The idea of the power elite brings to my mind a pyramid structure of society with small number of individuals (the power elite) at the top making political and economic decisions through a middle level composed of lawmakers, lobbyists, and politicians that impact the entire nation including the masses who occupy the bottom portion of the pyramid. What is interesting is that the power elite are themselves a subset of the higher classes who exercise tremendous influence and control over the operation of major political, economic, civic, cultural, scientific, and legal institutions. The power elite thus operate as a caste within the upper classes and make decisions that affect the entire pyramid. The power elite are themselves not a homogeneous group but are in fact composed of individuals from different backgrounds and creeds. However, these individuals share certain attitudes and beliefs, and occupy similar positions at the top of major political, economic, military, industrial, and social organizations. Shared beliefs and attitudes may be summarized in terms of a strong support for a capitalist society that visualizes the governmental intervention in so far as it protects the interests of business. Earlier members of the power elite derived their common belief systems from the time they were born (into rich families) through the schooling they received (in elite institutions such as Harvard or Yale) and the various networks that one gained membership of by virtue of affinity toward or membership of particular religious, racial, and economic denominations. While this sort of initiation through birth, education, and work is true and occurs to this day, what of the several efforts over the past 50 years to redress the imbalance in representation of the population? From a government run by party loyalists, we have come to a government run by the products of schools of public policy. We have supposedly installed a meritocratic system that favors intelligence and hard work. However, the fact remains that local structure of society in different parts of this country continues to reflect the organization of society at the national level. For example, the board of trustees at Purdue University is composed almost entirely of the entrepreneurs, presidents and CEOs of corporations. The two exceptions are the owner of Hardin farms and the Purdue student representative. It would seem that involvement in capitalistic enterprise is a requirement for membership of the board of trustees. Again, the motive here is not to misrepresent the convictions of the members of the board of trustees. As Mills put it the members of the power elite may be honorable and operate peacefully within the bounds of the constitution. However, it is the same group of people that decides when the constitution can and should be amended and when it should not. In fact the founding fathers of the US who wrote the American constitution were by no means representative of the people of the US at the time. The schools of public policy, the board of trustees of universities may try hard to provide equity of representation by invoking affirmative action. However, the fact remains that each new member of the power elite will have been indoctrinated into that particular belief system by the time they achieve membership. How then will representatives of the underrepresented manage to change the status quo when reaching a point where the status quo is discussed and debated involves accepting it? Then again, when did we ever really represent the population or its interests anyway? This point may be a critique of Mills in that his essay seems to assume that democracy was representative at an earlier point in time. The university was never meant to be of the people but rather a means to distinguish between the educated and the uneducated. Becoming educated involves exposure to the belief and value system espoused by the ruling elite. Analyzing the power elite helps us understand who is making the important decisions that impact the nation, and what the nature of such decisions is. However, one immediately wonders as to what Mills perspective on political and social reconstruction would have been given the pessimistic nature of his analysis.
In light of the discussion we had during our advisee meeting on Friday about being strategic in our means as critical scholars I was struck by the words of Lenin who emphasizes the role of the intellectual. He says, "The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., it may itself realize the necessity for combining in unions, for fighting against the employers and for striving to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals." (pg. 74) This idea of the bourgeois socialist intelligentsia as an instrument of raising consciousness and fomenting dissent is an ideal one I am sure but in contemporary times we, the academics, forming a substantial part of the "intellectual elite", occupy a unique position which forces us into ...
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