1941 three-fourths of defense spending went to only fifty-six companies, and six companies had a third of the contracts, with Bethlehem Steel, General Motors, and Du Pont leading the way. Today even fewer companies dominate the defense industry thanks to corporate takeovers and consolidations that have taken place over the decades.
The Power Elite and Superclass
Looking back from the vantage point of today, though, Burnham was prophetic in being one of the first voices to recognize that major changes were taking place in society that forever changed the flow of political power inside the United States. Burnham wrote his book in 1941. Maybe if he had written it ten years later, he would have painted a different picture of things. A book that is much more influential today and more accurate in its depiction of American society is the sociologist C. Wright Mills’s work The Power Elite that came out in 1956 and is now considered a classic.
Dynastic Successions Book 