ABSTRACT
C. Wright Mills was highly regarded as a teacher—especially at the undergraduate level. Mills left a variety of unfinished tasks and incomplete manuscripts, including Contacting the Enemy, which was to be a study of the Soviet Power Elite similar in tone and substance to his analysis of the American power elite. Mills' sociological imagination stood for a style of intellectual work inherited from the French Enlightenment. The uses of historical sociology guarantee sociology a place in the scientific sun because it need no longer be assumed that there is an "essential human nature" or a "mysterious core" to men in their social interaction. For Mills, the writings of the Marxists—Luxemburg, Kautsky, Bebel, etc.—were like an uncovering of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The impact of these writings on Mills' general vision of sociology can be grasped only in light of his conviction concerning the bankruptcy of the liberal tradition with which he was in such sympathy.
