Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:05:48 -0500
From: hugh bone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Public Intellectuals


Don,

Thanks for the quote.  I think the general statements about intellectuals
are substantially accurate.  There is always the question:  What are the
beliefs and motives of the one who speaks?

When Gramsci goes into Marxist mode, he may speak truly, but
the language, intent, and meaning, of Marx was violence and revolution which
might have led to "Social Democracy", and some (not me) would claim it was
achieved in the USSR, China and Cuba.

Hugh


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> In a message dated 2/14/01 5:41:21 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> hbone-AT-optonline.net writes:
>
> << 1) Who are the public intellectuals?  Maybe they're like the
>  Abominable Snowman, roaming the forest in theory, but never seen in the
>  flesh.
>   >>
>
> Hue and others, I thought you might like to know what Antonio Gramsci
thought
> about intellectuals. He divided intellectuals into two groups: those
directly
> involved in "directing the ideas and aspirations of their class" through
> hegemony, known as organic intellectuals and the rest, known as
traditional
> intellectuals.
>
> Don Smith
>
> Following is a rather long quote from "Selections from the Prison
Notebooks -
> Antonio Gramsci".
>
> The central argument of Gramsci's essay on the formation of the
intellectuals
> is simple. The notion of "the intellectuals" as a distinct social category
> independent of class is a myth. All men are potentially intellectuals in
the
> sense of having an intellect and using it, but not all are intellectuals
by
> social function Intellectuals in the fimctional sense fall into two
groups.
> In the first place there are the "traditional" professional intellectuals,
> literary, scientific and so on, whose position in the interstices of
society
> has a certain inter-class aura about it but derives ultimately from past
and
> present class relations and conceals an attachment to various historical
> class formations. Secondly, there are the "organic" intellectuals, the
> thinking and organising element of a particular fundamental social class.
> These organic intellectuals are distinguished less by their profession,
which
> may be any job characteristic of their class, than by their function in
> directing the ideas and aspirations of the class to which they organically
> belong.
> The implications of this highly original schema bear on all aspects of
> Gramsci's thought. Philosophically they connect with the proposition
(p.323)
> that "all men are philosophers" and with Gramsci's whole discussion "of
the
> dissemination of philosophical ideas and of ideology within a given
culture.
> They relate to Gramsci's ideas on Education (pp. hrt) in their stress on
the
> democratic character of the intellectual function, but also on the class
> character of the formation of intellectuals through school. They also
> underlie his study of history and particularly of the Risorgimento, in
that
> the intellectuals, in the wide sense of the word, are seen by Gramsci as
> performing an essential mediating function in the struggle of class
forces.
> Most important of all, perhaps, are the implications for the political
> struggle. Social Democracy, following Kautsky, has tended to see the
> relationship between workers and intellectuals in the Socialist movement
in
> formal and mechanistic terms, with the intellectuals-refugees from the
> bourgeois class-providing theory and ideology (and often leadership) for a
> mass base of non-intellectuals, i.e. workers. This division of labour
within
> the movement was vigorously contested by Lenin, who declares, in What is
to
> be Done, that in the revolutionary party "all distinctions as between
workers
> and intellectuals... must be obliterated". Lenin's attitude to the problem
of
> the intellectuals is closely connected with his theory of the vanguard
party,
> and when he writes about the need for socialist consciousness to be
brought
> to the working class from outside, the agency he foresees for carrying
this
> out is not the traditional intelligentsia but the revolutionary party
itself,
> in which former workers and former professional intellectuals of bourgeois
> origin have been fused into a single cohesive unit. Gramsci develops this
> Leninist schema in a new way, relating it to the problems of the working
> class as a whole. 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
> channeling 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.
>