Critics of Society (Routledge Revivals) by Tom B. Bottomore

Author:Tom B. Bottomore [Bottomore, Tom B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Social Classes
ISBN: 9781136923234
Google: bPUK_MdeW5MC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-13T04:46:36+00:00

CHAPTER VI

The Social Movements

THE audience of the critics whose writings I have discussed has grown considerably since the mid-1950’s. One sign of this is the appearance of popular expositions of their ideas. Consider a book such as William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man, which received much acclaim when it was published in 1956. Entertainingly written, it sets out in a more popular style ideas on mass society and conformism similar to those of Riesman in The Lonely Crowd. Whyte contrasts the Protestant ethic of an earlier America with what he calls the ‘social ethic’ of modern America. The former stressed the values of individualism, hard work, thrift, and competition; the latter stresses the importance of the group and of ‘belongingness’. The principle bearer of this new ethic is the business executive; and the group to which he feels a need to belong, to which he is urged to be ‘loyal’, is the business corporation. Whyte portrays him in different contexts; in the organization itself where batteries of personality tests are employed to select and advance the well-rounded, conforming man, and in the suburb, where he (and still more his wife), is prone to sacrifice individual tastes for the sake of fitting into the community. An examination of popular fiction and films, Whyte suggests, shows the same drift towards conformity; it is no longer the rugged individualist, answerable to his own conscience, who is presented as the hero, but the man who follows undeviatingly the rules and customs of his group.

These and other themes of criticism appear likewise in the writings of Vance Packard. The very titles show the influence of the sociological critics. The Hidden Persuaders deals with the power of advertisers and the mass media, The Status Seekers with conformism and ‘belongingness’, The Waste Makers with conspicuous consumption and the drive to an unlimited increase of production regardless of its social value, The Pyramid Climbers with the urge to economic success and social mobility—which is more and more often presented in the unattractive guise of the rat race.

One feature of this popular criticism which deserves attention is that it is addressed largely to the new middle classes, who are also presumably its most devoted readers. Its style is satirical. It holds up to the middle classes a slightly distorting mirror in which their virtues as well as their vices take on a ridiculous aspect. It is successful, as other forms of satire have been in the past decade, because it responds to an existing uneasiness about whether prosperity and an assured place on the social escalator do in fact amount to a good life. The same malaise which Wright Mills sketched in White Collar is reflected in this criticism.

At the same time such popular criticism is very much restricted to the middle-class milieu. The social scientist who reads The Organization Man is likely to be struck especially by the tameness and unimaginativeness of its conclusions. These amount to little more than the true but trite observations that there is

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