C. Wright Mills and the Critical Theory of Social Inequalities

As several key texts in his important and engaged work show, twentieth-century radical sociologist C. Wright Mills’ “Critical Theory of Social Inequalities” is made up of four dimensions. (1) A concern for the study of the social class structure (upper, middle, lower and their interrelationships). (2) A call to attention about the gap between the ideal of equality discursively defended by society and its real and material inequality. (3) A critique of elitism, authoritarianism, power and hierarchies, especially as spread by the mass media, from the standpoint of the intellectual. And (4) a goal of progressive social transformation in the direction of more egalitarian societies.