concludes Reunion, his memoir, pondering the future of the generation in which he was so central an actor:
The sixties leave a sense of troubling incompleteness and shortcoming alongside that of proud achievement. But if the time has remained difficult to capture, it is also possible that it is not over. The decade itself was perhaps only the beginning of a time of vast change that is not yet fulfiUed. Our generation, after all, has only lived into its middle years .... Why conclude that life's most powerful moments are already behind us? If the sixties are not over, it is up to the sixties generation to continue trying to heal our wounds, find our truth, and apply our ideals with a new maturity to our nation's future)
In 1988, twenty years after the most revolutionary year in a tumultuous decade, Hayden's words are just as pertinent to the present and future of social theory. When the rioting had ceased years ago, many of us looked up and found our intellectual, as well as political, lives changed. Now, we look back and see that the broader intellectual and academic landscapes have also changed --in large part because of the revolutionary ethos of the sixties. Tom Hayden's question is, therefore, also the question social theory must ask. What is the future for the sixties generation?
The very prominence toda)~ of social theory, which barely existed in the American academy in 1968, is one of the landmark accomplishments of the sixties generation. When Alvin Gouldner was writing, fresh with the spirit of the sixties, social theory was little more than a projected third force between academic sociology and Marxism. In this respect, as others, Gouldner continued the tradition of C. Wright Mills. 2 Today neither sociology nor Marxism can be said to be exclusive actors in the field of social theory. Critical knowledge of society is now shaped by