Editor's note: Has a class of anti-market, anti-freedom "intellectuals" taken over our media, government, large corporations, and academia?
This weekend, the Masters Series features a two-part interview with our friend Doug Casey, founder of Casey Research. In this interview with editor Louis James – originally published in November by Casey Research's free weekly e-letter, Conversations with Casey – Doug talks about a breed of pseudo-intellectuals, the "New Class," that he says has hijacked public thought and discourse.
And as Doug describes it, their ascendance has been building for a long time…
Louis: So Doug, what's on your mind this week?
Doug: Intellectuals – or rather, pseudo-intellectuals. I'm talking about a certain class of people who are not just a stereotype, but are a real group, who think and act in certain ways. They are a genuine menace. They're like worms or termites, eating away at the foundations of civilization. It's important to be clear on who and what I'm talking about here, because obviously being a person of intellect can't be a bad thing. I'm not advocating mindlessness.
L: The Collins English Dictionary defines an "intellectual" as:
- A person who enjoys mental activity and has highly developed tastes in art, literature, etc.
- A person who uses or works with his intellect.
- A highly intelligent person.
Doug: That's a good definition. But it really only defines the platonic ideal of an intellectual... what an intellectual should be. It doesn't capture the sense of current intellectualism, which is dominated by a certain mindset and driven by leftist political views rather than rational application of intellect to the issues of the day. In other words, being a real intellectual is a good thing. It's part of being a Renaissance Man, who is fully developed intellectually, physically, spiritually, psychologically, and experientially. We're not talking about eggheads who live in ivory towers when we talk about real intellectuals.
By and large, if you look at the policies they advocate, these pseudo-intellectuals dislike the free market, they dislike personal freedom, and they actually dislike humanity. So most so-called intellectuals today are actually anti-intellectual. They're destructive of rational thinking. Take Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman... in fact, most of the people you find in the New York Review of Books. You can't be sure whether they're knaves or fools. My guess is both. But they do a lot of damage. It's perverse, since all the intellectually honest people I know hold opposite views of those in the intellectual establishment.
L: Right – if you want to talk about a right-leaning intellectual, you'd have to say so, or most people would think the opposite.
Doug: Yes, but I hate to use the terms "right" and "left." They're so ill-defined that they've become meaningless. Anyway, they're basically two sides of the same coin; both right and left are collectivists and statists. The left says they believe in social freedom, but that's a lie; and they definitely hate economic freedom. The right says they believe in economic freedom, which is also a lie; but they definitely hate social freedom. Only the libertarians and classical liberals consistently promote both social and economic freedom, and therefore work to liberate the best and noblest aspects of the human spirit.
You and I work with our intellects, but I'd cringe if someone called me an intellectual, because the term has become so degraded and has acquired such bad connotations. Spiro Agnew, who was Nixon's vice president, referred to such people as "pointy-headed intellectuals" for a reason: They may be intelligent, but they lack common sense. That tends to make them bad at business. Smart as they may be, most intellectuals are poor as church mice, which may explain why they tend to be so hostile to enterprise.
There's a story – possibly apocryphal – about Karl Marx, who spent most of his life in poverty. It's said that his wife once told him that he should stop writing about capital and go out and make some.
L: I've heard that one too... but I've noticed that a lot of hardcore libertarians don't have two quarters to rub together, and they're as pro-market as you can get.
Doug: That's true. Libertarians understand the theory, but they fall down on practicing it. Why do you think most so-called intellectuals are thinly disguised or open socialists?
L: I suspect it's a personality type. Some people respond to the challenges of life with a desire to overcome, to achieve, to win. Others respond with a desire to seek protection, to avoid risk, to be given what they are not confident they can go out and get on their own. How much of this is nature and how much nurture, I can't say. But it often seems that those who want to force the world to guarantee happiness to all are not just unwilling, but are completely incapable of seeing things differently. Their core values don't allow them to see or believe facts that contradict their cherished notions.
