The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-020-09463-z

C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination

and the Construction of Talcott Parsons
as a Conservative Grand Theorist

Helmut Staubmann 1

Accepted: 25 September 2020 / Published online: 10 October 2020

# The Author(s) 2020

Abstract
C. Wright Mills was one of the most important critics of Talcott Parsons who
succeeded in establishing the image of Parsons as a conservative “grand theorist”
out of touch with the real world and its real problems, as passed on in sociological
textbooks. In this essay, it is argued that Mills’ “translation of Parsons into
English” is a one-sided interpretation based on his own theoretical premises,
which he called the sociological imagination. The way Mills conceptualized
sociological imagination leans towards an ideological world-view with political
ambitions but lacks the necessary theoretical differentiation for an adequate
evaluation of Parsons’ general theory of action and the conceptualization of the
social system in particular. Given Mills’ premises, it appeared to him as if Parsons
could not deal with social conflict, social change, domination and power relation-
ships, which laid the foundations of a narrative quite distinct from the “real”
Parsons. The conceptual deficiencies of Mills’ sociological imagination lead into
theoretical antinomies and the practical inability to resolve political issues outside
of forceful intervention as suggested in the theoretical tradition of Thomas
Hobbes. Independent of a political positioning, Parsons’ sophistications in his
understanding of power as one of several generalized symbolic media of interac-
tion beyond the Hobbesian utilitarian model are necessary to come to terms with
the increased complexity of modern society, both in theoretical and in political
terms.

Keywords Conflict . History of sociology . Philosophy of the social sciences . Power .

Social theory

* Helmut Staubmann
[email protected]

1
Department of Sociology, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstr. 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

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 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193 179

Introduction

“…as from a prophet who comes in from a desert” – such should be the effect of the
publication of a manuscript entitled The Sociological Imagination (1959) written in
Europe1 in 1957, as the author C. Wright Mills noted in a letter to the historian William
Miller on March 14, 1957 (s. K. Mills 2000: 230). The author’s wish would become
true. This publication eventually turned into one of the most powerful books in the
history of sociology. In 1997, the International Sociological Association conducted an
opinion survey on the most influential books in sociology published in the twentieth
century. Mills’ The Sociological Imagination reached the second rank after Max
Weber’s Economy and Society (2019 [1922]). Talcott Parsons got about half as many
votes as Mills for his The Structure of Social Action (1937) and ended up on rank nine.
Yet, the lasting effect C. Wright Mills has had up to our times might not so much be
based on his original writings which are less received by the younger generation of
sociologists than through setting the directions of the discourse at the time by coining
concepts and labels that were broadly accepted and included in sociology textbooks.
We all know that a considerable segment of textbooks has a life of its own, often
detached from the real world they pretend to stand for (s. Mahlert 2020). Still,
textbooks are a sort of RNA of scholarly fields in that they reproduce and spread the
information from generation to generation.
The most famous of the respective labels coined by Mills is “grand theory” and its
attribution to Talcott Parsons as its foremost representative. With the label of grand
theory comes a whole syndrome of unfavorable designations like “fetishism of the
concept” (Mills 1959: 35), the inability to deal with social conflicts and societal change,
with domination and power relationships etc. which all, in political terms, translate into
an image of Talcott Parsons as a conservative and apologist of the deficiencies of
Western modernity and capitalist societies.2

Talcott Parsons and his Strawman Double

There is a peculiarity in the assessment of Talcott Parsons’ legacy and the political role
he played, which, to my knowledge, is unique in the history of social thought. The
common situation is that creative thinkers come up with new ideas that eventually
crystallize in schools of thought, gaining permanence if a group of followers is able to
position themselves in academic institutions. This kind of tribal organization of soci-
ology, as Niklas Luhmann once called it with his peculiar irony, is the basis of ongoing
controversies over more or less antagonistic positions like methodological individual-
ism versus methodological collectivism, or the prevalence of cultural versus “material”

1
In March of 2018, Kathryn Mills, daughter of C. W. Mills, gave a lecture at the University of Innsbruck in
which she talked about details of her and her family’s time in Innsbruck, Austria. According to her, large parts
of the manuscript of The Sociological Imagination were written here during a difficult familial situation (s. K.
Mills 2018; Staubmann and Treviño 2018). Having Kate Mills as a guest in my department was a great honor
and touching experience. Since then, we have maintained a cordial exchange and friendship.
2
Talcott Parsons, in “The Distribution of Power in American Society” (first published in 1957), had written a
profound critique of Mills’ The Power Elite well before Mills critiqued his work in The Sociological
Imagination.

