a statementbegs the most important question of all:the mechanismsof co-ordinationamong thepower-holders.One can say obliquely, asMills does, that they "meet each other,"but this tells us little. If there is a "built-in" situation whereby each position mergesinto another, what are they? One can say,as Mills does, that the new requirementsofgovernment require increased recruitmentto policy positions from outside groups.5But, then,what are they-and what do theydo? At one point Mills says that the Demo-crats recruited from Dillon-Reed; the Re-publicans, from Kuhn-Loeb. But the pointis never developed, and it is hard to know' One key theoretical point, for Marxists, whichMills, surprisingly, never comes to, is the questionof the ultimate source of power. Is the politicaldirectorate autonomous, or the military independ-ent? If so, how come? What is the relation of eco-nomic power to the other two? Mills writes: "In sofar as the structural clue to the power elite todaylies in the enlarged and military state, that clue be-comes evident in the military ascendency. The war-lords have gained decisive political relevance, andthe military structure is now in considerable parta political structure" (p. 275). If so, what is oneto say, then, about the other crucial proposition byMills that the capitalist system in the United Statesis essentially unchanged (see below).


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THE POWER ELITE-RECONSIDERED 243what he means. One could equally say thatin the recruitment of science advisers theDemocrats took from Chicago and LosAlamos; the Republicans, from Livermore-but if this means anything, and I thinkit does, one has to trace out the conse-quences of this differentrecruitment n theactions of the different people. Mills con-stantly brings the story to the point whereanalysis has to begin-and stops.d) The big decisions.-Mills says thatthe power elite comes into its own on the"big decisions"; only they can effect them.Those who talk of a new social balance, orpluralism, or the rise of labor, he says,are talking, if at all correctly, about the"middle levels" of power. They fail to seethe big decisions. But, curiously, except ina few instances, Mills fails to specify whatthe big decisions are. And, when he does,they seem to be a few-namely, the stepsleading to intervention in World War II;the decision to drop the atom bomb; thedeclarationof war in Korea; the indecisionsover Quemoy and Matsu; the hesitationover Dienbienphu.It is quite striking (and it is in line withMills's conception of politics) that all thedecisionshe singlesoutas the "bigdecisions"are connected with violence. These are, itis true, the ultimate decisions a society canmake: the commitmentor refusal to go towar. And, in this regard, Mills is right.They are big decisions. But what is equallystriking in his almost cursory discussion ofthese decisions is the failure to see thatthese decisions are not made by the powerelite, either. They are the decisions which,in our constitutional system, are vestedspecificallyin one individual who must bearthe responsibility for the decision-thePresident. And, rather than being a usurpa-tion of power,so to speak, this is one of thefew instances in the Constitution in whichsuchresponsibility s specificallydefinedandaccountability is clear. Naturally, a Presi-dent will consult with others.And, in the in-stances Mills has cited, the President did.RichardRoverehas supplieda detailedanal-ysis of the decisions which Mills has named6

and refuted the notion that a "power elite"was really involved-certainly, as Millsdefines this elite broadly. Rovere points tothe few persons other than the Presidentinvolved in these decisions: on the atombomb, Stimson, Churchill,and a few physi-cists; on Korea, a small group of men likeAcheson and Bradley, whose counsel wasdivided; on Quemoyand Matsu, specificallyby Eisenhower; and on Dienbienphu, themilitary and the Cabinet-and, in this in-stance, "the" power elite, narrowlydefined,were for intervention, while Eisenhoweralone decided against it, principally, saysRovere,becauseof public opinion.Now it may well be that crucial deci-sions of this importance should not be inthe hands of a few men. But short of a sys-tem of national initiative and referendumsuch as was proposed in 1938-39 in theLudlowamendment,or short of reorganizingthe political structureof the country to in-sist on party responsibility for decision, itis difficult to see what Mills's shouting isabout. To say that the leaders of a countryhave a constitutionalresponsibilityto makecrucial decisions is a fairly commonplacestatement. To say that the powerelite makessuch decisions is to invest the statementwith a weight and emotionalcharge that isquite impressive but of little meaning.In this preoccupationwith elite manip-ulation, Mills becomes indifferent to thequestion of what constitutes problems ofpower in the everyday life of the country.This is quite evident in the way he sum-marily dismisses all other questions, shortof the ones described above, as "middlelevel," and presumably,without much realmeaning. Yet are these not the stuff of pol-itics-the issues which divide men andcreate the interest conflicts that involvepeople in a sense of ongoing reality: laborissues, race problems, tax policy, and thelike?

