[lbo-talk] Noam on intellectuals

[Sean Andrews]

On 2/11/07, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:

> "It happens quite often that a very bright worker must
> stand silent while a stupid scholar gets the better of
> him, not because the latter has any sense but because
> of the education denied to the worker, which the other
> has been able to get because of the labor of the
> worker that clothed him, lodged him, fed him, and
> provided him with tutors, books, and everything else
> he needed for his education while his stupidity was
> being scientifically developed in the schools. [After
> this,] this new aristocrat of the intellect finally
> tells you, 'You know nothing, you understand nothing,
> you are an ass, and I, an intelligent man, can load a
> pack saddle on you and lead you.' This is
> insufferable."


But the flipside of this--and the direction Bakunin is readed (which
is also somewhat like a return to the idiocracy thread), in many cases
what passes for the "bright worker" is no more independent minded than
the stupid (or even bright) scholar, s/he just gets more authority on
account of his/her being able to marshall populist appeals (hence
president dufuss).  On the other hand, it seems a bit disingenuous for
a person acknowledged as an intellectual (Chomsky) to try to create
some populist aura around himself by criticizing intellectuals
(particularly when he's from a culture that places so little value in
that group of people, particularly when they are criticizing the
government--in other words, even if he means someone like Kissinger,
the culture at large (not just the mass media, but the people who
watch it for their opinions) is more likely to not take Chomsky
himself seriously (at his behest), dismiss anyone else similarly
situated as an egghead, and give Bill Krystal several platforms on a
weekly basis to spew his commonplace "expert" propaganda.

In this, I am reminded of this passage from Adorno's Minima Moralia,
from chapter 7:

They, the people:  The circumstance that intellectuals mostly have to
do with intellectuals, should not deceive them into believing their
own kind still more base than the rest of mankind.  For they got to
know each other in the most shameful and degrading of all situations,
that of competing supplicants, and thus are virtually compelled to
show each other their most repulsive sides.  Other people,
particularly the simple folk, whose qualities the intellectual is so
fond of stressing, generally encounter him in the role of those with
something to sell, yet have no fear of the customer ever poaching on
their preserves.  The car mechanic, the barmaid, have little
difficulty in abstaining from effrontery: courtesy is in any case
imposed on them from above.  If, conversely, illiterates come to
intellectuals wanting letters written for them, they too may receive a
tolerably good impression.  But the moment the simple folk are forced
to brawl among themselves for their portion of the social product,
their envy and spite surpass anything seen among literati or musical
directors.  In the end the glorification of the splendid underdogs is
nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes
them so.  The justified guilt feelings of those exempt from physical
work ought not become an excuse for the 'idiocy of rural life.'
Intellectuals, who alone write about intellectuals and give them their
bad name in that of honesty, reinforce the lie.  A great part of the
prevalent anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, right up to Huxley,
is set in motion when writers complain about the mechanisms of
competition without understanding them, and so fall victim to them. In
the activity most their own they have shut out the consciousness of
/tat twam asi/.* Which is why they then scuttle into Indian temples.

* 'thou art this': mystic pantheist formula of the Upanishads."