C. Wright Mills cannot be neatly labelled and catalogued. He never belonged to any party or faction; he did not think of himself as a ‘Marxist’; he had the most profound contempt for orthodox social-democrats and for closed minds in the Communist world. He detested smug liberals and the kind of radical whose response to urgent and uncomfortable choices is hand-wringing. He was a man on his own, with both the strength and also the weakness which go with that solitude. He was on the left, but not of the left, a deliberately lone guerilla, not a regular soldier. He was highly organised, but unwilling to be organised, with self-discipline the only discipline he could tolerate. He had friends rather than comrades. Despite all this, perhaps because of it, he occupied a unique position in American radicalism. He was desperately needed by socialists everywhere, and his death leaves a gaping void. In a trapped and inhumane world, he taught what it means to be a free and humane intellect. ‘Get on with it’, he used to say. ‘Work’. So, in his spirit, let us.
Ralph Miliband