THE EUROPEAN IMAGEThe peculiar fact is that, while all theillustrations Mills uses are drawn from

'TheProgressive,XX, No. 4 (June, 1956), 33-35.


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244 THE AMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGYAmericanlife, the key concepts are drawnfrom European experiences; and this ac-counts, I believe, for the exotic attractive-ness-and astigmatism-of the power eliteidea.7Having defined politics and power interms of an ultimate sanction of violence,Mills then raises the provocative question:Why, then, have the possessors of the meansof violence-the military-not establishedthemselves in power more than they havedone in the West? Why is not military dic-tatorship the more normal form of govern-ment?Mills's answer is to point to the role ofstatus: "Prestige to the point of honor,and all that this implies, has, as it were,been the pay-off for the military renuncia-tions of power" (p. 174).Now, to the extent that this is true, andI think as a general statement it can stand,this fact applies primarily to the Europeanscene. But does it to the United States?Where in the United States have the mili-tary (the Navy apart) been kept in check

by honor? The military has not had thepower-or status-in American life for avariety of vastly different reasons: theoriginal concept of the Army as a people'smilitia; the Populist image of the Armyman, often as a "hero"; the "democratic"recruitmentto West Point; the reluctanceto accept conscription; the low esteem of

soldiering so against moneymaking; thetradition of civil life; etc.All this Mills sees and knows. But if"honor"and "violence"are not meaningfulin our past, why conceptualize the prob-lem of the military in terms of violenceandhonoras a general categorywhen the prob-lem does not derivefromthe Americanscenein those terms? Unless Mills assumes, asmany intellectuals did in the thirties, thatwe shall, yet, follow the European experi-ence.A similarpitfall can be foundin the treat-ment of prestige.Mills says: "All thosewhosucceed in America-no matter what theircircle of origin or their sphere of action-are likely to become involved in the worldof the celebrity." (The celebrities are thenames that need no further identification.)He says:With the incorporationf the economy, heascendencyof the militaryestablishment,ndthe centralization f the enlarged tate, therehave arisen he nationalelite,who,in occupy-ing the commandposts, have takenthe spot-light of publicityand becomesubjects of theintensivebuild-up.Membersof thepowerelitearecelebratedbecauseof thepositions heyoc-cupy and the decisions hey command p. 71].Arethe relationshipsof celebrity,prestige,status, and power as direct as Mills makesthem out to be? Glamour,celebrities, etc.,are the concomitants,or the necessarycom-ponents, not of an elite, but of a mass-con-sumption society. A society engaged inselling requires such a system of lure and

appeal. But why assume that positions ofpower nvolve onein this system of glamour?One reason, perhaps, is that the usagesby Mills stem from older, European con-ceptions of prestige, whereby prestige wasidentified with honor and with deference.8

'This is a refractory problem which has distortedmuch of American sociological thinking. Throughthe 1930's American intellectuals constantly ex-pected that United States social development, par-ticularly in the emergence of fascism, would inevi-tably follow that of Europe. To a great extent thiswas a product of mechanical Marxism which sawall politics as a reflex of economic crises and postu-lated common stages of social evolution. Even aslate as 1948, Laski would write that "the historyof the United States, would, despite everything,follow the general pattern of capitalist democracyin Europe" (Harold Laski, The American Democ-racy [New York: Viking Press, 1948], p. 17). Andeven so brilliant an observer as Joseph Schumpeter,in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, could,with sleight of hand, mix American experienceswith European concepts to achieve his gloomy pre-dictions.

