Intellectuals

Intellectuals

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Modern societies face a growing dilemma posed by the fact that key institutions and their elites are increasingly dependent upon intellectuals, particularly those in universities, research institutes, and the cultural apparatus generally. Yet, the leaders in these same social units are among the major critics of the way in which the society operates, sometimes calling into question the legitimacy of the social order and its political structure. A ruling elite, even one that is conservative and anti-intellectual, cannot respond to such challenges by crushing the intellectuals, unless it is willing to incur the punitive costs which such suppression entails. As the Polish "revisionist" philosopher Leszek Kolakowski (1968, p. 179) wrote while still a member of the Communist party, "the spiritual domination of any ruling class over the people . . . depends on its bonds with the intelligentsia . . . ; for the less one is capable of ruling by intellectual means, the more one must resort to the instruments of force." Decades earlier, the classically liberal (laissez-faire) economist and sociologist Joseph Schumpeter (1962, p.

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