Research Paper on:
The Power Elite and White Collar The American Middle Classes by C. Wright Mills

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
/aftersale.htm -- properly! Charles Wright Mills was one of the most radical thinkers of the twentieth century. He was  a social scientist whose theories were heavily influenced by the works of German social philosophers Max Weber and Karl Marx. His radical impressions of the American social structure are  featured in two of his most important texts, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, first published in 1951, and The Power Elite, published in 1956. Mills controversial perspectives have  as much relevance in the twenty-first century as they had in the 1950s, and as these works amply demonstrate, while his conclusions continue to inspire heated debate, his thoughts were  clearly ahead of their time. White Collar: The American Middle Classes considered the historical emergence of a new middle class in America, one which marked the "decline of the independent  individual and the rise of the little man" (xii). This little man was defined by Mills as the white collar workers, who began resembling the machines on which the  blue collar workers earned their livings. These workers, according to Mills, were little more than office robots who are, for the most part, completely unremarkable, having "slipped quietly into  modern society... As a group, they do not threaten anyone; as individuals, they do not practice an independent way of life" (ix). Nevertheless, Mills contends that it was the white  collar worker who have come to define American society. He argues that this new middle class has, in essence, sold out in order to succeed in the professional world.  He observes, "When white-collar people get jobs, they sell not only their time and energy but their personalities as well. They sell by the week or month their