Why Mills Studies the White Collar Worker

On the middle classes and cultural compression.

For the concluding episode of the 2024/25 Reading Club, we discuss C. Wright Mills' White Collar, plus some additional short texts on what mass culture is like today.

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• Does Mills' account of the “economic psychology” of the White Collar worker still ring true today?

• What about their "political psychology"?

• What is the state of White Collar trade unionism today?

• Is there no possibility of the middle class leading a political movement?

• Do the distinctions of high- middle- and low-brow still make sense today, in our era of levelling-down and slop?

• Should we defend democracy in the economy and elitism in culture?

Readings:

• White Collar: The American Middle Classes, C. Wright Mills, 1951 (esp final two chapters)

• Highbrow, Middlebrow, Lowbrow, Russell Lynes, Wilson Quarterly, 1976 reprint of 1949 article (pdf attached)

• Post-Mass Culture, Dylan Riley, Sidecar

• Unionizing the “Cultural Apparatus”, Nelson Lichtenstein, Jacobin