>Think I read this years ago in a piece on Richard Hofstadter
>and C.Wright Mills, in of all places, the neo-connish, "American Scholar,"
>that the dept. chair at Univ. of Maryland for Soc., sometime in the fifties,
>said Mills wasn't a sociologist, he was a Marxist! (The Sunday, NY Times
>Book Review just had a piece on the UC Press collection of letters by
>Mills.)
Speaking of C. Wright Mills, here's an interesting post by Chris Brady about a NYT review of Mills letters. Yoshie
At 2:49 PM -0700 7/11/00, Chris Brady wrote:
>Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 14:49:09 -0700
>From: Chris Brady <chris_brady at earthling.net>
>To: Marxism List <marxism at lists.panix.com>
>Subject: From Yip to C. Wright Mills
>Sender: owner-marxism at lists.panix.com
>Reply-To: marxism at lists.panix.com
>
>The negligence of Marxist Yip Harburg has similarities with the muddying
>of Mills. This ideological redaction is part of the maintenance of the
>hegemony of the ruling class. The blockade of alternatives to the
>dominant order is a necessity in publications that cater to the common
>reader.
>
>In the review of the new collection of the letters of C. Wright Mills by
>John B. Judis ("The Spiritual Wobbly: The sociologist C. Wright Mills
>did not fit in with either Marxists or liberals," in New York Times Book
>Review July 9, 2000), this reviewer of books for the conventional
>liberal, dominant culture denigrates "anachronistic Marxism" and snubs
>the red left. He portrays Mills as a flawed genius whose work would
>stand better if that embarrassing socialistic stuff could be quietly
>jettisoned.
>
>As far as anachronistic goes, we know that it's The New York Times Book
>Review that is the trusty, old-fashioned tool of the bourgeoisie,
>however, and that is why Judis makes the cut with his passé points about
>Mills. Judis just jabs away with unsubstantiated barbs instead of
>well-argued points such as "[Mills had a] disastrously simple-minded
>view of international relations. During World War II, he regarded the
>Allied and Axis powers as bent equally upon creating a new militarized
>corporate capitalism," (my response to this was a laughed What?!),
>and "During the cold war, Mills's anti-authoritarianism led him to
>embrace an equally unfounded equivalence between Eisenhower's
>''Amerika'' -- Mills's spelling in a September 1957 letter to Harvey
>Swados -- and Khrushchev's Soviet Union."
>
>First of all, I doubt if many on our Marxism List would disagree with
>Mills's take on World War II. It would be naïve to accept the view
>handed to us by the US imperialists that they ever defended democracy.
>Secondly, Judis fails to discriminate between the various fabrications
>of "equivalence" that critics could plausibly erect, rightly or wrongly,
>between the USA and the USSR. For him it is plainly incorrect to
>recognize any similarities between the two great superpowers of the
>twentieth century (a sentence that in itself shows the inconsistencies
>in his reasoning, or lack of
). Judis leaves no doubt that in his mind
>the USA was not only different but remains cleanly superior to the
>USSR. This opinion, not an argument, remains pathetically shallow.
>
>For all his attempts to locate Mills in some pink fog amidst liberals
>and leftists, Judis made the unexceptional oversight of ignoring the
>independent socialist magazine Monthly Review. Mills contributed an
>essay to MR in those important years before his death, that very period
>in which Judis claims Mills began "to see himself as a political
>activist whose words will lead directly to deeds." Judis notes that
>Mills described his pro-Cuban Revolution book ''Listen, Yankee'' as "a
>pivotal book for me." ''Listen, Yankee'' came out around the same time
>as Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy's influential _Cuba: Anatomy of a
>Revolution_ adding to the opposition against US imperialism from
>within.
>
>Judis persists in recognizing Mills -- despite his "disastrously
>simple-minded view of international relations" -- as "a kind of
>difficult genius" whose "view of his work as art and literature probably
>helped him to attain a certain objectivity even in the midst of his
>indignation." Nevertheless, Mills's "vices seem to have been integral
>to his virtues." To make his "genius" appear bona fide in the NYTBR,
>Judis must make sure that the vice of socialism is slighted. In the
>context of NYTBR's output over the years it is too boringly familiar
>(e.g., The NYTBR has NEVER reviewed any book published by the Monthly
>Review Press, regardless of the fame of the author or the originality or
>style of the material). Thankfully for the NYTBR, C. Wright Mills
>conveniently died soon after he made his radical left turn, and produced
>no further material that they would have to so obviously ignore, or
>pillory as proof of his perfidy.
>
>The analysis of hegemony in action is a serious matter.
>Of greater importance is the application of counter-hegemony.
>It is important to hone our theory, but the point is praxis.
>
>YFTR,
>Chris Brady