The Power Elite By C. Wright Mills

The “Power Elite” was a term that was created by sociologist C. Wright Mills. He used this term to refer to those small, loosely knit groups of people that controls the power of business, government, and the military (Henslin, 2014, p. 249). Elites have to do several things in order to keep themselves in power. The elite sometimes use coercion and force to maintain power, but these are not the most effective strategies because they create aggression and promote insurgence. Rather than doing this, “the ruling class adopts an ideology that justifies its currents arrangements” (Henslin, p. 219). In order to maintain stratification the elites use several methods such as; controlling people’s ideas, controlling information, controlling technology,
The first method that the elites use in order to maintain stratification is controlling people’s ideas. This was done by creating ideologies, they came up with the ideology known as the divine right of the kings, which was the idea that the kings authority comes directly from god (Henslin, p. 203).In today’s society the elites successfully do this in schools when talking about government and in the church. “Ideology is so powerful that it even sets limits on the elite” (Henslin, p. 203), this means that the people can demand that the leaders that come up with those ideas also have to follow those ideas. That is a liability that the power elites have, they must conform to their controlling ideas. Being able to control the ideas of the people would be more effective than using force because it does not create as much aggression. The benefits of elite controlling people’s ideas are that the elite still remain securely in power without creating hostility within the society. The second method that the elites use is controlling information. For example in china the government of china had limited what people are able to search and their access to social site. The elites use dictatorships in order to control information that they want to withhold from the public, those reporters and editors who print precarious information would be subjected to imprisonment. The benefits of this method are to protect the citizens from