https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Wright_Mills
The Power Elite (1956) describes the relationships among the political, military, and economic elites, noting that they share a common world view; that power rests in the centralization of authority within the elites of American society.[59][page needed] The centralization of authority is made up of the following components: a "military metaphysic", in other words a military definition of reality; "class identity", recognizing themselves as separate from and superior to the rest of society; "interchangeability" (they move within and between the three institutional structures and hold interlocking positions of power therein); cooperation/socialization, in other words, socialization of prospective new members is done based on how well they "clone" themselves socially after already established elites. Mills's view on the power elite is that they represent their own interest, which include maintaining a "permanent war economy" to control the ebbs and flow of American Capitalism and the masking of "a manipulative social and political order through the mass media."[57][page needed] Additionally, this work can be described as "an exploration of rational-legal bureaucratic authority and its effects on the wielders and subjects of this power."[46] President Dwight D. Eisenhower referenced Mills and this book in his farewell address of 1961. He warned about the dangers of a "military-industrial complex" as he had slowed the push for increased military defense in his time as president for two terms. This idea of a "military-industrial complex" is a reference to Mills' writing in The Power Elite, showing what influence this book had on certain powerful figures.[60]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Elite
The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of the American society and suggests that the ordinary citizen in modern times is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those three entities.
Background
A main inspiration for the book was Franz Leopold Neumann's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state like Germany. Behemoth had a major impact on Mills.[2]
Summary
According to Mills, the eponymous "power elite" are those that occupy the dominant positions, in the three pillar institutions (state security, economic and political) of a dominant country. Their decisions (or lack thereof) have enormous consequences, not only for Americans but, "the underlying populations of the world." Mills posits that the institutions that they head are a triumvirate of groups that have inherited or succeeded weaker predecessors:
1. "two or three hundred giant corporations" which have replaced the traditional agrarian and craft economy,
2. a strong federal political order that has inherited power from "a decentralized set of several dozen states" and "now enters into each and every cranny of the social structure," and
3. the military establishment, formerly an object of "distrust fed by state militia," but now an entity with "all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain."
Importantly and as distinct from modern American conspiracy theory, Mills explains that the elite themselves may not be aware of their status as an elite, noting that "often they are uncertain about their roles" and "without conscious effort, they absorb the aspiration to be... The Ones Who Decide." Nonetheless, he sees them as a quasi-hereditary caste. The members of the power elite, according to Mills, often enter into positions of societal prominence through educations obtained at eastern establishment universities like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. But, Mills notes, "Harvard or Yale or Princeton is not enough... the point is not Harvard, but which Harvard?"
Mills identifies two classes of Ivy League alumni: those were initiated into an upper echelon fraternity such as the Harvard College social clubs of Porcellian or Fly Club, and those who were not. Those so initiated, Mills continues, receive their invitations based on social links first established in elite private preparatory academies, where they were enrolled as part of family traditions and family connections. In that manner, the mantle of the elite is generally passed down along familial lines over the generations.
The resulting elites, who control the three dominant institutions (military, economy and political system) can be generally grouped into one of six types, according to Mills:
see Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Elite
Mills formulated a very short summary of his book: "Who, after all, runs America? No one runs it altogether, but in so far as any group does, the power elite."[3]
Reception and criticism
Commenting on The Power Elite, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. derisively said, "I look forward to the time when Mr. Mills hands back his prophet's robes and settles down to being a sociologist again."[4] Adolf Berle noted the book contained "an uncomfortable degree of truth", but Mills presented "an angry cartoon, not a serious picture".[4] Dennis Wrong described The Power Elite as "an uneven blend of journalism, sociology, and moral indignation".[5] A review of the book in the Louisiana Law Review bemoaned that the "practical danger of Mr. Mills' pessimistic interpretation of the current situation is that his readers will concentrate on answering his prejudicial assertions rather than ponder the results of his really formidable research".[6] Consideration of the book has become moderately more favorable. In 2006, G. William Domhoff wrote, "Mills looks even better than he did 50 years ago".[7] Mills' biographer, John Summers, opined that book's historical value "seems assured".[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Keynesianism#Permanent_war_economy
Permanent war economy
Seymour Melman in the book “The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline”
The concept of permanent war economy originated in 1945 with an article by Trotskyist[8] Ed Sard (alias Frank Demby, Walter S. Oakes and T.N. Vance), a theoretician who predicted a post-war arms race. He argued at the time that the United States would retain the character of a war economy; even in peacetime, US military expenditure would remain large, reducing the percentage of unemployed compared to the 1930s. He extended this analysis in 1950 and 1951.[9] In 1974, this idea was expanded on by Seymour Melman in the book “The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline” where Melman describes the downside of having a permanent war economy as “sustained nonproductive use of capital and labor.[10]” Melman goes on to observe that because this issue “is not unique to the United States[11]” that “It is shared by all states that try to sustain permanent war economies[12].” Melman argues that most of the military production is unnecessary and drains the talents of highly skilled workers due to politicians attempting to create a powerful influx of jobs in their districts, and because of this, most military production is in place to create jobs instead of adding to public safety. Melman suggests that the large sum of money allocated towards unnecessary military spending would be put to better uses by maintaining or improving domestic infrastructure to have an active positive benefit to society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory first developed by the German-born Italian sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book Political Parties.[1] It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of the organization.[1]
Michels' theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise. As he put it in Political Parties, "It is organization which gives dominion of the elected over the electors. [...] Who says organization, says oligarchy."[2]
According to Michels, all organizations eventually come to be run by a leadership class who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being servants of the masses, Michels argues this leadership class, rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures.[4] By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank-and-file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes.[citation needed]
Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.[5]
Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy, of eliminating elite rule, was impossible; that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite; and that elite rule, which he referred to as oligarchy, is inevitable.[1]
Michels later migrated to Italy and joined Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party, as he believed that this was the next legitimate step of modern societies.
Michels' thesis became popular once more in the postwar United States with the publication of Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (1956) by Lipset, Trow, and Coleman.
Reasons
Michels stressed several factors that underlie the iron law of oligarchy.
Bureaucratization and specialization are the driving processes behind the iron law. They result in the rise of a group of professional administrators in a hierarchical organization, which in turn leads to the rationalization and routinization of authority and decision-making, a process described first and perhaps best by Max Weber, later by John Kenneth Galbraith, and to a lesser and more cynical extent by the Peter principle.
Implications
The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law", democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.
Examples and exceptions
An example that Michels used in his book was Germany's Social Democratic Party.[6]
Adolf Gasser's proposed solution
see Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
Other
The iron law of oligarchy is similar to the concept in The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, a fictional book in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell, who had written a review of James Burnham's book The Managerial Revolution several years earlier. That fictional book begins:[21]
Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.[22] Orwell, George (2003). 1984. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 277. ISBN 9780547504186. (Winston Smith, the protagonist, reading from Chapter I, Ignorance is Strength, of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism)
