“The top of modern American society is increasingly unified and often seems wilfully co-ordinated: at the top there has emerged an elite of power. The middle levels are a drifting set of stalemated balancing forces: the middle does not link the bottom with the top. The bottom of this society is fragmented, and even as a passive fact, increasingly powerless:at the bottom there is emerging a mass society.”

—  C. Wright Mills, book The Power Elite

The Power Elite (1956)

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C. Wright Mills photo
C. Wright Mills55
American sociologist 1916–1962

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