The following are expcerpts from C. Wright Mills from his essay The
Structure of Power in American Society.


From Power, Politics, and People - C. Wright Mills NY, Oxford University
Press, 1963

p23
"Power has to do with whatever decisions men make about the arrangements
under which they live, and about the events which make up the history of
their times"

"In the modern world, me must bear in mind, power is often not so
authoritative as it seemed to be in the edieval epoch: ideas which justify
rulers  no longer seem so necessary to their exercise of power.  At least
for many of the great decisions of our time - especially those of an
international sort- mass "persuasions" has not been "necessary;" the fact
is simply accomplished.

p24
"There has, in fact, come about a situation in which many who have lost
faith in prevailing loyalties have not acquired new ones, and so pay
no attention to politics of any kind.  They are not radical, liberal, not
conservative, not reactionary.  They are inactionary.  They are out of it"

p25
"I should contend that "men are free to make history," but that some men
are indeed much freer than others.

"The history of modern society may readily be understood as the story of
enlargement and the centralization of the means of power-in economic,
in political, and in military institutions."

p27
"The power to make decisions of national and internation consequences is
now so clearly seated in policitical, military, and economic insitutions
that other areas of society seem off to the side and, on occasion, readily
subordinated to these"

"There is no longer. on the one hand, an economy, and, on the other, a
political order, containing a military establishment unimportant to
politics and to money-making"

"This triangle of power is now a structural fact, and it is the key to any
understanding of higher circles in America today.  For as each of these
domains has concided with the others, as decisions in each have become
broader.  The leading men of each- the high military, the corporation
executives, the political directorate- have tended to come together to
form the power elite of America"

"The long time tendency of business and the government to become more
closely connected has since World War II reached a new point of
explicitiness.  Neither can now be seen clearly as a distinct world"


p28
"The attention of the elite have shifted from domestic problems-centered
around the 30's around slump-to international problems"

p29
"In so far as the power elite is composed of men of similar origin and
education, of similiar career and style of life, their unity may be
said to rest upon the fact that they are of similiar social type."

p30 - on middle level of power
"It is these middle levels that the political journalist and the scholar
of politics are most likely to understand and write about-if only because,
being mainly middle class themselves, they are closer to them.  Moreover
these levels provide the noisy content of most "political" news and gossip;
the images of these levels are more or less in accord with the folklore
of how democracy works; and if the master-image of balance is
accepted many intellectuals, especially in their current patrioteering,
are readily able to satisfy such political optimism as they wish to feel."

p32
"The middle level of politics is not a forum in which there are debated
the big decisions of national and international life.  Such debate is
not carried on by nationally responsible parties representing and
clarifying alternative policies.  There are no such parties in the United
States.  More and more, fundamental issues never come to any point or
decision before Congress, much less before the electorate in party
campaigns"

"Such decisions are now regulary by-passed by the Congress, and are
never clearly focused issues for public discussion."

p36
"In this classic image, the people are presented with problems.  They
discuss them.  They formulate viewpoints.  These viewpoints are
organized, and they compete.  One viewpoint "wins out".  Then the people
act on this view, or their represenatives are instructed to act it out,
and this they promptly do.
   Such are the classic images of democracy which are still used as working
justifications for power in America.  We now reconize this description as
more a fairy tale than a useful approximation.  The issues that now shape
man's fate are neither raised nor decided by any public at large.  The idea
of a society that is at bottom composed of publics is not a matter of
fact; it is the proclomation of an ideal, and as well the assertion of a
legimation masquerading as fact"