C. Wright Mills (1916–62) was an American sociologist, one of few who dominated the field in the 1940s and early 1950s, and unusual, in the American context, for being considerably to the left, though he was never a convinced Marxist. Though much of his work, for example The Sociological Imagination, is of interest only to academics, he produced one of the first, and arguably still the best, radical critique of American politics and the changes in the system that threatened its democratic claims. This, The Power Elite, centres on the development from the Second World War onwards of the huge and influential military machine in the USA, an institution that had hardly existed before 1942.
By demonstrating the connections between the military and the major industrial corporations, and linking this ‘military-industrial complex’ to the rising executive power of the presidency and the top civil service appointments, he painted, early in the 1950s, a picture of decision-making in America that was not to become commonly believed until the days of the Vietnam War and Watergate. His work has been an inspiration for authors of various political persuasions in the study of American politics, and though he perhaps exaggerated and selected his evidence rather carefully, few deny his perception, or would deny that he mounts a very powerful and persuasive argument. In particular his attack on the mass media for turning a once highly articulate and argumentative citizen body into passive receivers of others’ views fits all too well with more ‘scientific’ research on opinion formation, and seems to prophesy the later development of political consultants and the huge impact of media techniques in grooming and selling electoral candidates. It is worth noting, in Mills’ support, that his book starts with a quotation by the far from radical President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning Congress against the dangers of ‘the military-industrial complex’.
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