Abstract

C. Wright Mills was that rarity among American thinkers — a political intellectual — who drew primarily on Western liberal traditions, American traditions of moral pragmatism and craftsmanship, the social classics and methods of sociology, to fashion a unique critical voice. Writing at the end of the liberal era, he brilliantly captured the outlines of a post-modern society he referred to as the “fourth epoch.” In this work, he anticipated and helped shape much of what was good in the American new left, raising questions which remain largely unanswered twenty-four years after his untimely death at age forty-five.

Mills argued that the elaboration of reason and culture was necessary to oppose the new “behemoth” of social rationalization.