The Sociology of CW Mills

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The Sociology of C. Wright Mills

by Dr. Frank Elwell



C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)

In all of his writings, Mills interprets theworld through a theoretical perspective verymuch influenced by Max Weber.



C. Wright Mills

Like the classical theory of the discipline,Mills’ vision is a holistic view of entiresociocultural systems, this system isinterdependent, and it has profound effectson human values, thought, and behavior.



Rationalization

As a student of Max Weber, C. Wright Mills'main body of work centers upon the themeof rationalization.



Rationalization

Rationalization is the practical application ofknowledge to achieve a desired end. Its goalis efficiency, its means are totalcoordination and control over the social

processes needed to attain that goal. It is theguiding principle behind bureaucracy andthe increasing division of labor.



Rationalization

We will begin exploring this overarchingtheme of rationalization with a quicksummation of some basic assumptions Millshas about the nature of man and society.



Basic Assumptions

Human beings, Mills asserts, cannot beunderstood apart from the social andhistorical structures in which they areformed and in which they interact.



Basic Assumptions

The number and variety of structural changeswithin a society increase as institutions

become larger, more embracing, and moreinterconnected.



Basic Assumptions

Consequently, the tempo of change has spedup appreciably in the modern era, and thechanges have become far moreconsequential for all — for those who are incontrol of these enlarged organizations, andfor those who are subject to them.



White Collar

According to Mills, the rise of white-collarwork is rooted in occupational change dueto recent growth in bureaucracies,technological change, and the increasingneed to market the goods of industrialsociety.



White Collar

The central characteristics regarding white-collar workers in modern industrial societiesare that they are unorganized and dependentupon large bureaucracies for their existence.



White Collar

By their mass existence and dependence theyhave changed the character and feel ofAmerican life. By focusing on white-collarlife, Mills believes, we can learn muchabout American character.



White Collar

Jobs, Mills observed, are broken up intosimple functional tasks. Standards are set interms of pace and output. Whereeconomically viable, machines areemployed. Where automation is impossible,the tasks are parceled out to the unskilled.Policy making and executive functions arecentralized and moved up the hierarchy.



White Collar

With the automation of the office and thegrowth in the division of labor, the numberof routine jobs is increased, authority and

job autonomy become attributes of only thetop positions. There is an ever greaterdistinction made in terms of power,

prestige, and income between managers andstaff.



White Collar

The routinized worker is discouraged fromusing his own independent judgment; hisdecision making is in accordance with strictrules handed down by others. He becomesalienated from his intellectual capacities,work becomes an enforced activity.



White Collar

The rise of white-collar work has had a profound effect on educational systems in bureaucratic-industrial societies.



White Collar

Educated intelligence, in the traditional senseof the word, become penalized in white-collar work, where job performance and

promotion are based on routinized work andfollowing the bureaucratic rules and dictatesof others.



White Collar

As a result, Mills says, American educationhas shifted toward a vocational focus. Highschools, as well as colleges, have becomethe training grounds for the large

bureaucracies of government and industry.



White Collar

While the aim of 19th century Americanschooling was the creation of the "goodcitizen" of democracy, in the middle of the20th century it has become the creation ofthe successful man in a society ofspecialists.



Power & Authority

For Mills, there are three forms of power. Thefirst is coercion or physical force. Millswrites that such coercion is rarely needed inthe modern democratic state. While such

power underlies the other two, it is onlyused as a last resort.



Power & Authority

The second type of power Mills characterizesas "authority." This is power that is attachedto positions and is justified by the beliefs ofthe obedient.



Power & Authority

Manipulation is not based on terror or externalforce, although the police powers of thestate under gird its authority. Humanorganization that depends on the constantuse of force and intimidation to disciplineits members is extremely inefficient and

ultimately ineffective.



Power & Authority

Rather, the power of manipulation is foundedupon the ever more sophisticated methodsof control given us by science (includingsocial science) and technology. The trulyefficient organization, in a societydominated by large bureaucracies, is based

on the techniques and technologies ofmanipulation.



Power & Authority

As modern management becomes the reigningethos of the age, the shift from explicitauthority relationships to more subtlemanipulation becomes the preferred form of

power.



Power & Authority

Part of the shift from authority tomanipulation is enabled by the newtechnologies of mass communication, partof the shift is due to the new ideologies ofmanagement and the advances in the socialsciences. But these technological advances

(and advances in techniques) merely allowthe shift to occur.



Power & Authority

The cause of the shift is the centralization andenlargement of political power itself.Authority has need of legitimation to secureloyalty and obedience. Manipulation ariseswhen such centralized authority is not

publicly justified, and when those in power

do not believe they can justify it.



Power & Authority

In the shift from coercion and authority tomanipulation, power shifts from the overt tothe covert, from the obvious to the subtle.Exploitation becomes a psychological

process.



