“The economy - once a great scatter of small productive units in autonomous balance, has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated… The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered… The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government.”

—  C. Wright Mills, book The Power Elite

Source: The Power Elite (1956), p. 7; discussing sectors of society which Mills feels have only recently become the dominant factors in determining the ultimate course of society.

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C. Wright Mills55
American sociologist 1916–1962

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