Translator's Note: A Portrait of Us Living in Modern Capitalism
introduction

Part 1.
Old middle class

Chapter 1.
The World of Small Business
1.
Old middle class
2.
Property, Liberty, and Security
3.
A self-balancing society

Chapter 2.
Changes in property
1.
The collapse of rural areas
2.
Business dynamics
3.
lumpen bourgeoisie

Chapter 3.
The Rhetoric of Competition
1.
Competitive lifestyle
2.
independent self-employed farmers
3.
Small Business Front
4.
political continuity

Part 2.
The world of white collar work

Chapter 4.
New Middle Class I
1.
Changes in occupation
2.
Industrial dynamics
3.
White-collar pyramid

Chapter 5.
management bureaucracy
1.
bureaucracy
2.
From top to bottom
3.
Case of a direct factory
4.
new entrepreneur
5.
The power of managers
6.
Three streams

Chapter 6.
Old professions and new skills
1.
Professionalism and Bureaucracy
2.
medical field
3.
lawyer
4.
professor
5.
Business and Professional

Chapter 7.
Intellectuals Corporation
1.
Four steps
2.
Bureaucratic context
3.
ideological demands
4.
The rise of the technician

Chapter 8.
huge sales floor
1.
Types of Salespeople
2.
The world's largest market
3.
Purchasing manager and store manager
4.
saleswoman
5.
Centralization of sales techniques
6.
personality market

Chapter 9.
A huge pile of files
1.
old-fashioned office
2.
Strength and Development
3.
white-collar women
4.
new office
5.
White-collar hierarchy

Part 3.
way of life

Chapter 10.
labor
1.
The meaning of labor
2.
The ideal of craftsmanship
3.
Conditions of modern labor
4.
Framework of acceptance
5.
Cheerful Robot's Fraud
6.
A profound disconnect

Chapter 11.
Status confusion
1.
White-collar prestige
2.
small town
3.
big city
4.
Status confusion

Chapter 12.
success
1.
Types and Ideologies
2.
Elevator of Education
3.
Origin and Mobility
4.
difficult times
5.
faded image

Part 4.
The Road to Power

Chapter 13.
New Middle Class II
1.
Theory and Difficulties
2.
temperament
3.
group

Chapter 14.
white-collar labor union movement
1.
degree of organization
2.
Acceptance and rejection
3.
personal involvement
4.
Forms of the labor union movement
5.
Labor unions and politics

Chapter 15.
The Politics of the Rearguard
1.
Model of consciousness
2.
political apathy
3.
mass media
4.
social structure
5.
American politics
6.
rearguards

Acknowledgements and Sources
Search
Recommendation

■ A monumental work dealing with the 'class problem' of modern society

"White Collar: A Portrait of the Modern Middle Class" is a monumental work that analyzes the "white-collar" class that forms the backbone of modern society.
Author Charles Wright Mills was one of the most influential English-speaking sociologists of the 20th century and lived his entire life as an independent and critical intellectual.
His ideas continue to have an impact on contemporary sociology and social movements, and are still considered an important foundation for exploring the challenges of our time.

■ The core class of industrial capitalist society, 'white-collar workers'

This book delves into the formation and evolution of white-collar workers in modern society and explores their social position and role.
It also vividly depicts the way modern capitalism operates in the lives of modern people, analyzing the impact of industrialization on individuals and society.
It explores the significance of the rise of the white-collar class in modern society, encompassing not only their political and economic characteristics but also their psychological ones.

■ The problems faced by white-collar workers are the concerns of all modern people.

White-collar workers are a group of occupations that make up the middle class in modern society. Due to the diversification of industrial composition, they are engaged in office work, professional work, service work, and technical work, and they perform work based on knowledge and information rather than physical labor.
Mills believes that white-collar workers play a key role as the industrial vanguard in modern society and have a significant impact on society and the economy.

The middle class, now "humans of the organization," is alienated from their own labor.

White-collar workers tend to work out of inertia to meet the goals of the organization rather than through personal creativity.
White-collar work is a repetitive and impersonal system.
The meaning of labor as more than a means of survival is lost, and individuals function as cognate parts of an organization.
White-collar workers are ironically alienated from their own labor as a result of bureaucratic rationalization.

■ Unstable ‘status’, ambiguous meaning of ‘success’, and political apathy

Middle-class white-collar workers are deeply dependent on the upper class with power and wealth, and always feel insecure about their social status.
For them, the meaning of 'success' is socially and existentially ambiguous.
The income, power, and prestige of white-collar workers vary depending on their occupation.
That's why white-collar workers are internally divided and externally dependent on greater power (power and wealth).
Rather than uniting with one another or becoming politically aware, white-collar workers choose to remain apathetic to politics, content to find psychological solace in the popular culture disseminated by the mass media.

Understanding the identity and limitations of white-collar workers can help us understand the structural problems of modern society.
Mills saw white-collar unions as at best pressure groups or privileged groups rather than “agents of social change.”
Author Charles Wright Mills argues that understanding the identity and limitations of the white-collar class is essential to understanding the structural problems of modern society.

■ The experience of white-collar workers reflects the crisis facing the middle class and emphasizes the need for social change.

The discontent and distress of the white-collar class are in fact related to the problems of modern society, and are also important factors that require social change.
What white-collar workers are experiencing reflects the crisis facing the middle class in modern society, and emphasizes the need for change in the modern society that created this crisis.