Bio: (1916-1962) American sociologist. Wright Mills received his doctorate from the University of Maryland with a dissertation on American pragmatism, which was posthumously published as the book Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America (1964). He began his academic career at the same university and later moved to the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University. At this institute, whose director was Paul Lazarsfeld, Mills was the director of the Department of Labor Research. Mills later became a professor at Columbia University, where he remained until his death.

Mills' first book was the result of a collaboration with sociologist Hans Gerth. They translated and edited parts of Max Weber's books and published them in the book From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946). Mills' next book was the result of work done in the Department of Labor Research - New Men of Power (1948). This book, which was conceived as the first part of a trilogy on American class structure, explored the radical policies of union leaders and found that their potential for substantial economic transformation was limited. Although the union leaders had great power, they were anti-socialist and did not oppose the capitalist class or the state bureaucracy enough. After this research, Mills stopped believing in Marx's idea that the working class would be the main engine of social change.

                              White Collar Class in the USA

The second part of Mills' trilogy on class structure was the book White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951). He attributed the increase in the size of a part of the middle class, the so-called "white collars", to three processes: the growth of bureaucracy in all spheres of work, the development of technology, and the growth of industrial production. Corporations are getting bigger, so former small entrepreneurs are becoming ordinary employees within large companies. The growth of bureaucracy in companies requires the creation of more managerial levels within companies, and these levels are linked into chains of superiority and subordination. At each level, specific coordination and supervision of subordinate employees take place. White-collar workers, unlike experts from earlier periods, do not represent independent professionals but are completely subject to bureaucratic control and manipulation within the companies in which they work.

The huge increase in bureaucracy was driven by the idea of ​​rationalizing the world, a type of rationalization that leads to standardization of work and rules, depersonalization, and loss of personal autonomy, all to increase efficiency, coordination, and control. In addition to their expertise, white-collar companies sell their own personality to the companies, because they have to suppress all forms of resistance and dissatisfaction, and they have to respect a strict way of behaving and living, at work and outside of it. The rise of white-collar jobs showed that Marx's prediction that almost the entire society would be divided into capitalists and manual workers did not come true. The division of labor has led to the work of white-collar workers being very limited to a specific task within the company, and the work process itself being very routine and automated. This has led to a reduction in autonomy and the expansion of semi-professional jobs, which have a low level of authority, income, and prestige.

White-collar workers are experiencing increasing alienation, both at work and outside of work. Mills saw a decline in the reputation, autonomy, power, and income of white-collar workers, and in addition to the previously mentioned causes, he cited an increase in the population with higher education, increased white-collar unemployment, and a reduction in the pay gap between white-collar workers and manual workers. University education has also transformed, so it is increasingly focused on the adoption of practical knowledge and social values ​​that serve to better prepare students for effective integration into large bureaucratic systems in the business or government sphere.

Power in such bureaucracies occurs in three forms: 1) coercive power, 2) power based on faith in one's authority, and 3) manipulative power. Manipulative power is becoming dominant and is based on the application of sophisticated methods of science and technology. The application of the principles of scientific management and the huge centralization of decision-making enables the use of manipulative power. Manipulative power is applied less visibly, and the goal is to manipulate workers to internalize the values ​​imposed on them by their superiors, and serve only the interests of those superiors. Outside the workplace, manipulative power is exercised through several channels: 1) mass media, which promotes entertainment and sports, while at the same time obscuring real economic and political problems, 2) through marketing that promotes consumerism, 3) through an education system that instills the values ​​necessary for the survival of the system, and 4) through religious organizations that give the values ​​of American capitalism a sacred aura.

                                       Power Elite in the USA

The third part of Mills' trilogy is the book The Power Elite (1956). The elite in the United States controls large bureaucratic organizations within three sectors: private corporations, state administration, and the military. Members of all three mentioned elites share many common features: they were born in the upper classes, they went to the same private schools and the most elite universities, and they belong to the same private social clubs. Members of the elite who are not from the upper classes most often perform technocratic jobs: managers, professionals, and lawyers. Elites keep their positions, intergenerationally, by mostly getting married within the elite, but also on the intergenerational level, so that the same person changes positions during his career and moves from one to the other two elites. The integration of the elite is accompanied by the growing integration of these three sectors. The elite within the state administration pursues policies that suit the economic interests of corporations, the corporate elite finances the political elite, while the military elite depends on the political elite and creates a "military-industrial complex" with the corporate elite. Of these three sectors, the sector of private corporations has the greatest power.

