---
title: Ralph Miliband on C. Wright Mills ~ 1962
date: 2025-04-15T10:17:35Z
modified: 2025-04-15T10:17:37Z
permalink: "https://dogwonder.co.uk/2025/04/ralph-miliband-on-c-wright-mills-1962/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 5664
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---

> 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](https://newleftreview.org/issues/i15/articles/ralph-miliband-c-wright-mills)