8 Mills, like E. A. Ross of Wisconsin, drew muchof this from the classic study of L. Leopold onprestige. Ross even went to the extent of writing:"The class that has the most prestige will have themost power." How many readers of the Journalcould quickly identify the presidents and boardchairmen of the top ten corporations on the For-tune magazine list of the five hundred largest corpo-


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THE POWER ELITE-RECONSIDERED 245Those who held power could claim honorand deference. This was true in Europe.But has it been so in the United States?When Lasswell first attempted in the latethirties to use deferenceas a key symbol, italready had a false ring. Mills, in effect,substitutes glamour or celebrity for defer-ence, but it is doubtful if, in the mass-con-sumption society, the notions of celebrity,glamour, and prestige and power have thekind of connotations,or are linked, as Millssuggests.

HISTORY AND IDEASIf one is concerned with the questionabout changes in the source and style ofpower or in the synchronizationand cen-tralization of power, one would have toexamine the problem historically. Yet, ex-cept in one or two instances, Mills ignoresthe historical dimensions. In one place hespeaks of a periodization of American his-tory wherein political power has replacedeconomicpower. But this is too loose to bemeaningful. In another, the only concrete

discussion of social change in historicalterms, he cites an interesting statistic:In the middle of the nineteenthcentury-between1865 and 1881-only 19 per cent ofthe menat the top of government egan theirpoliticalcareerat the national evel; but from1905 to 1953 about one-thirdof the politicalelite beganthere, and in the Eisenhowerad-ministrationome40 percentstartednpoliticsat the national evel-a highfor the entirepo-litical historyof the U.S. [p. 229].Even in its own terms,it is hard to figureout the exact meaning of the argument,other than the fact that more problemsarecentered in Washington than at the statesand that for this reason more persons aredrawn directly to the national capital thanbefore. Surely there is a simple explanationfor much of this. During World War II,

with a great need both for national unityand for specialists, more outsiders wereco-optedfor Cabinetposts and the ExecutiveBranchthan before.And, in 1952, since theRepublicans had been out of top office fortwenty years, they would have fewer per-sons who had a career in government,andthey would bring in a high proportion ofoutsiders.But what is interesting in the use ofthese kinds of data is the methodologicalbias it reveals. In using such data-andvariables ike lowerornationallevels-thereis a presumption that, in the differentkindof recruitment, one can chart differences nthe characterof the men at top-which maybe-and that therefore the character oftheir politics would be different too. Millsseems to imply this but never develops itother than to say that, today, the politicaloutsiderhas come into the ascendant.As a countermethodology, t would seemto me that one wouldstart not with recruit-ment or social origins but with the char-acter of thepolitics. Has somethingchanged,and, if so, what and why? Is the change dueto differences in recruitment (differentialclass and ethnicbackgrounds)or someotherreason? But, if one asks these questions,one has to begin with an examination ofideas and issues, not social origins.But Mills, at least here, is almost com-pletely uninterested n ideas and issues. Thequestions in politics that interest him are:In what way have strategic positionschanged, and which positions have cometo the fore? Changesin power, then, are forMills largely a succession of differentposi-tions. As differentstructural or institutionalpositions (i.e., military, economic, political)combine,different degreesof powerare pos-sible. The circulationof the elite-by whichPareto meant the change in the compositionof groups with different "residues"-istransformedhere into the succession of in-stitutional position.But how does this apply to people? Arepeople-character, ideas, values-deter-mined by their positions? And, if so, in what

rations, the top-ranking members of military staffs(e.g., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thehead of the Army, the Naval Chief of Operations,Air Chief of Staff, General of the Strategic AirCommand, etc.), or the members of the Cabinet?


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246 THE AMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGYway? More than that, to see political his-tory as a shift in the power position of"institutions," rather than, say, concreteinterest groups, or classes, is to read politicsin an extraordinarlyabstract fashion. It is,at first point again, to ignore the changesin ideas and interests. This is one of the rea-sons why Mills can minimize, in the strik-ing way he does, the entire twenty years'history of the New Deal and Fair Deal.For him these twenty years were notableonly in that they fostered the centralizingtendencies of the major "institutions" ofsociety, notably the political.In this neglect, or even dismissal, of ideasand ideologies one finds a striking parallelin Pareto's explanation of social changes inItaly. For Pareto the rise of socialism inItaly was a mere change in the "derivations"(i.e., the masks or ideologies), while thebasic combination of residues remained(No. 1704).9 In effect the shifts of temperfrom nationalism to liberalism to socialismreflected shifts in the distribution of ClassII residues (i.e., the residues of group per-sistence). Thus changesin the political classwere simply the circulationof sociopsycho-logical types. All ideologies,all philosophicalclaim, were masks "for mere purposes ofpartisan conveniencein debate. [They are]neither true nor false; [but] simply devoidof meaning" (No. 1708).Similarly, for Mills, changes in powerare changesin combinationsof institutionalposition; and this alone, presumably,is theonly meaningful reality.

