[lbo-talk] A short soliloquy on freedom and fishing

[JOANNA A.]

yes...that's what I meant, that intellectuals almost never identify w working class. The whole point of being an intellectual, it seems, was to distance yourself from working class. ....to claim nobility on the basis of intelligence and culture.

J

----- Original Message ----- 
On 2013-11-07, at 2:53 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote: 


> Joanna: "when did intellectuals as a whole ever identify themselves with 
> people who work for a living? It seems to me that's mostly what they have 
> always done" 
> 
> [WS:] When tenured sinecures were scarce? 

There's no evidence Intellectuals "as a whole" ever identified with other than the propertied classes. Throughout history only a minority of intellectuals, typically considered as "traitors to their class", have identified with the poor and powerless - their relative numbers rising and falling in accordance with the intensity of the class struggles around them. The leftist intelligentsia, for example, was more prominent in the 30's and 60's than in periods of declining class conflict like the 50's and recent decades, but in no case did dissenting intellectuals ever represent a majority of those who thought and wrote systematically about social and political issues. 
___________________________________ 
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk