The Structure of Power in American Society

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. The history of modern society may readily be understood as the story of the enlargement and the centralization of the means of power—in economic, in political, and in military institutions. In some societies, the innumerable actions of innumerable men modify their milieux, and so gradually modify the structure itself. The power to make decisions of national and international consequence is so clearly seated in political, military, and economic institutions that other areas of society seem off to the side and, on occasion, readily subordinated to these. The top of modern American society is increasingly unified, and often seems willfully coordinated: at the top there has emerged an elite whose power probably exceeds that of any small group of men in world history.