As the left seeks to define its vision, the scholarship of C. Wright Mills serves as a guidepost for drawing up a coherent philosophy. This article makes mention of Mills' resurgence, but I'm out of the loop regarding liberal think tanks and their sources of inspiration. This article (long) is titled, 'A Mills Revival,' but doesn't list specifically which professors are studying his body of work.
"Mills is both an exhilarating exemplar of the role and reach of the public radical intellectual, and at the same time, a sobering reminder of how far the human sciences have descended since the end of the Vietnam War. For even in death Mills was an inspiration to a generation of young intellectuals estranged from the suburban nightmare of post-World War II America and eager to shape their own destiny, and to some in his own generation who, in fear and trembling, had withdrawn from public involvement, but yearned to return. The decline of social engagement and political responsibility that accompanied the ebbing of the impulse to reform and revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, witnessed the shift of labor, socialist and social liberal parties and movements to the liberal center. Many erstwhile radical intellectuals who retained their public voice moved steadily to the right, motivated, they said, by the authoritarianism of the New as well as the Old Left, and by their conviction that American capitalism and its democratic institutions were the best of all possible worlds.
He suffered the sometimes scorching rebuke of his contemporaries and, even as he won the admiration of the young as well as the tattered battalions of left intellectuals, had severed his ties with much of the liberal center which sorely needed to hear his argument that, in face of the awesome and almost complete hegemony of the power élite, American democratic institutions were in a state of almost complete meltdown. That recently a small body of scholars have revisited his legacy should be welcomed. The question of whether intellectuals will remain tucked into their academic bunkers depends not only on the depressions or wars to pry them out. Indeed the economic slumps that have punctuated the last two decades have failed to move most to utterance, although there is evidence that, after 9/11 some radical intellectuals have engaged in protest against the U.S. promulgated war on Iraq or have entered the debate on the side of the government. In the final reckoning, even if, after 1950, most of Mills’s tirades were self-motivated, although a decade later Mills looked to an aroused coterie of young intellectuals as the source of a new democratic public, it is usually resurgent labor and other social movements to which intellectuals respond. While it can be argued that prior to 9/11 there were signs of revival in the political opposition, it remains to be seen whether, after suffering the defeats of the early years of the 21st century, the radical, nomadic spirit of C. Wright Mills will inculcate the minds and hearts of the intellectuals and activists upon whom he bestowed so much hope."
http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htmI'm giving consideration to making an in-depth study of Mills' writings and distilling the essence - along with a bibliography - for a Demopedia entry. I'd appreciate hearing the thoughts of others concerning this endeavor - whether it may be too theoretical or esoteric for inclusion in Demopedia.
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