The power structure of industrial society(book)

 There are crucial questions to be asked about the degree of compromise, and the extent of the by the
bourgeoisie in modern societies, and, for our purposes, about the extent to which civil services play a
concessions made 'brokerage' role in relation to these concessions.

 The study of these questions is inhibited if one takes a rigid position either on the immutability of capitalism
or on the irrelevance of the Marxist critique of the power structure of industrial society.

 The Marxists have been one of the main targets for attack by sociologists of the 'pluralist' school of thought.
Mosca and Miliband view:

 Mosca and Miliband both are agree, were they contemporaries, in interpreting American or British society as
capitalist, and only differ in that Mosca would have seen the power of the capitalists as preventing the state
becoming too powerful, while Miliband sees state power and capitalist power as both parts of a uniform system
of class domination.

 Mosca's view that capitalist economic institutions prevent the centralisation of power he regarded as inherent in
a socialist system, but Mosca's interpretation of the facts was remarkably close to that of a socialist theorist like
Miliband.

 Theorists such as Aron,22 Lipset,23 Dahl 24 Dahrendorfs 25 and Galbraith 26 identify other sources of power
which they regard as important, such as the trade unions, the political parties, and other voluntary
organisations, which they see as counterbalancing both the power of the state and the power of the capitalists.