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 180 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

factors in social life. In the case of Parsons, however, it is often not so much a matter of
conflicting standpoints. The problem is more confusing to begin with, since a quite
large circle of experts unanimously contests the accuracy of the critics’ understanding
of what Parsons’s theory, and consequently its political implications, are about. In this
regard, Harold J. Bershady wrote: “Much of Parsons’ work has been contaminated with
false and essentially unscholarly accusations. … It is to be hoped that once a clearer and
more truthful picture of him emerges, the theory of social action will gain greater moral
approval…” (2014: xix).
A prime example of a misleading label concerns structural-functionalism and the
unshakable conviction that Talcott Parsons was its inventor and foremost representative.
The historical fact is that there was only a short period in the early 1950s where Parsons
situated himself in the broader current of this methodological position developed and
held by a group of anthropologists, ethnologists and sociologists. He later argued against
the linking of structure and function and explicitly did not want to be subsumed under
the label of structural-functionalism. However, it was all in vain. Neither reminders on
the historical facts nor Parsons’ own protest sufficed to change the critics’ belief.
Another claim against all evidence, with resulting attacks spanning over decades, is
that Parsons did not and could not deal with societal change after he had written several
books and a considerable number of essays on the dynamics of societies and after he
had analyzed major evolutionary and revolutionary changes in a more elaborate and
refined way than those who could only make out harmony, integration and equilibrium
in Parsons’ writings.3 The reason, as we will argue with the example of C.W. Mills, lies
in a specific understanding of conflict, domination and social change inherited from
materialistic positions of nineteenth century thought.
These misrepresentations of Parsons’ standpoints find their continuation in the
widespread opinion of the incompatibility of theory developments carried out by some
of Parsons’ students. Harold Garfinkel or Clifford Geertz, for example, were favorably
received at their time and up to contemporary sociology. They are presented as
Parsons’ irreconcilable opponents which is against the facts and against explicit
statements, by both Parsons and his famed students. Recently, Anne Rawls published
an illuminating manuscript written by Garfinkel in the late 1950ies and early 1960s
which Garfinkel had used in his courses. The book entitled Parsons Primer (2019)
displays the deep understanding and appreciation Garfinkel had for his teacher. He
makes clear that he had learned the fundamental meaning of interaction for culture and
social systems in collaborations with Talcott Parsons, which led him to develop what
became known as ethnomethodology (s. Rawls and Turowetz 2019). Parsons’ critics
effectively could establish the belief of an utter opposition between Garfinkel and
Parsons. Anne Rawls and her collaborator Jason Turowetz sum it up: “We argue that
these criticisms do not target Parsons’ actual position, but a misinterpretation of it

3
A good example is Parsons’ concern with the political situation in Germany, particularly the rise of National
Socialism as documented by the essays “Democracy and Social Structure in Pre-Nazi Germany” and “Some
Sociological Aspects of Fascist Movements” included in Essays in Sociological Theory (1949, first edition)
along with other essays dealing with social change and conflict like “The Problem of Controlled Institutional
Change”, “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World”,
or “Social Classes and Class Conflict in the Light of Recent Sociological Theory”. Furthermore, Parsons
served as scientific advisor for the Council of Democracy, voicing concern about changes in Germany as well
as in Japan towards post-war democracy.

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 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193 181

popularized in the 1940’s and 1950’s and subsequently criticized in the 1960’s and
1970’s.” (Turowetz and Rawls forthcoming) They conclude: “… the version of Parsons
these approaches oppose is a strawman.”
This means that there is Talcott Parsons and then there is, let’s say, a persistent
narrative about Talcott Parsons which is only remotely related to the “original”. C.
Wright Mills was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the establishment of
such a narrative. It is this decisive role in creating a distorted image of Talcott Parsons
and what consequently turned into a kind of “ritualistic Parsons slaughter,” as Roland
Robertson expressed it aptly, that makes it worthwhile looking into how Mills per-
ceived and judged Parsons’ work, how he drew his conclusions and, conclusively, why
his writings resonated so well with the intellectual climate of the time and even with
contemporary sociology.4
Constructivist perspectives suggest that observations are dependent on the observa-
tional schemes used; the frames of reference, to put it in Parsonian terms. This view will
serve us as a starting point to explain the specific approach Mills led to arrive at his
judgments on Talcott Parsons by looking into the presuppositions of his own theory.
We will at first reconstruct Mills’ argument and subsequently compare the relevant
underlying concepts with the ones of Talcott Parsons.

Sociological Imagination: Promises and Disappointments

“The Promise” is the title of the first chapter in The Sociological Imagination. What is
the promise about, what role could sociology play and to whom is it addressed? The
starting point is the assertion that society is in a terrible state, haunted by unruly forces,
by anarchy, and by alienation, to use Mills’ expressions. The problem, according to
Mills, is not confined to American society, since history turned into world history in the
twentieth century. And Mills draws a dismal picture of ongoing developments: colo-
nialism was replaced by less visible forms of imperialism, the majority of people find
themselves excluded from democratic processes, and democracy as such was trans-
formed into mere formalistic procedures. “Everywhere in the overdeveloped world, the
means of authority and violence become total in scope and bureaucratic in form.”
(1959: 4) And things might even turn worse: The powers are “concentrating … [their]
… most coordinated and massive efforts upon the preparation of World War Three” (4)
a danger on which Mills had published a book the year before (s. Mills 1958).
Individuals are the victims of such societal circumstances without being able to
grasp the structural problems in which they are trapped. They experience individual
fates, private troubles, but cannot perceive the “real” reasons behind them, which are
the “public issues”, i.e. the institutions and larger structures of society that constrain the
lives of individuals.
According to Mills, the solution is a new “quality of mind” called sociological
imagination. It

4
There are more sophisticated critiques of Parsons‘work, that would be worthwhile responding to, but it was
precisely Mills’ bold style that resonated well and thus contributed more effectively to the distortion of
Parsons’ image.

