Mills’ theory of the “power elite” centers around the idea that elites are products of the distinct institutions within which they arise, whether it be the military, politics, or business. However, Mills does not consider whether the elite dynamics he identified were merely products of the political system at large, as opposed to distinct, cooperative processes within governmental bodies. At the time of Mills’ writing, there was significant overlap between the two main political parties in the United States. Compromise was key, and political stability was maintained through an accepted status quo of racial oppression. It was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the Democratic and Republican parties began to form the constituencies that they represent today (Ziblatt and Levitsky). In 1950, six years before Mills published The Structure of Power Within American Society, the American Political Science Association published a report entitled Towards a More Responsible Two-Party System in which, “many of the country’s most eminent political scientists” lamented that the party members’ positions were diverse and misaligned with the actions of elites (Klein). For the authors of this report, and many of their supporters, the overlapping nature of the American party system disabled citizens’ capacity for political participation by leaving them without party platforms that aligned with their interests and values. It is interesting to consider Mills’ theory in the context of the report because it reveals that a common sentiment at the time was frustration with the lack of transparency within the political system and the values, interests, and incentive structures around which the political processes of the time evolved. In Mills’ view, the political system was defined by displacement of the traditional legislative processes by the “power elite,” whose ascendance subordinated the political system to the interests of the military and business communities. But it is worth considering whether Mills’ claims that there was unity among the “power elite,” and that elite interests ran contrary to that of the population at large, were merely an expression of the same frustration with governmental transparency that the authors of the 1950 APSA report saw as the fundamental issue of American politics. Today, Mills’ descriptions of the American political system do not hold. It is no longer true that “the differences between [the two parties], so far as national issues are concerned, are very narrow and mixed up” and that the “Congressman is not concerned with national party lines” (Mills, 37). The Republican and Democratic Parties are more polarized than ever and politics has turned increasingly national, with voter turnout having remaining constant in presidential elections and decreasing in state and local elections (Five Thirty-Eight). In many ways, the American political system is more transparent than it has ever been, at least in terms of citizens’ understanding of the beliefs and governing strategies of the two political parties.
Comparing the dynamics of the American political system today with that of Mills’ era might lead one to conclude that Mills’ theory of the “power elite” does not hold value as a model for understanding contemporary society, as Mizruchi does (Mizruchi, 113). But that view is rather narrow, giving too much emphasis on Mills’ attention to the “unity” of the “power elite” and his description of it as a, subversive, unknown quantity of relations between dominant interests. While the descriptive nature of Mills’ theory is confined to a specific period of time and political setting, its operative nature as a logic of power is remarkably prescient. As he describes the impact of the ascendance of military and corporate power within the political sphere, “virtually all political and economic actions are judged in terms of military definitions of reality” (Mills, 33). Taken in this light, power is a permeating and regulating force that defines the spaces it inhabits by its own logic. It displaces the previous order by changing the terms through which material resources and collective goals are understood, not merely by introducing new forms of organization and enforcement. There may not be a specific “power elite” anymore. And if there is, the polarization of the political system, and the increasing organization of social life through signals of identity-ignition, makes it harder to discern who its members could be. But if Mills’ idea is that power functions by shaping the terms in which we think, there is still a convergence of interests that is supported and created by hegemonic forces within contemporary society that is permeating and impenetrable. Today, the dominant form of power is the neoliberal market ideology that structures any potential solution to issues of public concern in terms of the market. It “others” government when it is an agent of the people as citizens and as workers and envisions government only as an agent of capital flows. It redefines government and the law in these terms and propagates the idea of “small” government to create a coalition across very different material interests (Giridaradas, 114). The contemporary “power elite” is not a cooperation between individuals, or even specific institutions—the American political system is much too organized along partisan lines for a unity of that sort to ascend to power. Rather, it is an ideology; one that cuts across high school classrooms, higher-education institutions, non-profits, and governing institutions. It shapes the aspirations of our college graduates, and constitutes what is acceptably “elite” as a future profession. But most consequentially, it erodes the association between government and the task of governing, by substituting the logic of efficiency and profit for morality and the public good.
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