The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills

"American men of power tend, by convention, to deny that they are powerful." --C.Wright Mills

People of power and privilege "readily define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves ‘naturally’ elite." --C.Wright Mills

In 1956 C. Wright Mills wrote The Power Elite. His thesis was that an elite, composed largely of white, Anglo-Saxon protestant men, dominated the corporations, the machinery of the state, and the military. "Almost everywhere in America," he writes, "the metropolitan upper classes have in common, more or less, race, religion, and nativity."

The book was a hallmark. It portrayed, as no book had done before, the nature of the governing elite and highlighted its non-representative character. More importantly, it served as the intellectual paradigm for the reformist groups that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mills taught sociology at Columbia University. He was a leading critic not only of the elite of his time, but of the traditional conventions of American political culture. "Prestige buttresses power," he wrote, "turning it into authority, and protecting it from social challenge."

All elites, virtually by definition, hold themselves to be the guardians of the ordinary people. Typically, however, the vision they espouse becomes corrupt as their power grows. It is the magic of the American democracy that, if and as today’s Progressive elite comes to misuse its power and privilege, another C. Wright Mills will emerge.