Planificación

In the same way that Thompson’s conception o f the intellectual may be compared and contrasted with that of Gramsci, Mills’ idea o f the intellectual (of the social scientific intellectual particularly) as a key social and political actor prompts comparisons with Mannheim. Mills had little faith in the working-class, even if constituted as “the people”, a la Thompson, and ultimately became dismissive o f what he was to call the ‘labour metaphysic’, that is, the elevation by those on the Left o f the revolutionary agency o f labour to the level o f an unassailable political first principle (1963: 256). As we have seen, Mills came to propose intellectuals as filling the historical shoes of the working-class as a possible ‘radical agency for change’ (1963: 256); and as an integral part of this political perspective he looked to the traditions of social science and the experience and consciousness of social scientists, rather than popular traditions and experience, as that in which such agency could be grounded.

In The Sociological Imagination Mills spoke of the tradition of classic social science as exemplary in providing models o f engaged and truly social science, wherein methods are employed for specific sets of concrete social problems and theories ‘are theories of some range o f phenomena.’ (1959: 121) Practitioners

within this tradition, according to Mills, were concerned not with building models or schema ‘from microscopic study’, nor with deducing down from grand theories to the level o f empirical reality, but ‘try to build and to deduce at the same time.’ (1959: 128)

A year later Mills edited a volume of readings from the classic tradition,

Images o f M an (1960). That tradition constituted, as John Eldridge points out, ‘a great cultural and intellectual resource. Its existence could not be taken for granted and the task of the contemporary sociologist was to ensure that it was a living tradition ’ (1983: 102) The contemporary social science intellectual was obliged to ‘[t]o reflect, keep alive and extend the social science tradition ’ (1983: 103) Indeed, for Mills, that tradition was comparable with the literary tradition. Mills displayed a distinct literary consciousness, and in White Collar in particular

sought to meld together social-scientific and literary methodologies and perspectives, just as Mannheim had tried to renew social science by incorporating concepts and categories drawn from art-historical and cultural studies.

It is possible to see in Mills’ active conception o f social science not only respect for Mannheim as a vital contributor to a quasi-I,eavisite Great Tradition but also an apparent re-activation of the latter’s notion of ‘sociology as a form of consciousness’ (Eldridge, 1983: 103) - that is, as that which cannot be restricted

understanding o f social life in its totality Mills’ claim that the social sciences constituted the “common denominator of our cultural period” directly echoed Mannheim’s claim that ‘the self-interpretation of man’ was now mirrored ‘in the

perspective of his social pursuits’ (1956: 94). For both, sociology had become an “ethos” and an epistemological principle. For Mills, the “promise” of the social sciences was that which Mannheim saw in the sociology of knowledge - the

possibility for reciprocal knowledge of the individual and the world, self- knowledge becoming knowledge of the world. Moreover, Mills’ conception o f the mutual character o f political and intellectual crises in modem society seemed to

endorse precisely Mannheim’s collapsing of intellectual self-consciousness and socio-political action in the process o f synthesising conflicting ideologies

However, having indicated these conceptual connections, it is necessary to point out that Mills’ “Mannheimian” commitment to intellectual agency and to the efficacy o f the sociological consciousness should be seen in relation to other, critical elements in Mills’ intellectual relation to Mannheim

Thus, Mills was highly resistant to the idea of planning, which he conceived of as offering solutions of a technocratic order The planner, the expert, the policy scientist were, for Mills, all liable to be drawn into the service of power. As we

saw in chapter one, the intellectual-as-planner, as conceived by Mannheim, became an agent o f the existing social structure, a supposedly neutral figure seeking the rational adjustment of all parts - social actors and institutional functions - into an harmonious social whole Mannheim’s earlier historicisation and socialisation o f knowledge and of the intellectual had ultimately laid the grounds for a new objectivity beyond history, which in turn provided the

foundations for the scientific manipulation of the “key positions” within the social structure.

For Mills, however, as expressed in a review o f Mannheim’s Man and Society,

and in terms similar to those of Horkheimer and Adorno in chapter two, Mannheim’s notion of planning exhibited myopia where the realities o f power were concerned Mannheim appeared to carry on regardless of the fact that there were strata who already occupied the “key positions” in society, and that this was the key problem to face rather than entertaining possibilities of planning on that

basis (1940: 968-969). Such planning would simply deliver more power, now of a “decontaminated” technocratic-scientific kind, into the hands of those who already held it.

The “intellectual craftsman” envisaged by Mills was rooted in the active unity of history and biography, of object and subject. The very designation “craftsman” signalled an attempt by Mills to give a new experiential and moral texture and value to scientific-scholarly activity. In this regard, Mills could be said to be more readily related to the earlier Mannheim, to the Mannheim rooted in the cultural revolt and vanguardism o f the Sunday Circle, the Mannheim who articulated the

Lebensphilosophie of Simmel and Dilthey - the “critical-moral” rather than the “methodological” Mannheim Or rather, perhaps one should say that whereas for Mannheim methodology could be detached from a specific cultural-critical and moral stance, and thence could become the foundation of detachment, inhering in the method of politico-cultural synthesis constituted as a scientific warrant against

craftsmanship, method could not be so detached from morality, from the specific moral progression of the individual intellectual.

The sociology of knowledge, though rooted in experience, nevertheless sought its synthesis, and as an essential part of the synthetic process sought to defer specific commitments and decisions which had to be taken within the realm of experience. The idea of planning that grew out of the sociology of knowledge ultimately turned knowledge against the supposedly irrational and chaotic sphere of experience: science -social science - could achieve, indeed, had to achieve, a position beyond the “irrational” flux of history. For his part, however, Mills’ imaginative crafts-worker, grafting onto the sociology o f knowledge a literary and philosophic sensibility of which Mannheim had tried to purge it, sought to turn social science - as the use of specific skills and knowledges, as the elaboration and extension of a specific “living tradition” - back into personal-moral experience, into that which was a matter o f individual feeling and creativity.