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Why American Unions Need Intellectuals
- Dissent
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 57, Number 2, Spring 2010
- pp. 69-73
- 10.1353/dss.0.0128
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Sixty years ago, in The New Men of Power, C. Wright Mills made a perceptive observation about the troubled relationship between labor leaders and radical intellectuals during an era of Cold War militarism and conservative advance. Wrote Mills: To have an American labor movement capable of carrying out the program of the left, making allies among the middle class, and moving upstream against the main drift, there must be a rank and file of vigorous workers, a brace of labor intellectuals, and a set of politically alert labor leaders. There must be the power and the intellect.