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 182 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

“… enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its
meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. It
enables him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their daily
experience, often become falsely conscious of their social position.” … “The
sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the
relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise.” (Mills
1959: 5–6)

Let’s look into one of the examples Mills provided: the case of a failed marriage.
Through the lens of a married person, most cases of divorce are undoubtedly troubling
personal experiences. Empirical data accumulate these experiences to increasing di-
vorce rates which have structural causes like concomitantly rising unemployment rates.
So, a divorce appears as an individual problem but is “in reality” a societal problem and
thus can only be resolved by changing the structures of society. “Tracing such
linkages” … “is to possess the sociological imagination” (Mills 1959: 11). This
example gives a foretaste of Mills’ sociological reductionism, i.e. his attribution of
“real causal factors” to society; a principle, which is a crucial starting point of his
critique of Parsons’ theory of social systems.
Mills’ ambitions thereby are in no way moderate. The claim is that sociological
imagination is the intellectual common denominator of contemporary cultural life (s.
Mills 1959: 14), a world-view comparable to Newtonian physics and Darwinian
evolution theory, which also represented the basic intellectual orientation in their time.
According to Mills, it is the basic intention of his book to lead the social sciences into
fulfilling this cultural task.
The social scientists, however, to the dismay of Mills, have followed quite different
imaginations and taken different paths. In the eyes of Mills, some simply pursue the
development of a “set of bureaucratic techniques” (Mills 1959: 20). In doing so, they
distort the “real” knowledge about society, which he calls abstracted empiricism, while
“some – being addicts of the high formalism of theory – associate and disassociate
concepts in what seems to others a curious manner” (Mills 1959: 20) – all this in
association with abstract and static views. Although the first names Mills mentions here
are interestingly Georg Simmel and Leopold von Wiese, we have finally arrived at the
section entitled grand theory, a chapter dedicated to a critique of Talcott Parsons.

“Grand Theory” and its Discontent

The vocabulary Mills uses to characterize Parsons’ work is not very flattering: arid
formalism, void phrase mongering, confused verbiage, endless elaboration of distinc-
tions, drunk on syntax – blind to semantics, splitting of concepts and endless rear-
rangement; although we could go on we want to stop here. In a relatively sober
formulation, “grand theory” is defined as “the associating and dissociating of concepts
“(1959: 26).
Mills elaborates his objections to Parsons by scrutinizing mostly The Social System
(1951). The subtitle of the book, which Mills does not mention anywhere, is: The
Major Exposition of the Author’s Conceptual Scheme for the Analysis of the Dynamics
of the Social System. The publication includes two chapters exclusively dedicated to the
dynamic processes and processes of change in social systems. To be able to judge

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 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193 183

Mills’ verdict of the book in reverse, we need to keep the two claims expressed in the
book title in mind: firstly, the elaboration of a conceptual scheme (not the analysis of an
empirical, historically given social system, an analysis of any societal state etc.) and
secondly, a focus on the dynamics of social systems.
Before going into the specific objections of Mills against The Social System, we
need to clarify the concept and role of theory in social sciences as such. Theory is one
of the two pillars sociological inquiry rests on, the other one being methodology. There
are two basic tasks or, I hesitate to say, “functions” of theory. The most important one
is the construction of the basic concepts that give the discipline its identity. Let’s call it
the a-priori function. Here, the founders of sociology had to overcome the “raw” and
undifferentiated kind of everyday life-world understanding of social phenomena and
thus took up the burdensome endeavor of what sometimes appears to some young
sociology students as an “endless” arrangement of concepts. Max Weber’s essay on
“Basic Sociological Concepts”, included in Economy and Society (2019 [1922]), is a
conspicuous example thereof. The classical founders had to do so because common-
sense life-world concepts with their lack of sophistication soon lead to aporias, as all
undifferentiated concepts eventually result in confusion. Thus, there are good reasons
for splitting concepts and (re-)arranging them into a coherent system. Talcott Parsons
dedicated his first masterpiece, The Structure of Social Action (1937), to the task of
refining the theoretical traditions, precisely to overcome “arid” controversies over
idealism and materialism and, closely related to the issue, reductionisms of all sorts.
The increasing complexity of the theoretical system – and Parsons’ further refinements
led to an undoubtedly high degree of sophistication – is demanding, but the alternative
is the regression into a pre-disciplinary social science guided by everyday life-world
concepts and driven by mostly political agenda. Expressed with reference to Mills’
words: sometimes it pays to concentrate on syntax, leaving semantics aside. The
development of the discipline of semiotics illustrates this point.
However, Mills is totally right in his assertion that “semantics” is indispensable after
all. This leads us to the second meaning of sociological theory: its a-posteriori function.
Based on well-defined concepts, as Emile Durkheim had demanded as the first and
foremost rule of sociological inquiry (1982 [1895]), we now can use them to empiri-
cally explore the social and cultural world. This eventually leads to “substantial” or
“empirical” theories, like Weber’s theory of modernity or Durkheim’s theory of
suicide, to name just two of the most prominent examples. These “concrete” applied
theories are, as Parsons repeatedly stated, the ultimate test and ultimate goal of any
theoretical scheme.
The dividing line between Mills and Parsons in purely theoretical terms is the
sophistication of the theoretical frame. Generally speaking, we can say that the
complexity of a theory correlates with the possibility of differentiated knowledge, or,
using Mill’s terminology: the more advanced the syntax of a language, the more
options there are for semantics and consequently for thinking and for communicating.
Insufficient conceptual differentiation leads to blindness in empirical terms, as we have
known ever since Immanuel Kant’s famous formulation. And Mills provides ample
evidence thereof in what he subsequently calls a translation of Parsons into English.
Indeed, many feel that Parsons’ formulations could be improved stylistically; even
Parsons himself. However, Mills’ translation did not make it easier to understand what
Parsons had to say. Instead, it was a translation into his own thinking, the limitations of

