The “Power Elite”: Two Views

As an explanation of the higher circles in American life, The Power Elite* is enormously valuable. One can scarcely overpraise C. Wright Mills for this latest installment in a series that, if continued, may assume almost Balzacian proportions. Not that he is invulnerable. The careful reader might object to his excessive voluntarism (are the rich as free as he makes them out to be, and if riot, doesn’t Mills himself intimate that the explanation lies in a general loss of autonomy?) There are omissions. Perhaps the power of American Catholicism has been underestimated. More data would be welcome—if anyone had them. Certain facts, which no other student of American society has troubled to collect with such skill, require even more sifting than Mills has given them. He eschews the dictum of Franz Boas who said, “Never draw conclusions about anything till you know everything.” Since you obviously never know everything, this study bristles ...