The Power Elite
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March 26, 2014
Introduction to Sociology 125
Essay 2 25087900
The institutions that are responsible for forming the interlocking triangle are the economic, military and political organizations of America. The economic institutions are filled with C.E.Os of major corporations, while the military institution consist of the high-ranking officers and the political portion holds the president of the United States and members of his cabinet. These institutions are the most powerful because of wealth. Due to where they stand in society and the amount of money they possess, members of the interlocking triangle may feel they deserve the right to the decision makings. Wealth is the key to how these institutions came into power and as a result use that power to control society.
The bureaucracies of state, corporations, and military have become enlarged and centralized. They have become a means of power never before equaled in human history. These hierarchies of power are the key to understanding modern industrial societies. The elite power occupy the key leadership positions within the bureaucracies that now dominates modern societies, the positions in which the effective means of power are now located. Thus their power is rooted in authority, an attribute of social organizations, not individuals.
With the rise of national means of mass communication, the institutional elite must now compete with and borrow prestige from these professionals in the world of the celebrity as status distractions do permit the power elite conveniently to keep out of the limelight. Mill was unsure as to whether the power elite would be content to remain uncelebrated. Now under the liberating permissiveness of the neoliberal regime of media indoctrination and social management, the differences between the jet-set crowd and the power elite are melting. All that is solid melts into air while all that is holy is profaned....