Rebellious Orgmen and Tame Intellectuals

Omnivorousness is perhaps the most striking quality of corporate civilization. Every idea, like every thing and no matter what its origins, is swallowed, absorbed and reused. This condition was brought home to me recently by an acquaintance of mine who is employed on Madison Avenue. He was summoned one day last year to ply his peculiar trade (“Market Psychology”) in the research division of a large company. The junior executive who had sent for him quickly explained that a big boss had just read two valuable books. One was Personal Influence, a sociological study of consumer habits by Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz which might be expected to interest eggheads in business (some of them refer to it as Personnel Influence). Interest in the other book was a little more startling, for it was The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills.

What did the boss see in these two books? “Well, he tells me,” said the young man, “that, according to Mills, a very...