Except for the unsuccessful Civil War,changesin the power system of the UnitedStateshave not involved mportant hallengestobasic egitimations.... Changesn the Amer-ican structureof power have generallycomeaboutby institutional hifts in the relativepo-sitions of the political, the economicand themilitaryorders[p. 269].Thus the extraordinary hanges n Ameri-can life, the changesin the conceptsof prop-erty, managerial control, responsibility ofgovernment,and the changesin moral tem-per created by the New Deal become "re-duced" to institutional shifts. But have

there been no challenges to basis legitima-tions in Americanlife? Let us take up thequestion of the corporation.THE CONTINUITY OF POWERIf, in his analysis of politics, Mills drawsfromPareto, in his imageof economicpowerhe becomes a mechanical Marxist. Millsnotes:

The recentsocialhistoryof American ap-italism does not revealany distinctbreakinthe continuity f thehighercapitalist lass....Over he lasthalf-centuryn the economyas inthe politicalorder, herehasbeena remarkableconitinuityof interests, vested in the types ofhighereconomicmen who guardand advancethem [p. 147].

Although the language is vague, one canonly say that an answer to this propositionrests not on logical or methodologicalargu-ments but on empiricalgrounds.I can onlyoutline the kind of answernecessary.The sinigular fact is that in the lastseventy-five years the established relationsbetweenthe systems of propertyand family,which, Malthusmaintained,represented he"fundamental aws"of society, have brokendown. The reasons for this breakdownarefairly obvious: the growth of romanticism,the high premium on individual attach-ment and free choice, the translationof pas-sion into secular and carnal terms-allworked against the system of arrangedmar-riage. The emancipation of women meant,in one sense, the disappearanceof one ofthe stable aspects of "bourgeois"society.But it also meant the breakup of "familycapitalism," which has been the socialcement of the bourgeois class system.10Capitalism is not only, as Marx saw it,an economic system with employer-workerrelations and classes formed on strictlyeconomiclines but a social system, wherein

'V. 1. Pareto, The Mind and Society (New York:Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1935). The numbering fol-lows the notation system used by Pareto for hisparagraphs. The sections cited here can be found inVol. III (pp. 1146-56)." For an elaboration of this argument see mynote, "The Break-up of Family Capitalism in Amer-ica," Partisan Review, Vol. XXIV (Summer, 1957).


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THE POWER ELITE-RECONSIDERED 247power has been transmitted through thefamilyand wherethe satisfactions of owner-ship lay, in part, in the family name (e.g.,X & Sons) by which the business enter-prise was known.The social organization of the familyrested on property and the "dynastic"mar-riage. Property, sanctioned by law and re-inforced by the coercivepowerof the state,meant power; the "dynastic"marriage wasa means through inheritancelaws of trans-mnittingproperty and preserving the con-tinuity of the family enterprise. Throughthe fusion of the two institutions, a classsystem was maintained: people met at thesame social level, had similar educations,mingled in specific milieux-in short, cre-ated a distinctive style of life.Beyond the emancipationof women,thereare reasonsmoreindigenousto the economicsystem why the mode of family capitalismhas given way. Some are general:the declineof the extendedfamily or clan narrowed hechoice of heirs competent to manage theenterprise; the increasing importance ofprofessional techniques placed a high pre-mium on skill ratherthan bloodrelationship.In the United States, however, one canpoint to even more specific factors. Thebreakupof family capitalismcame, roughly,around the turn of the century, whenAmerican industry, having overextendeditself, underwent a succession of crises. Atthis point the bankers, with their controlof the money and credit market, stepped inand reorganized and took control of manyof the country's leading enterprises. Thegreat mergers at the turn of the century,typified by the formation of United StatesSteel, marked the emergence of "financecapitalism"in this country. By their inter-vention the investment bankers, in effect,tore up the social roots of the capitalistorder. By installing professional managers-with no proprietarystakes in the enter-prise and therefore unable to pass alongtheir power automatically to their sons andaccountable to outside controllers-thebankers effected a radical separation ofproperty and family.