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 184 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

which led on the one hand to what Parsonians perceive as a distortion, the kind of
simplified strawman edition Rawls and Turowetz described. Marx might have used the
word phantasmagoria here. On the other hand, Mills’ translation brought forth the
sharp contrast between his style of thought and Parsons’ theoretical system. Or, put
differently, Mills used Parsons’ general theory of action as a sort of projection screen,
eventually making his own theoretical shortcomings visible.
Mills begins his argumentation with an extensive sample quote, his aim being that
the readers would self-evidently perceive this as void phrase mongering. This quotation
technique itself is somewhat questionable, as any small portion of text taken out of the
context of a complex argument poses difficulties to readers. Besides such stylistic
issues, however, the difference lies in two concepts/conceptual differentiations
completely alien to Mills’ thinking: one is the double contingency of interaction, and
the other the clear distinction and assumption of the structural independence of a
personality, a social system and a cultural system. This conceptual differentiation is
indispensable for the understanding of the stability or instability of social systems.

The Hobbesian Problem of Chaos

The famous expression “the Hobbesian problem of order” is rather misleading. What
Hobbes tried to resolve in practical and in theoretical terms was not order, it was chaos.
The question arose in the context of a highly disordered cultural and political situation
in seventeenth century England. Based on what we now call the utilitarian model,
which assumes that humans “naturally” inherit egoism, causing “war of all against all”
– as Hobbes had interpreted his observations at the time – he saw the solution in a
sovereign, an “absolute” ruler who is able to control the situation in a way that
everyone is better off when conforming with the government, the means of which
could ultimately only be force. Such a view, however, covers only a very limited range
of empirical cases. Luckily, humans are not hedonistic creatures triggered by situational
pleasure or pain causing factors. As social beings, they have not only egoistic impulses
but also altruistic ones; they orient themselves towards others and their expectations, as
well as committing themselves to social norms and cultural values, so that Parsons,
based on a more realistic albeit complex model, could write: “The problem of order …
thus focuses on the integration of the motivation of actors with the normative cultural
standard which integrate the action system…” (quoted in Mills 1959). While Mills,
quite in line with Hobbes, perceived a kind of primordial opposition between social
structure and individual agency, Parsons clearly identified the balancing mechanisms
and pointed to common culture, norms, value orientations and shared symbols, all of
which link individual motivations and social structure. This is by far not trivial. At least
Mills did not seem to understand it. It is important to stress that Parsons thereby
identified the preconditions of social order, while explaining social disorder at the
same time and to the same extent.
When Mills narrows his objection down to the assertion that “an institution is a set
of roles graded in authority” (1959: 30), implying that some assert their power over
others, he fully stands on the grounds of Hobbes’ utilitarian model. Despite the fact that
he is indeed right to draw attention to armies, factories or families – to take up Mills’
own examples – where some exert force over others in the sense of the Hobbesian
model, we would not have families, factories or armies if this were essentially the

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 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193 185

“normal” case. On the contrary, as Parsons would formulate later, deflationary forms of
authority, the regression to means of force, lead to unstable situations. The minimum
conceptual differentiation necessary to see the problem is the structural independence
of individuals with their need dispositions, of culture and of social institutional
structures. This is the basis of a theory of the dynamics of social systems that is
anything but static, as Mills erroneously concluded. Mills should have taken the
Parsons-quotes he himself had selected for his chapter to heart:

“That the stability of any social system … is dependent on a degree of such

integration may be said to be the fundamental dynamic theorem of sociology. It is
the major point of reference for all analysis which may claim to be a dynamic
analysis of social process.” (Parsons in Mills 1959: 30–31)