Power & Authority

Among the means of power that exist today isthe power to manage and manipulate theconsent of men. Because the power ofmanipulation is hidden it deprives theoppressed from identifying the oppressor.This power effectively removes the check

of reason and conscience of the ruled on theruler.



Power & Authority

White-collar people subject to themanipulations and control of their superiors,lose both freedom of action and creativityon the job. Such individuals will learn toseek satisfactions elsewhere.



Power & Authority

Emptied of all other meanings andlegitimations, jobs are emptied of anyintrinsic meaning. Money, in order to builda life outside of work, becomes the onlyrationale for work itself.



The Power Elite

In The Power Elite, Mills made explicit his belief that the American doctrine of balances of power is an ideal showing lessvigor today than was true in the past.



The Power Elite

Historically in the West, the means ofviolence has greatly increased, and thedegree of organization has enlarged,centralized, and become ever more efficient.



The Power Elite

According to Mills, there is a power elite inmodern societies, an elite who command theresources of vast bureaucratic organizationsthat have come to dominate industrialsocieties.



The Power Elite

As the bureaucracies have centralized andenlarged the circle of those who run theseorganizations have narrowed and theconsequences of their decisions have

become enormous.



The Power Elite

According to Mills, the power elite are thekey people in the three major institutions ofmodern society:

EconomyGovernment

Military



The Power Elite

The bureaucracies of state, corporations, andmilitary have become enlarged andcentralized and are a means of power never

before equaled in human history. Thesehierarchies of power are the key tounderstanding modern industrial societies.



The Power Elite

It is not a conspiracy of evil men, he argues, but a social structure that has enlarged andcentralized the decision-making process andthen placed this authority in the hands ofmen of similar social background andoutlook.



The Power Elite

In Mills’ view, major national power nowresides almost exclusively in the economic,

political, and military domains. All otherinstitutions have diminished in scope and

power and been either pushed to the side ofmodern history, or made subordinate to the

big three.



The Power Elite

It is their similar social backgrounds that provide one of the major sources of unityamong the elite.



The Power Elite

The majority of the elite, Mills asserted, comefrom the upper third of the income andoccupational pyramids. They are born of thesame upper class. They attend the same

preparatory schools and Ivy Leagueuniversities. They join the same exclusive

gentleman's clubs, belong to the sameorganizations. They are closely linkedthrough intermarriage.



The Power Elite

Some of the coordination comes from theinterchange of personnel between the threeelite hierarchies. The closeness of businessand government officials can be seen, Millsasserts, by the ease and frequency withwhich men pass from one hierarchy to

another.



The Power Elite

Mills also asserted that a good deal of thecoordination comes from a growingstructural integration of dominantinstitutions. As each of the elite domains

becomes larger, more centralized, and moreconsequential in its activities, its integration

with the other spheres becomes more pronounced.



The Power Elite

Of the three sectors of institutional power, Millsclaims, the corporate sector is the most

powerful. But the power elite cannot be

understood as a mere reflection of economicelites; rather it is the alliance of economic, political, and military power.



The Power Elite

Mills saw two other levels of power inAmerican society below the power elite. Atthe bottom are the great masses of people.Largely unorganized, ill informed, andvirtually powerless, they are controlled andmanipulated from above.



The Power Elite

The masses are economically dependent, theyare economically and politically exploited.Because they are disorganized, the massesare far removed from the classic democratic

public in which voluntary organizationshold the key to power.



The Power Elite

Between the masses and the elite Mills saw amiddle level of power. Composed of localopinion leaders and special interest groups,they neither represent the masses nor haveany real effect on the elite.



The Power Elite

Mills saw the American Congress andAmerican political parties as a reflection ofthis middle-level of power. AlthoughCongress and political parties debate anddecide some minor issues, the power eliteensures that no serious challenge to its

authority and control is tolerated in the political arena.



The Power Elite

The positions of the elite allow them totranscend the ordinary environments of menand women. The elite have access to leversof power that make their decisions (as wellas their failure to act) consequential.



The Power Elite

To date, Mills fears, these leaders are acting(or failing to act) with irresponsibility, thusleading us to disaster. But this does notmean that it always must be so. The greatstructural change that has enlarged themeans and extent of power and

concentrated it in so few hands now makesit imperative to hold these men responsiblefor the course of events.



The Causes of World War III

By 1958, Mills seemed much more concernedwith the rise of militarism among the elitesthan with the hypothesis that many eliteswere military men. According to Mills, therise of the military state serves the interestsof the elite of industrial societies.




For the politician the projection of military power serves as a cover for their lack ofvision and innovative leadership.




For corporate elites the preparations for warand the projection of military powerunderwrites their research and developmentas well as provides a guarantee of stable

profits through corporate subsidies.




