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For The Corporation Executives, The Military Metaphysic Often Coincides With Their Interest In A Stable And Planned Flow Of Profit; It Enables Them To Have Their Risk Underwritten By Public Money; It Enables Them Reasonably To Expect That They Can Exploit For Private Profit Now And Later, The Risky Research Developments Paid For By Public Money. It Is, In Brief, A Mask Of The Subsidized Capitalism From Which They Extract Profit And Upon Which Their Power Is Based.

-C. Wright Mills

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For The Corporation Executives,

C. Wright Mills

...

For The Corporation Executives, The Military Metaphysic Often Coincides With Their Interest In A Stable And Planned Flow Of Profit; It Enables Them To Have Their Risk Underwritten By Public Money; It Enables Them Reasonably To Expect That They Can Exploit For Private Profit Now And Later, The Risky Research Developments Paid For By Public Money. It Is, In Brief, A Mask Of The Subsidized Capitalism From Which They Extract Profit And Upon Which Their Power Is Based.

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People With Advantages Are Loath To Believe That They Just Happen To Be People With Advantages. They Come Readily To Define Themselves As Inherently Worthy Of What They Possess; They Come To Believe Themselves 'naturally' Elite; And, In Fact, To Imagine Their Possessions And Their Privileges As Natural Extensions Of Their Own Elite Selves.

For The Corporation Executives, The Military Metaphysic Often Coincides With Their Interest In A Stable And Planned Flow Of Profit; It Enables Them To Have Their Risk Underwritten By Public Money; It Enables Them Reasonably To Expect That They Can Exploit For Private Profit Now And Later, The Risky Research Developments Paid For By Public Money. It Is, In Brief, A Mask Of The Subsidized Capitalism From Which They Extract Profit And Upon Which Their Power Is Based.

Above All, Do Not Give Up Your Moral And Political Autonomy By Accepting In Somebody Else's Terms The Illiberal Practicality Of The Bureaucratic Ethos Or The Liberal Practicality Of The Moral Scatter. Know That Many Personal Troubles Cannot Be Solved Merely As Troubles, But Must Be Understood In Terms Of Public Issues And In Terms Of The Problems Of History Making.

Much Work Is Merely A Way To Make Money; Much Leisure Is Merely A Way To Spend It.

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I Try To Be Objective. I Do Not Claim To Be Detached.

According To Your Belief [christian Clergy], My Kind Of Man — Secular, Prideful, Agnostic And All The Rest Of It — Is Among The Damned. I'm On My Own. You've Got Your God.

What I Am Asserting Is That In This Particular Epoch A Conjunction Of Historical Circumstances Has Led To The Rise Of An Elite Of Power; That The Men Of The Circles Composing This Elite, Severally And Collectively, Now Make Such Key Decisions As Are Made; And That, Given The Enlargement And The Centralization Of The Means Of Power Now Available, The Decisions That They Make And Fail To Make Carry More Consequences For More People Than Has Ever Been The Case In The World History Of Mankind

To Say That You Can 'have Experience,' Means, For One Thing, That Your Past Plays Into And Affects Your Present, And That It Defines Your Capacity For Future Experience. As A Social Scientist, You Have To Control This Rather Elaborate Interplay, To Capture What You Experience And Sort It Out; Only In This Way Can You Hope To Use It To Guide And Test Your Reflection, And In The Process Shape Yourself As An Intellectual Craftsman

Nobody Talks More Of Free Enterprise And Competition And Of The Best Man Winning Than The Man Who Inherited His Father's Store Or Farm.

The Broadening Of The Economic Order Which Came To Be Seated In The Individual Property Owner... Dramatized By Jefferson's Purchase Of The Louisiana Territory... "the Supremacy Of Corporate Economic Power... Consolidated By The Supreme Court Decision Of 1886 Which Declared That The Fourteenth Amendment Protected The Corporation... [the New Deal, Leading To], Within The Political Arena, As Well As In The Corporate World Itself, Competing Centers Of Power That Challenged Those Of The Corporate Directors.

Neither The Life Of An Individual Nor The History Of A Society Can Be Understood Without Understanding Both.

Commercial Jazz, Soap Opera, Pulp Fiction, Comic Strips, The Movies Set The Images, Mannerisms, Standards, And Aims Of The Urban Masses. In One Way Or Another, Everyone Is Equal Before These Cultural Machines; Like Technology Itself, The Mass Media Are Nearly Universal In Their Incidence And Appeal. They Are A Kind Of Common Denominator, A Kind Of Scheme For Pre-scheduled, Mass Emotions.

You Can Never Really Understand An Individual Unless You Also Understand The Society,historical Time Period In Which They Live,personal Troubles, And Social Issues

America Is A Nation With No Truly National City, No Paris, No Rome, No London, No City Which Is At Once The Social Center, The Political Capital, And The Financial Hub.

By The Power Elite, We Refer To Those Political, Economic, And Military Circles Which As An Intricate Set Of Overlapping Cliques Share Decisions Having At Least National Consequences. In So Far As National Events Are Decided, The Power Elite Are Those Who Decide Them.

Prestige Is The Shadow Of Money And Power. Where These Are, There It Is. Like The National Market For Soap Or Automobiles And The Enlarged Arena Of Federal Power, The National Cash-in Area For Prestige Has Grown, Slowly Being Consolidated Into A Truly National System.

Seldom Aware Of The Intricate Connection Between The Patterns Of Their Own Lives And The Course Of World History, Ordinary People Do Not Usually Know What This Connection Means For The Kind Of People They Are Becoming And For The Kind Of History-making In Which They Might Take Part.

In Our Time, What Is At Issue Is The Very Nature Of Man, The Image We Have Of His Limits And Possibilities As A Man. History Is Not Yet Done With Its Exploration Of The Limits And Meanings Of Human Nature.

Prestige Is The Shadow Of Money And Power.

All Politics Is A Struggle For Power; The Ultimate Kind Of Power Is Violence.

The More We Understand What Is Happening In The World, The More Frustrated We Often Become, For Our Knowledge Leads To Feelings Of Powerlessness. We Feel That We Are Living In A World In Which The Citizen Has Become A Mere Spectator Or A Forced Actor, And That Our Personal Experience Is Politically Useless And Our Political Will A Minor Illusion.

Each Day Men Sell Little Pieces If Themselves In Order To Try To Buy Then Back Each Night And Weekend.

To Have Peace And Not War, The Drift Toward A War Economy, As Facilitated By The Moves And The Demands Of The Sophisticated Conservatives, Must Be Stopped; To Have Peace Without Slump, The Tactics And Policies Of The Practical Right Must Be Overcome. The Political And Economic Power Of Both Must Be Broken. The Power Of These Giants Of Main Drift Is Both Economically And Politically Anchored; Both Unions And An Independent Labor Party Are Needed To Struggle Effective.

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Ibm Plus Reality Plus Humanism = Sociology.

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Whatever Sociology May Be, It Is The Result Of Constantly Asking The Question, What Is The Meaning Of This?

Let Every Man Be His Own Methodologist, Let Every Man Be His Own Theorist

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