American democracy, it’s blindingly evident, is in crisis. Terms that once characterized faraway repressive regimes—oligarchy, elite, plutocracy—are now invoked to describe the current political ...

The late, visionary sociologist C. Wright Mills stated in 1956 that acts of elite deviance that cause social harm, regardless of their criminality in a legal sense, are part of the “higher immorality ...

Following his death at age 89 on July 23 in Rome, Harper’s today compares its long-time editor and essayist Lewis H. Lapham to Montaigne, Twain, and Mencken, and quotes from him a truism as relevant ...

The higher circles -- Local society -- Metropolitan -- The celebrities -- The very rich -- The chief executives -- The corporate rich -- The warlords -- The military ascendancy -- The political ...

The Power Elite was the last of his three books addressing what he called “the main drift” of American public life. The first, The New Men of Power (1948), called out organized labor’s failure to ...