C. WRIGHT MILLS AND THE POWER ELITE

This revisits Mills' powerful indictment of the American plutocracy which he made in his The Power Elite (1956) and in other works. The editors have collated a number of critical essays which, following Mills' own schema, are categorized as Liberal (Berle, Parsons, Dahl), Radical (Lynd, Sweezy, Aptheker) and Highbrow which is served for those who seemed aloof to the power elite thesis (Rovere, Bell). Mills' own rejoinder to his critics is included along with an essay by editor Domhoff that analyzes more recent judgments of the Mills book and also provides a retrospective critique of the durability of Mills' insights. From the Liberal camp, A.A. Berle Jr. takes humdrum issue with Mills' notion of the power elite as ""accidental, amoral, undogmatic, irresponsible, disconnected. . . ."" Aptheker, a Radical, congratulates Mills for tilting against the enemy but feels that the conspiracy is far less mindless than Mills believed. . . . A useful addition to any basic collection in the social and political sciences.