The role of intelligentsia

[IbelieveInanarchy]

Can anyone explain what your think the role of intelligentsia is in a revolution. I know the idea of a vanguard party is very common with leninists? Sorry this question is very broad, i would just like to hear some general perspectives.

[willowtooth]

When most marxists write about "the intelligentsia" they usually are referring to a class of intellectuals, its not necessarily a synonym for intellectuals.


What are the intelligentsia? Adler gives this concept, of course, not a moral but a social definition: the intelligentsia are not an order bound together by a historic vow, but the social stratum which embraces all kinds of “brain-work” occupations. However hard it may be to draw a line of demarcation between “manual” and “brain” work, the general social features of the intelligentsia are clear enough, without any further going into details. The intelligentsia are an entire class – Adler calls them an inter-class group, but essentially there is no difference – existing within the framework of bourgeois society. And for Adler the question is: who or what possesses the better right to the soul of this class? What ideology is inwardly obligatory upon it, as a result of the very nature of its social functions? Adler answers: the ideology of collectivism. That the European intelligentsia, in so far as they are not directly hostile to the ideas of collectivism, at best stand aloof from the life and struggle of the working masses, neither hot nor cold, is a fact to which Adler does not shut his eyes. But it shouldn’t be like that, he says, there are no adequate objective grounds for it. Adler decidedly opposes those Marxists who deny the existence of general conditions which could bring about a mass movement of the intelligentsia towards socialism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1910/xx/intell.htm

[ComradeAllende]

Fuck the intelligentsia, fuck the intellectuals, and fuck the vanguard party. The intelligentsia are too separated from the realm of class struggle to provide any concrete help in the revolutionary struggle. While they can clarify the aims and tactics of the revolutionary movement as a whole, the idea of entrusting the revolution to a bunch of petty-bourgeois academics is pure insanity. The liberation of the working class must be achieved by the working cl. At best, the intelligentsia can sway some of the petty-bourgeois to our cause, or at least keep them neutral; at worst, they will muddle our message and cripple our plans with high-minded elitism and obscurantist jargon.

[IbelieveInanarchy]

Fuck the intelligentsia, fuck the intellectuals, and fuck the vanguard party. The intelligentsia are too separated from the realm of class struggle to provide any concrete help in the revolutionary struggle. While they can clarify the aims and tactics of the revolutionary movement as a whole, the idea of entrusting the revolution to a bunch of petty-bourgeois academics is pure insanity. The liberation of the working class must be achieved by the working cl. At best, the intelligentsia can sway some of the petty-bourgeois to our cause, or at least keep them neutral; at worst, they will muddle our message and cripple our plans with high-minded elitism and obscurantist jargon. Do you consider the intelligentsia to be part of the proletariat or are they bourgeouise? And how are they bourgeouise, what capital do they control? I understand very well they don't experience class struggle as manual labors do, but i think they have a revolutionary role. Me personally, I became a leftist by the pursuit of knowledge, which led me to read Marx and that persuaded me. I only worked in a factory for one year, this experience emboldened my standpoint but i think reading Marx, which in modern times seems to be a 'intellectual' thing to do, is what really persuaded me.
So when you say, the working class must liberate the working class, i agree, but who do you include in the working class?

[Antiochus]

The intelligentsia are not part of the working class, obviously. The fact that the intelligentsia disproportionally supports Communism (compared against the total human population) is nothing more than a function of its relation to societal production within Capitalism. More or less the same reason that the police are generally speaking, agents of reaction.

[IbelieveInanarchy]

edit: made a mistake

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Personally, I feel like "intelligentsia" is too unclear a category to be useful. Is it just academics? Does it include scientists? Authors? Filmmakers? Artists? Pundits? Better to talk about all of these in their peculiarities.

[ckaihatsu]

Personally, I feel like "intelligentsia" is too unclear a category to be useful. Is it just academics? Does it include scientists? Authors? Filmmakers? Artists? Pundits? Better to talk about all of these in their peculiarities.


I consider this 'cultural' stuff to be on the *outskirts* / fringes of actual class struggle -- nonetheless the intelligentsia has intellectualized examination of this 'cultural' realm with the same dedication that revolutionaries use to examine actual political economy.


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Foreword to The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left: A Marxist Critique

Part One

By David North

21 July 2015

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

The WSWS is beginning publication of the foreword by David North to his new book, The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left: A Marxist Critique. The book is available for purchase at Mehring Books. A pdf file of the complete foreword is available here.

***

This book examines the relationship between Marxist theory and the development of the revolutionary program, perspective and practice of the Trotskyist movement. Within this context, it explains why the International Committee of the Fourth International has devoted significant time and energy to exposing the reactionary character of the anti-materialist and anti-Marxist intellectual tendencies—related to various branches of existentialist irrationalism, the Frankfurt School and postmodernism—that provide the theoretical foundations for a wide array of present-day petty-bourgeois pseudo-left and anti-socialist political movements.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/21/dnbo-j21.html