In time, however, the power of thebankers, too, declined. Important was theenforced separation, by the New Deal, ofinvestment and banking functions, whichlimited the investment bankers' control ofthe money market. More recently, the tre-mendous growth of American corporationsenabled them to finance their expansionfrom their own profits rather than by bor-rowing on the money market, and so themanagerial groups have won a measure ofindependence.

Mills says: "In general . . . the ideologyof the executives . . . is conservatism with-out any ideology because they feel them-selves to be 'practical' men" (p. 169).I find this somewhat puzzling-particu-larly in the light of a whole slew of booksin recent years to establish an ideology formanagers as a moral justification of theirrole. The older property capitalists had atheory of "natural rights" as a philosophicalsanction. The newer managers could notclaim this foundation. But power requireslegitimation, and rules alnd authority haveto be invested with a sense of "justice."The fact that the new managershave lackeda class position buttressed by tradition hasgiven rise to a need on their part to justifytheirenormouspower.In no other capitalistorder,as in the American, herefore,has thisdrive for an ideology been pressed so com-pulsively.As we have had in the corporationlthe classic shift on the economic level fromownershipto managerial control, so, on thesymbolic level, we have the shift from"private property" to "enterprise," as thejustification of power.

THE COMMUNITY OF POWERIn his summation of economic control,Mills paints an extraordinarypicture:The top corporations re not a set of splen-didly isolated giants. They have been knittedtogether by explicit associationswithin theirrespective ndustriesand regionsand in supra-associations uch as the NAM. These associa-tions organizea unity among the managerialelite and other membersof corporateranks.. . . They translatenarroweconomicpowers


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248 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGYinto industry-wide nd class-widepower; andthey use these powersfirst on the economicfront, for example,withreference o laborandits organizations; nd second,on the politicalfront, for examplen their argerolein the po-litical sphere.And they infuse into the ranksof smallerbusinessmenhe views of big busi-ness [p. 122].

This is a breathtaking statement moresweeping than anything in the old TNECreports or Robert Brady's theory of Spit-zenverbande (or peak associations) in hisBusiness as a System of Power. That thereis some co-ordination is obvious; but co-ordinationof this magnitude-and smooth-ness- I would doubt and certainly wouldlike to see any evidence.Mills speaks of "their large role in thepolitical sphere." But against whom arethe members of the power elite united, andwhat kinds of issues unite them in the po-litical sphere? I can think of only one issueon which the top corporations would beunited: tax policy. In almost all others,they divide. They are divided somewhat onlabor. There are major clashes in areas ofself-interestsuch as thosebetweenrailroads,truckers,and the railroadsand the airlines;or between coal and oil, and coal and natu-ral-gas interests. Except in a vague, ideo-logical sense, there are relatively few issueson which the managerial elite are uniited.The problem of who unites with whomon what is an empirical one, and this con-sideration or clues to it, is missing fromMills's work. If such co-ordinationas Millsdepicts does exist, a further question israised as to how it comes about. We know,for example, that, as a consequenceof bu-reaucratization,careerlines within corpora-tions become lengthened, and as a conse-quence there is shorter tenure of office forthose who reach the top. Within a ten-yearperiod, AmericanTelephone and Telegraphhas had three executiveofficers,all of whomhad spent thirty to forty years within thecorporation. If men spend so much timewithin their corporateshells, how do mem-bers of the "elite" get acquainted?The use of the term "elite"poses another