Since Mills interpreted this quote from the perspective of his societal force versus
individual fate distinction, it appeared to him as if Parsons demanded conformity to
societal rules from individuals, in order to give the social system unchangeable
stability. The entire alleged “over-socialized man” model (Wrong 1961) in Parsons’
theory is based on such a misreading. However, it was not meant this way. An
unprejudiced reading of The Social System would have made clear that the relationship
between society and individuals is a co-evolutionary one in which mutual adaptation,
for which Parsons used the word integration, is a major factor in the dynamics of action
systems. So Mills’ assertion that “no explicit meaning is lost” in what he called his
“straightforward translation” (p. 31) of parts of The Social System into English has
departed far from the text’s actual stated intention. And so is his conclusion that
Parsons is unable to explain disequilibrium and social change in empirical terms.

The Self-Reference Paradox of Mills’ Sociological Imagination

From a political perspective, a sociological imagination is extremely limited if it only

attributes the causes of “individual troubles” to the structure of society. Who would be
able to make the desired changes, the reforms or perhaps even revolutions? This
exposes a self-reference paradox that is well known from all materialistic theories
oscillating between the idea that humans are the product and thus mere victims of
circumstances, while at the same time demanding political action from exactly these
“products”. In the end, such a model requires a deus ex machina, or, in the words of
Mills, “a prophet that comes in from a desert”.
In line with Mills, intellectuals at the time tried to outdo each other in attributing the
discontents of life – of alienation – to some exteriorly conceptualized society or some
concrete or generalized “other”. Jean-Paul Sartre, to whom Mills had close contact,5
epitomized it with the famous dictum: “Hell is other people”. An upright sociological
imaginative mind immediately sees the self-reference issue associated with this prop-
osition because it only can be true if an individual, let’s call her/him ego, is set absolute.

5
In particular, they shared a common interest in the Cuban revolution. In the summer of 1961 Mills met with
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in Paris (s. Treviño 2017: ix and K. Mills 333f). A review of
Beauvoir’s Second Sex by Mills appeared posthumously under the title “Women: The Darling Little Slaves”.
(s. K. Mills 333)

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 186 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

From an individual perspective, this might appear as fully accurate but for a sociolog-
ical observer, it is clear that ego and alter perspectives are interchangeable. Therefore,
ego must conclusively be hell for alter in reverse, and the ultimate conclusion then is
that ego is hell for her/himself, which at times comes closer to the truth anyway.
However, the fallacy lies in the theoretical model on which the contention is based with
its lack of differentiation. For it might also be true that “heaven is other people”,
ultimately making it an empirical question, whether the one or the other is the case or
some state in between which is, in the long run, the normality. This is just another
example that the sheer “endless elaboration of distinctions” (Mills 33) bears fruits at
times, as without the distinctions one is stuck in a one-sided and often improbable
dismal picture of reality.
The self-reference issue in Mills’ case gets even worse when we consider what
happens if this prophet finds followers and gains power – power and authority the way
it was defined beforehand. Hobbes’ conclusion was clear: the solution is an absolute
sovereign who rules the people with the ever-present force as the base of her/his power.
A look into history teaches us that this actually sometimes did happen with disastrous
consequences. Given the theoretical premises of Mills’ theory, we could never escape
the ordeal of “unruly forces” and would be trapped in a choice between being ruled by
capitalist power elites or a left-wing power regime. However, there is good reason to
believe that the premises are wrong and that pursuing theoretical and practical alterna-
tives is worthwhile.

Double Contingency

Closely associated with the issue of a blind spot for self-reference in mechanistic
thinking is the difference in Mills’ and Parsons’ conception of the most basic socio-
logical concepts, those of communication and interaction. A mechanistic understand-
ing, as is common in everyday life, attributes the causality to one side of the individuals
involved in these processes. In communication, the “sender” of information usually
bears the burden of causality. As for the case of interaction, the one who “wants” or
“demands” something is thus deemed “dominating” or “superordinate” over the one
who gives something or provides a service. The result is a splitting of the mutuality of
communication and interaction into one-way units which in summation is taken as the
whole communication or interaction process. Such an understanding misses the sys-
temic quality of social processes for which Parsons coined the term double contingen-
cy, a functional source for an emerging common culture. It is implied that both sides are
“to the same extent” causally involved. Ordered and “successful” communication and
interaction processes are – as the concept has it – contingent on both or all sides
involved and thus could not occur otherwise. “To the same extent” only means that
they are both indispensable conditions for the interaction to occur and thus a quanti-
fication of the extent of the causality makes no sense.
Georg Simmel’s concept of social interaction, literally translated as “social mutuality
of cause and effect” (soziale Wechselwirkung) precisely captures this point. That is why
he came to the same conclusions; e.g. in his essay on domination and subordination
[1908] he argues that a mechanistic understanding erroneously attributes the causality
in such relationship types to the apparently dominating part. The expression “appar-
ently dominating” refers to the fact that it frequently cannot be decided if someone is in

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 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193 187

a dominating or sub-ordinate position. For example, journalists exert influence on the

audience and at the same time try to write what the audience wants to hear to be
successful. In the more abstract formulation of Talcott Parsons it reads: “What are
expectations to ego are sanctions to alter and vice versa” (1951: 40). Such an insight
into the mutuality in interaction is completely alien to Mills and this might explain why
he aligns Simmel with Parsons in the grand theory chapter. His assessments of the
conditions of society display a strict one-way causality, particularly of socioeconomic
and political processes.
Mills actually provides a quote that includes the term double contingency (1959: 25)
but obviously did not see its relevance and thus paid no further attention to it in his
“translation” endeavors. Once more, the reason is obviously a blind spot based on
Mills’ design of a sociological imagination.

