Elite Centralization - Political, Economic, and Military

Power Elite Series

The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, 1956, Excerpts

The political order has become a centralized 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 economy has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated, which together hold the keys to economic decisions. The trend within the corporate world is toward larger financial units tied into intricate management networks. Today the great American corporations seem more like states within states than simply private businesses. The economy of America has been largely incorporated.

The military order 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 a sprawling bureaucratic domain.

In each of these institutional areas, the means of power at the disposal of decision makers have increased enormously; their central executive powers have been enhanced; within each of them modern administrative routines have been elaborated and tightened up. Religious, educational, and family institutions are increasingly shaped by the big three.

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