If I am reading Gramsci correctly, the idea is that the intellectuals considered "organic" are actually supposed to be a part of the oppressed class or at least working more directly with them.
> Instead of economic power based on rights to property (capitalists),
> their power is based on ideas and knowledge. As capitalists desire
> some scarcity in their property, we might predict that the
> professional-managerial class desires a scarcity of people wielding
> its skills. (So for example, sane professionals create professional
> organizations which limit their supply.)
Bourdieu would certainly agree to with this within a given sphere of intellectual production--i.e. there is a system of symbolic capital which helps to structure the relationship of positions and dispositions within the field--and the same would apply to the way this works in most of the somewhat autonomous fields of science and, as within those fields, in order for you to have an effect in the field (sort of like on a listserve) you must be acknowledged by the major actors in the field, whether your position is one of a reinvigoration of the doxa that applies to the field or a heterodox intervention.
But I don't think this crudely translates into the supply/demand issue you posit here, or at least it doesn't directly relate to the question of whether the obscurity of language is the primary barrier to attainment of professional status. It may relate to the more official ones--i.e. you have to speak the language in order to write the articles in order to get published in order to get tenure--but with the proliferation of journals and conferences, it is difficult to see this as limiting the supply. In fact, now that academic journals are a fairly vigorous market in themselves, the tendency seems to be the opposite of what would be expected--i.e. there are more journals being published with less clear criteria of what is required to win publication, particularly in journals with a multidisciplinary approach.
This is possible because it is rarely individuals purchasing the journals and university libraries are usually willing to pick up a few new journals (or they are forced to because, like cable TV channels, they are sold in blocks).
In short, I don't think this really qualifies as being a system which limits the number of scholars. In fact, it seems like there is a tendency to produce far more than the market can handle--this is especially the case in fields most directly related to this conversation, like English.
>
> Is that the intellectual class's version of "anti-Americanism"? Just
> as capitalists aren't fond of class analysis, I can hardly expect
> intellectuals to enjoy this sort of analysis turned on their class
> interests. Simply look at the bitter denunciations of Chomsky by those
> he criticizes.
This is basically saying that Chomsky (like all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists) are validated as correct simply because they are critiqued (or ignored). I also don't see many "bitter denunciations" of Chomsky in general. He's mentioned in most considerations of propaganda I've read in political economy of communication, where he and Ed Herman have the most concrete analysis. In other areas, of general political science or of uses of ideology, I don't see many people talking badly about him except to say that he has a blunt tool that, useful as it might be in certain situations, hasn't changed much in the past 30 or so years.
I'd also point out that intellectuals, particularly those on the left or who vaguely feel that they should be, are almost annoyingly vigilant in their consideration of how they do or do not support the dominant interests of gender, race, capital, class, etc. (I'd also note that the idea of intellectuals as a "class" doesn't seem very precise, but maybe I don't understand the context in which you're using it.) If anything, this has become part of the capital of the field.
>> After all, who are Ehrenreich and Dijas in your
>> account? Aren't they intellectuals as well?
>
> Wasn't Engels a capitalist? Chomsky an intellectual? A broad social
> analysis is not like physics; people in a given class aren't identical
> particles.
I realize that, but I was responding to the comment you had before this which grouped all intellectuals as a class into the same category in relation to capital and this was in a discussion of Marx's and marxists consideration of "intellectuals" which. Also, this statement itself seems contradictory in that you're using class in two different ways.
>> This, I think, points to the need to specify ideologies in relation to
>> historical blocs of socio-economic power and the process through which
>> they are able to gain what appears to be a hegemonic dominance (defined,
>> as Perry Anderson has pointed out, through a varying combination of
>> coercion and consent. In other words, ideology always operates best
>> with the threat of force for non-compliance, a threat which, at least in
>> western, industrial society, usually corresponds with a certain capture
>> of the institutions of the nation-state.)
>
> The "father of modern public relations," Bernays, leads me to the
> opposite conclusion. Controlling beliefs is more necessary in
> societies where physical force is less of an option.
I tend to think that Gramsci and Bernays are basically dealing with the same sorts of questions at the same historical moment. However, Gramsci was trying to consider strategy and was a more critical kind of observer who constantly had to wrestle with what was the dominant mechanism in a given society at a given moment. Bernays, on the other hand, was first and foremost a propagandist--not least for the importance of propaganda or its gussied up term "public relations." I think most labor organizers or African Americans living in the lynch-crazy south of the time would question just how limited the option of using force was in the US society that Bernays was watching at the time. It might have been less of an option, but that doesn't mean that, if it was necessary, one couldn't count on the state or society to step in and apply some force to the issue.
> There's a great literature of how ideology works. Often by people who
> create them in the first place. Like those employed in the public
> relations industry, who promote extreme individualism, hopelessness
> and commodity fetishism.
>
> And I'm absolutely fine with the idea of social "scientists"
> dissecting ideology too. But that does not imply immunity to the
> institutional critique they happily dish out, regardless of the fine
> intentions they ascribe to themselves.
I don't think anyone is claiming that they shouldn't be. I thought the original question was whether we can even talk about the concept of ideology or it was a useful conversation at all. On the other hand, Bernays was wildly successful in manipulating public opinion and used many of the theories of his uncle Sigmund Freud (right or wrong) in his methods. Therefore trying to consider the issue from a more complex standpoint, using an updated version of these psychological theories (i.e. through Lacan) and a set of semiotic concepts more attuned to the current circumstances. If this requires more complex language or a greater number of concepts, I don't see how this is *necessarily* or in any simple way an attempt by those intellectuals to avoid looking at themselves or to set up some sort of boundary to keep out possible competitors. However, I'll agree with your tacit argument here that most of them would do well to read some Bernays (as well as people like Lippmann--who had a much more virulent streak of intellectualism) to see some of the intellectuals most directly involved in setting up the current state of affairs.
-s