[lbo-talk] Noam on intellectuals

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 2/11/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> I asked Noam Chomsky to elaborate on his embrace of American anti-
> intellectualism, and if he considered himself an intellectual. Here's
> his answer:
>
> > In standard usage, "intellectual" means someone who has sufficient
> > privilege, resources, opportunities, etc., so as to be able to
> > reach some kind of audience on matters of general human interest.
> > Has nothing particular to do with insight, knowledge,
> > intelligence,....  By "anti-intellectualism" I meant the strain in
> > American culture that doesn't take intellectuals too seriously,
> > about the opposite extreme from Paris, where if one of the famed
> > "intellectuals" sneezes, there's a front-page story in Le Monde and
> > everyone gasps with awe.  In these terms, I'm an intellectual, and
> > Americans shouldn't take me seriously for that reason. I'm all in
> > favor of that.
>
> Me, I don't think an "intellectual" is one with privileges,
> resources, connections, etc., or shouldn't be. An intellectual is
> someone with specialized knowledge, the capacity to synthesize facts
> and ideas into some sort of analysis, the skills to circulate their
> knowledge and analysis through words and images. Like Noam Chomsky,
> who deserves to be taken seriously.

Noam Chomsky is taken seriously, even in the USA, to say nothing of
the rest of the world, probably much more so than any of the French
intellectuals who have made the front page of Le Monde.  So are many
other American intellectuals on the Left, like Ralph Nader, Michael
Moore, the late and lamented Edward Said, the late and lamented
Stephen Jay Gould, etc.  What makes American intellectuals different
from those of the rest of the world is that in America intellectuals,
when they get taken seriously, become individually famous and acquire
individual followings, and their sayings and doings, however correct,
do not help build enduring popular movements and institutions,
especially political parties.

In other words, American intellectuals are the antithesis of "organic
intellectuals" as defined by Gramsci:

     The working class, like the bourgeoisie before it,

     is capable of developing from within its ranks

     its own organic intellectuals, and the function of

     the political party, whether mass or vanguard,

     is that of channelling the activity of these organic intellectuals

     and providing a link between the class and certain sections

     of the traditional intelligentsia. The organic intellectuals of

     the working class are defined on the one hand by their role

     in production and in the organisation of work and on the other

     by their "directive" political role, focused on the Party.

     It is through this assumption of conscious responsibility,

     aided by absorption of ideas and personnel from

     the more advanced bourgeois intellectual strata,

     that the proletariat can escape from defensive corporatism

     and economism and advance towards hegemony

     ("The Intellectuals," _Prison Notebooks_, 1949/1971,
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/editions/spn/problems/intellectuals.htm>).
-- 
Yoshie
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