>BTW, I found C. Wright Mills' key -- and among Marxist sociologists,
>famous -- footnote (from THE POWER ELITE) on-line. Here it is:
>
>'Ruling class' is a badly loaded phrase, 'Class' is an economic term;
>'rule' a political one. The phrase, 'ruling class,' thus contains the
>theory that an economic class rules politically. That short-cut theory
>may or may not at time be true, but we do not want to carry that one
>rather simple theory about in the terms that we use to define our
>problems; we wish to state the theories explicitly, using terms of
>more precise and unilateral meaning. Specifically, the phrase 'ruling
>class,' in its common political connotations, does not allow enough
>autonomy to the political order and its agents, and it says nothing
>about the military as such. It should be clear to the reader by now
>that we do not accept as adequate the simple view that high economic
>men unilaterally make all decisions of national consequence. We hold
>that such a simple view of 'economic determinism' must be elaborated
>by 'political determinism' and 'military determinism'; that the higher
>agents of each of these three domains now often have a noticeable
>degree of autonomy; and that only in the often intricate ways of
>coalition do they make up and carry through the most important
>decisions. Those are the major reasons we prefer 'power elite' to
>'ruling class' as a characterizing phrase for the higher circles when
>we consider them in terms of power.
He's got a point about state autonomy - though some of that autonomy is a case of people (like central bankers) taking a longer-term view than practical commercial sorts are capable of - but I don't agree on the military. The US military largely follows orders from civilians.
Doug