Power

“Interaction” based on pure force is a limiting case. Strictly speaking, it is not

“inter”action at all but action exerted by someone on some other, only contingent on
the person having the means of force. Unfortunately, this occurs from time to time but
to generalize such cases as being the essential form of interaction in modern society is
far from reality. This also applies to interaction in connection with political goals. Here
we have the most obvious opposition of Mills against Parsons, which crystallizes
around the concept of power.
A first difference lies in Mills’ conceptualization of power as a means for some to
pursue self-interested goals over others, while Parsons conceptualized power as a
medium for the attainment of collective goals, a functional problem that needs to be
resolved in all social systems. The basic issue is consensus, not on the specific decision
but on the legitimacy of the decision, for which the circulation of power as a symbolic
medium is a decisive prerequisite (s. Lidz and Staubmann 2020). It is clear from the
onset that these definitions of power are incompatible. For Mills it is a matter of a one-
sided exertion of the will of some on others, for Parsons it is a phenomenon anchored in
the mutuality of interaction.
A consequence of the mutuality is that it creates an overall surplus so that the gain of
one party does not equal another’s loss. The motive to engage in an economic exchange
is the expectation on both sides to have more afterwards and the same is valid for other
types of interaction, e.g. in collective decision making. In all such cases, interaction
does not equal a zero-sum game. Parsons explicitly referred to Mills in his essay on
power,6 to point out the difference:

“The dominant tendency in the literature, for example in … C. Wright Mills, is to

maintain explicitly or implicitly that power is a zero-sum phenomenon, which is
to say that there is a fixed ‘quantity’ of power in any relational system and hence
any gain of power on the part of A must by definition occur by diminishing the
6
Talcott Parsons’ famous essay “On the Concept of Political Power” appeared at first in 1963, a year after C.
W. Mills had died and Parsons’ review of The Power Elite appeared the same year as The Sociological
Imagination. Therefore, the quoted references of Mills to Parsons and vice versa cannot be interpreted as an
exchange between the two. The section on power in this essay is intended as a reconstruction of their opposing
views and their critique of each other.

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 188 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

power on the part of other units, B, C, D,… There are, of course, restricted
contexts in which this condition holds, but I shall argue that it does not hold for
total systems of a sufficient level of complexity.” (1969: 353)

Such a conceptualization of power as a generalized symbolic medium of communica-

tion and interchange does not mean to neglect many of the issues Mills refers to. There
indeed is evidence of forceful domination occurring in complex societies, much of
which is actually deemed deviant or criminal behavior. However, these problems
would be unresolvable if interaction were essentially one-sided and a zero-sum process.
Marx was theoretically consistent in that he suggested reversing the “unruly force” of
the bourgeoisie into a dictatorship of the proletariat, but since the times When Marx
Mattered (Bershady 2016), history suggests to better pursue other solutions. As Parsons
wrote in a personal history, he held the view that it could no longer be a matter of the
substitution of the capitalist pursuit of self-interest by a “rigidly centralized control by
government in the public interest”. The overcoming of “the rigid capitalistic – social-
istic dichotomy” (Parsons 1977: 57) is possible on the basis of a broadening of a
sociological imagination by taking other factors into account, such as voluntary
associations, normative structures linked to cultural values and constitutive-religious
beliefs.
Parsons especially emphasized what Durkheim had called solidarity, its “affective
grounding … in the motivational attachment of individuals to roles, to the collectivities
in which they participate, and to their fellow members” (1977: 57). In contrast, for
Marx and his followers, solidarity was clearly a utilitarian concept where people unite
based on the same self-interest, as they share similar social conditions and status, but
only if they turn from a class in itself to a class for itself, which again requires some
external political agency.
Another characteristic associated with the zero-sum proposition for exchange in
Mills’ sociological imagination is the equation of power “with all forms of capacity to
gain ends” (Parsons 1969: 297). If all give and take were a zero-sum phenomenon, then
indeed it would not matter if a “transaction” were based on force or love or religious
beliefs. In each of these cases it would mean the exploitation and subjugation of one
person, or group of persons, by some other. The ability to acknowledge altruistic
affective attachments, which in larger social systems lead to solidarity in Durkheim’s
sense, is connected with differentiations for the description of forms of exchange.
Parsons’ media theory discerns specific media for what he called subsystems of the
social system and of the general action system. This conceptual refinement is indis-
pensable, to see the difference in whether the goals in interaction are reached by
threatening the other person, by agreeing consensually on common goals, by offering
money, or by appealing to their solidarity, responsibility and shared values. Mills, as his
fellows in “critical theory”, conclusively “deconstructs” all these different means as “in
reality” equaling “in the last instance” violent means of power. This becomes partic-
ularly clear in the passages Mills wrote on “the symbol sphere”.
To sum up, the differences of Parsons’ concept of power in contrast to Mills’ can be
broken down into three key points: 1) power is a discrete mechanism different from
money and influence and embedded in different institutions; 2) power has the potential
for transcending zero-sum relations; and 3) power is a facility or means of collective
goal attainment, not just a way of securing personal interests.

