RELATED (scivillage): The Making of Roger Scruton
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With regard to the video content: A bit too universal when minus the adjective "literary" preceding "intellectual". And barring them being the kind of grassroots, self-taught illuminati that early Marxist revolutions depended on for widespread proselytizing (an example in the Higbie quote below), many of the groups he subsumes as "intellectuals" would often as individuals just be mere supporters or the pseudo kind at best. Like the reference to entertainment celebrities, journalists, and others (and obviously they do have day jobs and skills). There are also business magnates like Singham who even admire and champion non-subtle communism. So it's not always due to lack of entrepreneurial experience and knowledge. Anyone can become enchanted with socioeconomic utopias in the sky to the point of zealotry.
Tobias Higbie: Don Lescohier traveled the length of the Great Plains during the summer harvest seasons of 1919, 1920, and 1921, documenting the lives of farmworkers. In one migrant camp he met his intellectual match in the person of an unschooled Irish immigrant named Doyle, who was, Lescohier wrote in his field notes, “one of the brainiest and thoroughly read” workers he had ever met.
“I drew him, or rather he drew me, into an economic discussion. This hobo, this bum, this chap who had never been inside of a school … knew the classical economists well and quoted readily from Ricardo and Adam Smith.” Doyle identified himself as both a Bolshevik and member of the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and impressed Lescohier with his thorough knowledge of current events.
He couldn’t agree with Doyle’s radical politics, but Lescohier respected his intellect and his commitment to social justice. “The ‘Red’ is on a higher social level than the unorganized hobo,” he concluded. --Labor's Mind
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JOSEPH T. SALERNO
https://youtu.be/NCpCPvg8GSY
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: When Hayek wrote this article in 1949, intellectuals in Western nations overwhelmingly supported socialism. This is still the case today, when intellectuals loudly and proudly proclaim themselves to be progressives. Of course, the progress they promote is toward a democratic socialist state.
Hayek explains the inherent bias of intellectuals towards socialism by describing their position and function in society. Intellectuals, he says, are professional second-hand dealers in ideas. They are not creative thinkers, and they have no expert knowledge in any particular field or discipline.
Hayek identifies journalists, TV commentators, novelists, school teachers, even ministers and physicians as making up the bulk of the class of intellectuals. Today, I am sure he would add podcasters, social media influencers, and entertainers to the list. What distinguishes all these professions and groups is that they are masters of the technique of conveying ideas, but amateurs in evaluating the content of the ideas that they speak and write about.
While intellectuals are not exceptionally intelligent and have no specialized training in any field or discipline, they do have one major advantage over ordinary people. The reading, writing, and personal interactions that are routine part of their professions regularly bring them into contact with new political and social ideas before most people have heard about them.
Intellectuals are thus ideological filters who feed their preferred ideas to the public and thereby mold public opinion. Hayek also points out that real experts and scholars outside their specialized fields are just as susceptible as ordinary people to the influence of intellectuals on their political opinions.
In fact, intellectuals create the public reputations of scholars and experts. And these reputations may be wildly inconsistent with their reputations among their fellow scholars or scientists. Pop economists like Paul Krugman and John Kenneth Galbraith come to mind, as do celebrity natural scientists like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking.
So why, according to Hayek, are intellectuals naturally biased towards socialism? First and foremost, they earn their living in professions far removed from the world of practical business and financial affairs. They therefore have no real knowledge of the operation of the economic process.
In addition, their professions encourage and reward thinking and communicating in terms of abstract and speculative ideas and ideals. Socialist ideology is built on speculation about utopian political and economic systems.
Because they lack knowledge of the actual working of existing capitalist society, intellectuals are incapable of understanding that their favorite socialist utopias are profoundly unworkable. Intellectuals therefore decide which new ideas are worth conveying to the public by how well the ideas fit with some idealized socialist worldview.
Hayek raises an extremely important question regarding the extent to which the growth of the intellectual class has been artificially stimulated by the existence of copyright law. For many intellectuals earn their living by writing books, essays, and articles protected by copyright. Hayek doubts that an open and frank discussion about whether the law of copyright is socially beneficial can ever take place with a class with an interest in maintaining the law largely controls the channels of public communication.
Hayek ends his article with an appeal to classical liberals to have the courage to embrace true radicalism and promote a program for the full realization of a free society. Only by sticking to their principles, daring to be utopian, and not worrying about offending politically powerful groups, like labor unions and crony capitalists, can classical liberals hope to nullify the influence of socialist intellectuals.
https://youtu.be/NCpCPvg8GSY
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