question about the utility of its limits ondiscussingpowers. Vhyuse the word "elite"rather than "decision-makers" or even"rulers"?To talk of "decision-making," newould have to discuss policy formulation,pressures, etc. To talk of "rule,"one wouldhave to discuss the nature of rule. But, ifone talks of an "elite," one needs only dis-cuss institutional position, and one can doso only if, as Mills assumes, the fundamen-tal nature of the system is unchanged, sothat one'sproblem s to chartthe circulationat the top. The argument that the funda-mental nature of the system-i.e., that ofbasic legitimations, of continuity of thecapitalist class-is unchanged is a curiousone, for, if power has becomeso centralizedand synchronized,as Mills now assumes, isthis not a fundamental change in the sys-tem?Yet, even if one wants to talk in termsof elites, therehave been key shifts in powerin Americansociety-the breakup of familycapitalism (and this is linked to a series ofshifts in power in Western society as awhole). Family capitalismmeant social andpolitical, as well as economic, dominance;the leading family used to live in the "houseon the hill." It does so no longer. Nor isthere any longer, if once there was, Amer-ica's "Sixty Families." Many middle-sizedenterprises are still family owned, with theson succeedingfather, and many towns, likeSt. Louis and Cincinnati, still reveal themarks of the old dominance by families.But, by and large, the system of family con-trol is finished. So much so that a classicstudy of American life like Robert Lynd'sMiddletown in Transition, with its pictureof the "X" family dominating the town, hasin less than twenty years become historyrather than contemporary life. (Interest-ingly enough, in 1957, the Ball family,Lynd's "X" family, took in professionalmanagement of its enterprises, since thefamily lineage was becomingexhausted.)Two "silent" revolutions in the relationsbetweenpowerand class position in modernsociety seem to be in process. One is achange in the mode of access to powerinso-


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THE POWER ELITE-RECONSIDERED 249far as inheritance alone is no longer all-determining; the other is a change in thenature of power-holding itself insofar astechnical skill rather than property and po-litical position rather than wealth have be-come the bases on which power is wielded.The two "revolutions" proceed simulta-neously. The chief consequence, politically,is the breakupof the "rulingclass." A rulingclass may be defined as a power-holdinggroup which has both an established com-munity of interest and a continuity of in-terest. Being a member of the "upper class"no longer means that one is a member of theruling group. The means of passing on thepower which the modern ruling groups pos-sess, or the institutionalization of any spe-cific modes of access to power (the politicalroute or military advancement), is not yetfully demarked and established.

THE TYPES OF DECISIONSIf one wants to discuss power, it seemsto me more fruitful to discuss it in termsof types of decisionsratherthan elites. And,

curiously, Mills, I would argue, ultimatelyagrees, for the real heart of the book is apolemic against those who say that decisionsare made democratically in the UnitedStates. Mills writes:More and more of the fundamentalssuesnever came to any point of decision beforeCongress . . much less beforethe electorate[p. 255].Insofar as the structuralclue to the powerelite today lies in the politicalorder, hat clue

is the declineof politics as genuineand publicdebatesof alternativedecisions.... Americasnow in considerable art more a formalpoliti-cal democracy p. 224].Now, to some extent, this is true, butnot, it seems to me, with the invidious as-pect with which Mills invests the judgment.In many instances even the "interestedpublic" feels itself "trapped,"so to speak,by its inability to affect events. Much ofthis arises out of the security nature of prob-lems, so that issues are often fought out ina bureaucratic labyrinth. The decision onthe H-bomb was one such issue. Here we

had groups of scientists versus a section ofthe military, particularly the Strategic AirCommand.Unless one assumes that every-one ever involved in decision-makingis amember of the power elite-which is circu-lar-we have to locate the source of suchdivisions, for these are the centralproblemsof a sociology of power.But another, equally important, reasonfor being unable to affect events is the onsetof what one can only call, inaptly, "techni-cal decision-making"-the fact that, oncea policy decision is made, or once a techno-logical change comes to the fore, or oncesomelong crescive change has becomemani-fest, a number of other consequences, f oneis being "functionally rational,"almost in-evitably follow."1Thus shifts of power be-come "technical"concomitants of such "de-cisions." And the problem of a sociology ofpower further is to identify the kinds ofconsequences which follow the differentkinds of decisions.The fundamental policy issues whichMills talks about are primarily,as I pointedout before, decisions to be involved in waror not-or, more broadly, that of foreignpolicy. But how can one discuss this ques-tion-and Mills ducks completely the ques-tion of foreign policy-without discussingthe cold war and the extent to which ourposture is shaped by the Russians! UnitedStates foreign policy since 1946-or, morespecifically, since Byrnes's Stuttgartspeech,which reversed our position on weakeningGermany-was not a reflex of any internalsocial divisions or class issues in the UnitedStates but was based on an estimate ofRussia's intentions.Nor was this estimate made, in the firstinstance, by "the power elite." It was anestimate made by American scholarly ex-perts, most notably by GeorgeKennan and

