Mills, C. Wright (1916–1962)

Charles Wright Mills was a leading critic of the postwar United States and one of the most controversial figures in social science. One may divide his major work into two categories. First, in his important trilogy on power and social stratification, he critiqued the U.S. class system. Second, in his standard primer in sociology, he declared that all informed publics must consider the relation between biography and history and their intersection within particular social structures.

In New Men of Power (1948), Mills examined the character of labor leadership in the United States. He maintained that American union leaders had emerged into positions of power and argued that only the powerful force of labor unions as agencies of protest could stop U.S. drift toward a permanent war ...