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.

credit: Ryan Zickgraf, based on The Wilson Quarterly/Russell Lynes 1949

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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

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