"The elaboration of this argument which wasmade in the initial presentation would take toomuch space. The examples cited dealt with the "dualeconomy" and the forced expansion of capital plantafter the Korean invasion: the shifts in economicand military expenditures and power created bynew weapons and the role of the federal budget asan economic gyroscope.


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250 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGYthe policy planning staff of the State De-partment.It was a judgmentthat Stalinismas an ideologicalphenomenonand Russia asa geopolitical powerwere aggressively,mili-tarily, and ideologically expansionist andthat a policy of containment, including arapid military buildup, was necessary inorder to implement that containment. Thisunderlay Truman's Graeco-Turkishpolicy,and it underlay the Marshall Plan and thedesireto aid the rebuildingof the Europeaneconomy. These policies were not a reflexof power constellations within the UnitedStates. They were estimates of national in-terest and of national survival.From the first decision, many others fol-lowed: the creation of a long-distancestrik-ing arm in the air (SAC), the establishmentof a West European Defense Community(EDC), and, following its failure, NATO,etc. This is not to say that every strategicstep followed inexorablyfrom the first deci-sion (after FrancerejectedEDC, we had torely more on Germanyfor militarysupport)but that the broad imperatives were clear.

Once these broad lines were laid down,interest groups were affected, and Congresswasused-often disastrously-to pass mneas-ures which gave pressuregroups largerallo-cations of aid money (e.g., the Bland Act-pressured both by the unions and by themaritime industry-that 50 per cent of allMarshall Plan aid had to be carried inAmerican bottoms) or to hinder the flexi-bility of the State Department (e.g., theBattle Act, which fobrade trade with theSoviet bloc and, in effect, crippled Ceylon,when it was our ally, by threateningto stopaid of Ceylon-soldrubberto China).To ignore the problems of this type of"imperative" decision-makingis, it seemsto me, to ignore the stuff of politics-andthe new nature of power in contemporarysociety.

CODAMuch of Mills's work is motivated by hisenormousanger at the growingbureaucrati-

zation of life-this is his theory of history-and its abettors; and this gives the bookits enormouspower and pathos. Many peo-ple do feel helpless and ignorant and reactin anger. But the sources of helplessnessought to be made clear, lest one engage, asI think Mills does, in a form of "romanticprotest" against modern life. (The Soreliantones of Power as violence and the Populistimagery of power as closed conspiracy finddisturbingecho in Mills's book.)Complexity and specialization are inevi-table in the multiplication of knowledge,theorganization of technical production, andthe co-ordination of large territorial areasof political society. That these should leadto "bureaucratization"of life is not neces-sarily inevitable,particularly n a society ofgrowingeducation, rising incomes,and mul-tiplicity of tastes.'2 More importantly,suchambiguous use of terms like "bureaucrati-

zation" and "power elites" often reinforcesa sense of helplessness and belies the re-sourcesof a free society: the variety of in-terest conflicts, the growthof public respon-sibility, the weight of traditional freedoms(vide the SupremeCourt,an institutionthatMills fails to discuss), the role of volunteerand community groups, etc. Like the indis-criminate use by the Communists of theterm "bourgeoisdemocracy" n the thirties,or by Burnham of "managerial society" inthe forties, or of the term "totalitarianism"in the fifties, particular and crucial differ-ences between societies are obscured. Thisamorphousness eads, as in the case of ThePower Elite, with its emphasison "big"de-cisions, to a book which discussespowerbutrarely politics. And this is curious, indeed.CENTERFOR ADVANCED TUDIESIN THE BEHAVIORALCIENCES

u See my article, "The Theory of the Mass So-ciety," Comm,4entary, XXII (July, 1956), 75-83.

Documents

Bell, The Power Elite-Reconsidered