But it is not just the existence of a power elitethat has allowed this manufacturedmilitarism to dominate. It has also beenenabled by the apathy and moralinsensibility of the masses and by the

political inactivity of intellectuals in both

communist and capitalist countries.




Most intellectual, scientific, and religiousleaders are echoing the elaborate confusionsof the elite. They are refusing to questionelite policies, they are refusing to offeralternatives. They have abdicated their role,they allow the elite to rule unhindered.



Social Problems

Mills identified five overarching social problems:

Alienation

Moral insensibilityThreats to democracy

Threats to human freedom

Conflict between bureaucratic rationalityand human reason.



Social Problems: Alienation

Unlike Marx, however, Mills does notattribute alienation to capitalism alone.While he agrees that much alienation is dueto the ownership of the means of

production, he believes much of it is alsodue to the modern division of labor.



Social Problems: Apathy

One of the fundamental problems of masssociety is that many people have lost theirfaith in leaders and are therefore veryapathetic. Such people pay little attention to

politics. Mills characterizes such apathy as a"spiritual condition" which is at the root of

many of our contemporary problems.




Mass communications contributes to thiscondition, Mills argues, through the sheervolume of images aimed at the individual inwhich she "becomes the spectator ofeverything but the human witness ofnothing.”




Mills relates this moral insensibility directlyto the rationalization process. Our acts ofcruelty and barbarism are split from theconsciousness of men--both perpetratorsand observers. We perform these acts as

part of our role in formal organizations. We

are guided not by individual consciousness, but by the orders of others.




Thus many of our actions are inhuman, not because of the scale of their cruelty, but because they are impersonal, efficient. and performed without any real emotion.

Social Problems: Threats to



Social Problems: Threats toDemocracy

Mills believed that widespread alienation, political indifference, and economic and political concentration of power is a seriousall added up to a serious threat todemocracy.




Social Problems: Threats toFreedom & Reason

Finally, Mills is continually concerned in hiswritings with the threat to two fundamentalhuman values: "freedom and reason." Millscharacterizes the trends that imperil thesevalues as being "co-extensive with themajor trends of contemporary society.”




For the individual, rational organization is analienating organization, destructive offreedom and autonomy. It cuts theindividual off from the conscious conduct ofhis behavior, thought, and ultimatelyemotions. The individual is guided in her

actions not by her consciousness, but by the prescribed roles and the rules of theorganization itself.





"It is not too much to say that in the extremedevelopment the chance to reason of mostmen is destroyed, as rationality increasesand its locus, its control, is moved from theindividual to the big-scale organization.There is then rationality without reason.

Such rationality is not commensurate withfreedom but the destroyer of it."





Like Weber before him, Mills cautions that asociety dominated by rational socialorganization is not based on reason,intelligence, and good will toward all.





Further, it is through rational socialorganization that modern day tyrants (aswell as more mundane bureaucraticmanagers) exercise their authority andmanipulation, often denying the opportunityof their subjects to exercise their own

judgments.



The Sociological Imagination

Mills claimed that Sociological research hascome to be guided more by therequirements of administrative concernsthan by intellectual concerns. It has becomethe accumulation of facts for the purpose offacilitating administrative decisions.




For Mills the difference between effectivesociological thought and that which failsrested upon imagination. The sociologicalimagination is simply a "quality of mind"that allows one to grasp "history and

biography and the relations between the two

within society.”




To truly fulfill the promise of social sciencerequires us to focus upon substantive

problems, and to relate these problems tostructural and historical features of thesociocultural system.




The promise of the social sciences is to bringreason to bear on human affairs. To fulfillthis role requires that we "avoid furtheringthe bureaucratization of reason and ofdiscourse.”




"What I am suggesting is that by addressingourselves to issues and to troubles, andformulating them as problems of social science,we stand the best chance, I believe the onlychance, to make reason democratically relevantto human affairs in a free society, and so to

realize the classic values that underlie the promise of our studies" (1959: 194).




Mills set forth his own conception of how asocial scientist should undertake the work.He conveys a sense of what it means to bean intellectual who concentrates on thesocial nature of man and who seeks thatwhich is significant.




Third, a good intellectual engages incontinual review of thoughts andexperiences.




Fourth, a good intellectual may find a truly bad book as intellectually stimulating andconducive to thinking as a good book.




Fifth, there must be an attitude of playfulness toward phrases, words, andideas. Along with this attitude one musthave a fierce drive to make sense out of theworld.




Sixth, the imagination is stimulated byassuming a willingness to view the worldfrom the perspective of others.




Seventh, one should not be afraid , in the preliminary stages of speculation, to thinkin terms of imaginative extremes.




Eighth, one should not hesitate to expressideas in language which is as simple anddirect as one can make it. Ideas are affected

by the manner of their expression. Animagination which is encased in deadeninglanguage will be a deadened imagination.

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The End

The Sociology of CW Mills

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