Mills
C. Wright Mills (1916–62) was an American sociologist, one of few who
dominated the field in the 1940s and early 1950s, and unusual, in the American
context, for being considerably to the left, though he was never a convinced
Marxist. Though much of his work, for exampleThe Sociological Imagination, is
of interest only to academics, he produced one of the first, and arguably still the
best, radical critique of American politics and the changes in the system that
threatened its democratic claims. This,The Power Elite,centres on the devel-
opment from the Second World War onwards of the huge and influential
military machine in the USA, an institution that had hardly existed before
- By demonstrating the connections between the military and the major
industrial corporations, and linking this ‘military-industrial complex’ to the
rising executive power of the presidency and the top civil service appoint-
ments, he painted, early in the 1950s, a picture of decision-making in America
that was not to become commonly believed until the days of theVietnam
WarandWatergate. His work has been an inspiration for authors of various
political persuasions in the study of American politics, and though he perhaps
exaggerated and selected his evidence rather carefully, few deny his perception,
or would deny that he mounts a very powerful and persuasive argument. In
particular his attack on themass mediafor turning a once highly articulate
and argumentative citizen body into passive receivers of others’ views fits all
too well with more ‘scientific’ research on opinion formation, and seems to
prophesy the later development of political consultants and the huge impact of
media techniques in grooming and selling electoral candidates. It is worth
noting, in Mills’ support, that his book starts with a quotation by the far from
radical President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning Congress against the dangers
of ‘the military-industrial complex’.
Minorities
Technically minorities are, obviously, those who are not, in some sense, in a
majority in a particular area of a political system. In most usages minorities are
thought of as having a common positive identity, rather than being united only
in their opposition to the majority. Although it is perfectly proper to refer to a
minority existing on only one issue, or by virtue of one single characteristic,
this is not usually the most important meaning. The politically important sense
of ‘minority’ is that a group in society has a set of common interests and beliefs
over a wide set of issues, which marks it out as needing, deserving or even
being given special treatment that the majority of citizens do not. Furthermore
minorities are thought of usually as having a permanence, or at least a very
long-term existence, and requiring the establishment of institutional or
structural methods for helping them.
Mills