Document Type
Article
Abstract
The commonalities between C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse – both social theorists who enjoyed a considerable public audience – are charted in this essay. Despite apparent fundamental differences over Marxism and "Big Theory", their parallel theoretical engagements with the linked questions of post-war political agency and the impact of U.S. mass media, are mapped out. A specific limitation of their "New Left" philosophies and politics is each thinker's problematic tendency to locate potential "freedom" in an increasingly narrow "private" sphere.
Repository Citation
Panton, James. "Intellectual Influences on the New Left in America: C Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–25. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol8/iss1/17