C. Wright Mills: Sociological Imagination and the Power Elite

[Octafish]

13. One thing I know: Mills wrote about the Military Industrial Complex before there was such a term.

The Power Elite was published in 1956. Ike warned us in 1961.

The Tyranny of Defense Inc.

In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower famously identified the military-industrial complex, warning that the growing fusion between corporations and the armed forces posed a threat to democracy. Judged 50 years later, Ike’s frightening prophecy actually understates the scope of our modern system—and the dangers of the perpetual march to war it has put us on.

ANDREW J. BACEVICH
The Atlantic, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ISSUE

EXCERPT...

This national-security state derived its raison d’être from—and vigorously promoted a belief in—the existence of looming national peril. On one point, most politicians, uniformed military leaders, and so-called defense intellectuals agreed: the dangers facing the United States were omnipresent and unprecedented. Keeping those dangers at bay demanded vigi­lance, preparedness, and a willingness to act quickly and even ruthlessly. Urgency had become the order of the day.

In his 1956 book, The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills, a professor of sociology at Columbia, dubbed this perspective “military metaphysics,” which he characterized as “the cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.” Those embracing this mind-set no longer considered genuine, lasting peace to be plausible. Rather, peace was at best a transitory condition, “a prelude to war or an interlude between wars.”

Perhaps nothing illustrates military metaphysics more vividly than the exponential growth of the U.S. nuclear stockpile that occurred during Eisenhower’s presi­dency. In 1952, when Ike was elected, that stockpile numbered some 1,000 warheads. By the time he passed the reins to John F. Kennedy in 1961, it consisted of more than 24,000 warheads, and it rapidly ascended later that decade to a peak of 31,000.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-tyranny-of-defense-inc/308342/

Military Metaphysics still rules. Pretzeldent George w Bush said: "Money trumps peace" at a White House press conference and the press corpse blinked and moved on to the next question.