Why so Many Intellectuals Are Opposed to Capitalism
When you are dealing with a field as black and white as math, you are either right or you are wrong. But when it comes to communication, the victor is not always the individual with the soundest logic. Instead, to he who can construct the most poetic sentences or appeal to the strongest emotions goes the spoils. And many wordsmiths are used to being praised for the construct of their words, rather than the content of their ideas.
Unfortunately, our education system has reinforced the belief that being a wordsmith guarantees your value in society. And unfortunately for the intellectuals, the market does [not] operate in this manner. To succeed in the market you must create real value for people that goes beyond your intellect. And this is something that irks the academic class.
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They talk about the topic – Maybe non-intellectuals have the same rate of opposition to capitalism as intellectuals, but they’re not in the business of writing about it. I wonder if you if you asked non-intellectuals questions about capitalism in straightforward language how strong their support would be.
Outside their area – Sometimes we wrongly thing someone who’s really smart in one area is also smart outside her area. It’s like how Linus Pauling was an advocate of megadosing of vitamin C.
Package Dealing – People wrongly tie ideas together, saying you have to pick a package. Someone says he believes in respecting everyone’s rights. People tell him he’s a part of the group that respects rights and opposes capitalism. If he doesn’t know much about capitalism, he may say sign me up for that group if I must pick a group.
Definition of capitalism – There are various parts of capitalism and various degess you can oppose the different parts. If someone is for having central banks control monetary policy, does that make her anti-capitalism? I suspect many of the people the author considers anti-capitalist actually do not oppose private ownership of the means of production.
Claim might not be true. - I wonder if the whole claim that intellectuals are more opposed to capitalism is even true. In my experience there’s a “neo-liberal consensus” among intellectuals. The consensus supports capitalism but tolerates costly and intrusive gov’t as a fact of life for the modern world. In my experience, less intellectual people are more supportive of facile solutions that involve government intervening to fix the economy.
"Wordsmith intellectuals fare well in capitalist society...Their occupational skills are in demand, their income much above average. "
"By and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals... they mix socially with successful capitalists and so have them as a salient comparison group and are humiliated by their lesser status."
If we go with the latter claim, why don't we similar opposition to capitalism among other fields that have the two trait mentions a) earn less money and b) have a narrative as to why their profession is important.
Anti-lectuals: some measure of compartmentalized bull crap accumulated.
Intra-lectuals: some measure of knowledge integrated into wisdom.