Conflicts within the elite take place at the middle level of power, mainly over the division of spoils, and the media and political scientists pay the most attention to these conflicts, while no one questions the fundamental basis of the system itself. Conflicts within the elites are becoming increasingly integrated into the bureaucratic state apparatus, which replaces the real political struggle between political parties. Trade unions and other professional organizations tend to integrate into the state, and their leaders fight only for their own interests or for the interests of their own members. Below the elite is the class of white-collar workers, which, compared to the earlier middle class of small capitalists and professionals, has lost its autonomous power. At the bottom of the pyramid is a huge mass of ordinary people who are disorganized, uninformed, completely apathetic, indifferent, and without any real power, but are completely controlled and manipulated. The very high concentration of power that the elites have and the apathy and powerlessness of the largest part of the population, represent an exceptional threat to democracy.

The bureaucratic rationality of the elite seeks to prevent huge masses of people from approaching life's problems autonomously and rationally. As a solution to the problem of lack of democracy in the United States, Mills offers the following proposals: 1) educating the general public who would be informed and involved in making important decisions, 2) creating "nationally responsible political parties" that would clearly and openly fight for specific policies, 3) creating real intelligentsia, which would deal with the most important issues, 4) creation of strong state services independent of corporate interests, 5) formation of mass media that would properly inform the public about the most important issues, 6) creation of strong associations that would connect individuals, communities and the public.

                                 Sociological Imagination

The book Sociological Imagination (1959) is Mills' attempt to present his view of how sociology, as a science, should be established; which epistemological, theoretical, and methodological approaches are most appropriate for sociology; to show what he means by the term "sociological imagination"; to point out the current state of sociology in the United States and to point to approaches to sociology that he considered flawed. Mills defines the sociological imagination as: " a quality of mind that will help them (social scientists) to use the information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves." (Mills, 1959). The basic premise of Mills' approach is that each individual lives in a particular society, in a particular historical moment, and that each individual is a product of that society and historical forces, but that, on the other hand, each individual, by his, or hers very life in that society and historical moment, affects that society and its historical development.

One of the main concepts of Mills' analysis is "dominant character", by which he means the values, ideological orientation, beliefs, expectations, and hopes of the largest number of people in a particular society at a particular historical moment. The feature of sociological imagination is the possibility of using different perspectives - political, psychological, and economic. In addition, society needs to be studied at all levels, from the level of the individual to the level of macro-transformations of society. Some of the main sociological questions that sociologists need to answer, regardless of which society and the historical moment they are studying, are the following: what is the structure of society, and how do the components of that structure relate to each other; determining the difference between the studied society and other societies; identifying factors that affect continuity and change in that society; what is the place of that society in the historical development of mankind, how every feature of a society affects the historical process and how that historical process affects the society; how the history and structure of society shape the dominant character of the people in that society.

Mills places special emphasis on the sociological study of social and individual problems. Individual problems arise when an individual cannot achieve his or her values ​​and goals. Social problems arise when the social structure creates social contradictions that prevent the majority or a significant number of members of society from achieving the values ​​and goals imposed on them by society itself. He believes that in modern American society, the capitalist organization of production and the political domination of the elite over the majority of society have the greatest impact on the personal feelings of dissatisfaction and apathy among a large number of people. As the greatest abuses or wrong approaches in sociology in the United States, in the period after the Second World War, Mills singles out three approaches. The first is “abstract empiricism” which is reflected in the implementation of a huge number of empirical measurements of attitudes, and the main mistake of this approach is that it puts methodological precision ahead of theoretical explanation. Other approaches are macro theories, of which the most important is Parsons functionalism, which is completely dedicated to abstract theoretical principles separate from concrete reality. The third type of abuse of sociology is the use of social science to increase bureaucratic control over the population.

                                     The USA and the World

Mills began writing about political problems in the world and the United States in the late 1950s. In The Causes of World War III (1958), he argues that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is an extremely dangerous preparation for nuclear destruction and that the political elite and state bureaucracy in both countries are responsible for creating such a planetary danger. In the United States, all three branches of the elite promote militarism among the general population, through schools, churches, and the mass media, and their goal is only to increase their own personal wealth and power. Book Listen Yankee! The Revolution in Cuba (1960) arose as a result of a large number of interviews that Mills conducted with the leaders of the Cuban Revolution. In this book, Mills celebrates the Cuban Revolution by presenting the message of a fictional Cuban revolutionary (who is the amalgam of all the real people he interviewed) to America and the American people. In Marxists (1962), Mills criticizes "sophisticated Marxism" for trying to save a failed model, and on the other hand, he tries to portray his approach as "plain Marxism" that uses Marxist methods but is also applicable to current historical, political, and economic reality.

Main works

From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946);

New Men of Power (1948);

White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951);

Character and Social Structure (1953);

The Power Elite (1956);

The Causes of World War Three (1958);

The Sociological Imagination (1959);

Listen, Yankee! The Revolution in Cuba (1960);

The Marxists (1962);

Power, Politics, and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills (1963);

Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America (1964).