Robert Michels was a German-born Italian sociologist who contributed to elite theory by describing the political behavior of intellectual elites.
Robert Michels
Image: Title page of Political Parties by Robert Michels
In philosophy, political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the State that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policymaking networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections.
On the left we have the sociologist C. Wright Mills and on the right we have the writer Saul Landau (at that time his assistant).