Alvin Gouldner on Intellectuals & the Social Totality

It follows that neither involvement suffices to sustain theorists’ efforts to develop understanding of the social totality, although ironically both Party theorists and University academicians agree that each of their (different) group environments already suffices for that very purpose. My own conclusion is to the contrary. I therefore believe that one of the central tasks of social theory in our time is to attempt to rethink the position of theory's own group involvements and to re-examine the conditions, social and organizational, requisite for the development of an effective community of theorists committed to the understanding of the social totality.

SOURCE: Gouldner, Alvin W. Against Fragmentation: The Origins of Marxism and the Sociology of Intellectuals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 299 (final paragraph).

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