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 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193 189

“Symbol Spheres”7: Culture as Mere Legitimation of Domination?

The utilitarian power concept Mills advocates is continued in his judgments on culture,
“the symbolic sphere”, as he calls it, with its “alleged autonomy” (1959: 36). Conse-
quently, for Mills, values and normative structures are the “master symbols of legiti-
mation” of domination. Culture is merely used by “those in authority” to justify their
rule.

“Such symbols … do not form some autonomous realm within a society; their
social relevance lies in their use to justify or to oppose the arrangement of power
and the positions within this arrangement of the powerful…” (1959: 37)

For Parsons, in contrast, orientation towards culture as such plays an important role for
the understanding of the structures of social systems. He understood it as a differenti-
ated subsystem with moral-evaluative culture as having a special importance for social
normative order. Structural units, such as roles and institutions, integrate interactional
expectations with cultural patterns. This is the case in such diverse areas as the
institution of private property or the institution of marriage. The result is the emergence
of social norms for concomitant interactions. These cultural and normative references
suggest a dynamic in social systems independent of coercion, since commitments to
culture and sensitivity towards the attitudes of others are decisive principles when
engaging in interaction. This is the basis of Parsons’ assertion that there is a cultural
component inherent in every interaction, implying that there are powers in human life,
which are entirely distinct from any pursuit of egoistic interests and striving for
domination.
To contest this insight, Mills attacks the idea of the cultural quality of institutions.
For him, social structures defined in this way obscure their “real” meaning: “The result,
I think, is to transform, by definition, all institutional structures into …. what has been
called ‘the symbol sphere’. “(1959: 36) And this symbol sphere serves no other purpose
than the justification of authority and power, e.g. in the cases of “widely believed-in
moral symbols, sacred emblems … god or gods … ‘vote of the majority’” etc.
Capitalists, according to Mills, use such ideas to disguise their self-interest – since
“the old self-interest motives and reasons may lead to guilt or at least to uneasiness
among capitalists” (36–37). Conclusively, Parsons’ “value-orientations and normative
structure has mainly to do with master symbols of legitimation.”
The provided quotes include the curiosity that a “vote of the majority” is deemed as
mere means of the rule of authorities. Even if from time to time one hates the outcome
of such majority votes, the question is what an alternative would look like. A compre-
hensive sociological imagination only brings up scary scenarios.
Besides such open democracy deficit issues, Mills’ view on the role of culture in
society comes down to a crude form of functionalism. Here, once again, we come

7
“Symbol Spheres” is the title of a chapter in Character and Social Structure (1953), a book Mills authored
together with Hans Gerth. There they present a comprehensive social theory based on a synthesis focusing on
Marx, Weber, and American pragmatism. Their specific understanding of power, of authority and of “the
symbol sphere” as a means to legitimize domination became the conceptual tools Mills used in his Parsons-
critique in The Sociological Imagination.

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 190 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

across a paradox still living on in the context of what now is called cultural sociology.8
In line with Mills, a broad current of “critical” thought criticizes functionalism in
abstract terms and at the same time adheres to a reductionist functionalist interpretation
of culture as “in the last instance” serving economic and political interests. Culture is
frequently directly equaled with economic capital and power, and a plethora of cultural
studies outbid each other in “deconstructing” cultural preferences and activities, as
motivated by the pursuit of economic self-interests.
The result is a blind spot for one of the most powerful phenomena in individual and
in social life, namely the contents and forms of culture as such. Culture can indeed be
used for all sorts of purposes, no doubt also for the ones Mills pays attention to, which I
have suggested be called the “heteronomous function” of culture (Staubmann 2005).
However, much more important, both for individuals and for society, is the role culture
plays as such, its “autonomous function”. A specification of the latter for social systems
theory is the idea of the fiduciary function of a subsystem, the roles and institutions
responsible for the preservation and furtherance of culture. Parsons’ and Platt’s study
on the American university system (1973) shows how rational culture interpenetrates
with all parts of what Parsons calls the general actions system, the enormous meaning
of rational knowledge and values for social and individual life and even for an overall
characterization of modern society.
Mills’ repudiation of the autonomous role of culture leads him to deny that social
structures are inherently also cultural phenomena. He repudiates Parsons’ social struc-
tures concept but does not explicitly define what he calls “the structural features of
human society” anywhere. We can only guess when he refers to a “set of institutions”
that “controls the total society and superimposes its values by violence and the threat of
violence” (1959: 39). This reminds one of a number of totalitarian communist states,
which Mills most likely did not have in mind. However, even in these cases, sheer
violence would not be sufficient to explain their temporal stability.

