C. Wright Mills
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In 1956, sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote, The Power Elite, in an effort to publicize his hypothesis concerning what had gone wrong with American democracy. Mills believed that powerful and wealthy elites had been able to gradually take control of our government and that that process had been facilitated by "ordinary men" whose ambivalence and lack of understanding of the functions of a democracy had allowed this situation to occur. The elite have been able to consolidate their hold on government because government itself had gradually transformed in the last hundred or so years from a decentralized, servant of the people into an oversized, bureaucratized, and over-centralized behemoth (Mills, 1956). Furthermore, he felt that the ordinary men who comprised the bourgeoisie lacked the abilities and desire to take their government back and infuse true democratic principles into their constitution. In short, the common man was like a child who was only interested in his tiny, narrow, instant gratifications and the small rewards meted out by the powerful elite who controlled the overwhelming majority of this nation's wealth. In his book, Why We Can't Wait (1964), Martin Luther King Jr. took issue with Mills by arguing that social and political change occur when initiated at the grassroots level. Martin Luther King Jr. believed the "Negro Revolution of 1963" showed that the ordinary man can affect change but only through direct, non violent action (King, 1964, 26). By taki
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s social analysis. However, in the next few chapters he described his argument for why violent methods could not work for the Civil Rights movement. It is these views which brought King into direct conflict with the teachings of Malcolm X. King wrote, "The Negro turned his back on force not only because he knew he could not win his freedom through physical force but also because he believed that through physical force he could lose his soul" (King, 1964, 35). By this he meant that it was obvious blacks could not hope to match the firepower available to their oppressors. Furthermore, violent tactics tended to drive away the sympathies of those who opposed force and aggression by anyone - which he believed represented the attitude of the majority of Americans. King believed it was more effective for creating support for Civil Rights if the public saw police dogs mauling defenseless men, women, and children on national television instead of being frightened by the sight of dead policemen and running gun battles in the streets.
Malcolm X strongly disagreed with Martin Luther King's philosophy even though he also wanted to see power wrested away from the elite. Malcolm X argued from a historical perspective that changes co
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Approximate Word count = 2286
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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