Conflict and Social Change

Given Parsons’ extensive writings on social and cultural change, the persistent narrative
of his lack and incapability to deal with the issue is stunning. Here again it is a matter of
undifferentiated conceptions that account for a distorted perception of his work, one of
which is the a-priori linking of social change with conflict. In Mills’ words it reads:
“The magical elimination of conflict, and the wondrous achievement of harmony, …
remove from this ‘systematic’ and ‘general’ theory the possibility of dealing with social
change …” (1957: 42). Such a “conflict perspective” – as it is called – is limited by the
fact that conflict and change are “independent variables”.
With the help of Parsons’ theory technique of crosscutting such variables, we get a
fourfold table in which, let’s say, the rows represent the presence and absence of
conflict and the columns show the presence and absence of social change. In assessing
the four fields of our table with empirical/historical data, we realize that the presence of
conflict in no way necessarily induces social change. On the contrary, a certain level of
conflicts is a prerequisite of a stable social system. Niklas Luhmann, one of Parsons’
most accomplished students, even saw conflicts as a sort of immune system that

8
Similarly, Lidz’ critique of the strong program of cultural sociology (2019).

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 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193 191

prevents social systems from falling apart, thus contributing to their durability.
Expressed in Parsonian terms, conflicts are, to a degree, indispensable for the homeo-
stasis of social systems. In proceeding to the next field of our fourfold scheme, we
sometimes observe that conflict indeed may lead to social change, which Parsons
acknowledged in his writings accordingly.
Finally, we have the important cases where social change occurs without being
induced by any conflict at all. Historically, this is especially the case with cultural
innovations that influence social structures and processes. To name one example, there
is vast literature on the far-reaching impact of the invention of the internet and
concomitant technologies on the change of communication and interaction patterns,
both on the macro level as well as on the micro level. These technologies are, in turn,
based on prior scientific innovations that, at the time of their invention, appeared to
have no pragmatic use at all, for example the binary algebra George Boole had
elaborated.
Within the complexity of Parsons’ general theory of action, we can conclude that
any part of the general action system may induce social change. Social conflict is
neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for social change.

Conclusion

In one of his first publications, Talcott Parsons wrote that distortions in the character-
ization of society are rooted “in the isolation of one aspect of social development”
(1991 [1928]: 35). Some fifty years later, in looking back to his achievements and the
challenges he had to face, he summarized: “A large part of the hierarchy – power
preoccupation of so much generalized social thought of the last century or so I attribute
to ideological factors.” (1977 [1970]: 57). In between, he dedicated his life to over-
coming ideological one-sidedness and reductionism of all sorts in human sciences,
which he accomplished by theoretical syntheses and conceptual differentiations. The
result is a highly complex multi-dimensional “frame of reference” for achieving
empirical knowledge of society.
In his review of Mills’ The Power Elite, Parsons started his argument on the
shortcomings of Mills’ analysis by stressing the importance of such differentiated
“technical theoretical schemes” (1956: 124) in order to prevent “ideological distortion”
(125) in the interpretation of empirical data. Mills’ interpretation of Parsons as a grand
theorist is an ideological distortion, in this sense grounded in a deficient theoretical
scheme he charmingly had called the sociological imagination.
The “prophet who came in from a desert” found many followers. His polemical
writing style resonated well with the emerging political culture with its predilection for
“style over substance, outrage over objectivity…” (Goertzel 1989: 244–5). His theo-
retical core displays a close affinity to the theories of the stylites of contemporary
sociology, such as Pierre Bourdieu or Michelle Foucault. Seymour Martin Lipset, in his
essay on the state of American sociology, elaborated on the thesis “that the parlous state
of sociology … (is) related to its vulnerability to politicization” (1994: 199). What he
obviously referred to was not the political use of sociological knowledge but the
usurpation of the sociological imagination by political interests. Perhaps political
agendas do require simplifications, such as the isolation of specific goals for their

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 192 The American Sociologist (2021) 52:178–193

effective pursuit. However, imposing the simplifications and concomitant restraints on

scholarly reasoning leads to its collapse. For the tree of knowledge does not resemble
an upright sailing mast, but rather a widely ramified plant that requires abundant free
space for further growth. It will be one of the most important criteria for any future
sociological imagination to procure such a prospect.

Acknowledgements I want to thank Victor M. Lidz, Lawrence T. Nichols, A. Javier Treviño, Bruce C.
Wearne, and two anonymous reviewers for their critique and helpful comments on a prior version of this
essay.

Funding Open access funding provided by University of Innsbruck and Medical University of Innsbruck.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest There is no conflict of interest associated with this paper.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which
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