Doug: It's interesting that you put that in terms of their values. I absolutely agree and wrote about this in Crisis Investing for the Rest of the '90s. I referred to these types as "The New Class." There are a lot more of them now than there were even then. Let's see... I've got a copy right here. There's a chapter – 31, "The New Class in the No-Fun Nineties" – on the kind of intellectuals we're talking about:
|
The New Class is less a political than a socioeconomic grouping. The term was originated by Milovan Djilas, a renegade Yugoslav Communist, but has been best described in the United States by Irving Kristol, B. Bruce-Briggs, and Herman Kahn. Robert Reich, Clinton's chief economic advisor, calls them "symbolists" or "symbolic analysts." They are concerned with what Marx termed the "means of production," but they do not deal with them directly.
|
|
You will not find members of the New Class farming, mining, manufacturing, inventing, or working with their hands. In other words, they are less interested in experimenting with nature, tinkering with technology, or manipulating physical reality than in experimenting with human nature, tinkering with politics, and manipulating society.
|
|
These people trade in symbols, words, and concepts. Typically they are writers, editors, producers, media people, mid- to upper-level bureaucrats, academics, entertainers, lobbyists, lawyers, planners, artists, analysts, consultants, and employees of charitable organizations. They are the direct descendants of scribes and priests.
|
I went on to describe their values, which I agree with you – they are not open to debate, subject to reason, or ever, ever questioned. Incidentally, I generally disapprove of what Reich and Kristol, in particular, stand for. Herman Kahn was a friend of mine, although somewhat problematic philosophically; but he was a genius and great company.
L: It seems all too few people actually think about their values, why they hold them, and what the consequence of those values are in their lives. But it's crucial for people to do so. Values determine decisions, which are implemented in actions, the sum of which is a person's life and very being.
Doug: Well said, and totally true. It's interesting to me to look at this list, describing the characteristics of the New Class which I wrote in 1993, in light of what these people have done since then. They've completely captured the media, government, large corporations, NGOs, and academia. They now control the world of ideas and what the public believes is right.
Remember what I said about these pseudo-intellectuals being more concerned with controlling other people than with controlling nature and developing technology? Here's what I wrote back then:
|
Technology. The New Class is deeply suspicious of technology. Few of them have had any real scientific training, and almost none has had any exposure to engineering, so very few have a practical understanding of technology per se. People naturally fear anything they do not really understand. They want to control scientists and engineers who, they are convinced, do not have the wisdom, which mostly resides in the New Class, to employ their powers appropriately.
|
|
The New Class thinks that technology mostly leads to bad results. Their tendency is to decrease automotive pollution by decreasing driving 50 percent through punitive regulations rather than to encourage installation of a new device to cut pollution by 99 percent. Since they mistrust mankind, they do not want them to have much power over the environment, hence the technophobia that accompanies the "back to the earth" movement. And that, of course, is another major theme.
|
L: Neo-Luddites. It's a bit Kafkaesque going to antiglobalization protests and seeing these anticapitalists organizing their demonstrations via social-networking software on their Apple computers. Looks like you saw the green hysteria rising...
Doug: Well, I didn't see how bad it would get and how it would mutate and metastasize... Like the insanity of deciding that carbon is bad for carbon-based life forms – like us. I didn't see that they'd declare war on the periodic table of elements, with carbon being a major villain. But I did predict the rising religion of "greenism":
|
Ecology/Environment. Greenism is becoming a new religion, where "ecology" is a deity to whom worshipers must offer sacrifice. Religion offers a pretty good analogy, and not just because it's also historically antitechnology. Greenism could replace traditional religion for a large portion of the population in the decades to come, even though its views are at odds with the Jewish, Christian, and even Muslim doctrines that give mankind direct dominion over the world.
|
|
I find this an interesting subtheme, if only because I have always been sympathetic with the Nordic and Celtic cultures that prevailed in pre-Roman, pre-Christian Europe. They were probably the most libertarian cultures in the history of the world, with strong emphasis on personal privacy and property rights and a respect for nature. But only their nature-worship aspects seem to be emphasized in New Class circles.
|
|
Despite a generally antiscientific bent, the New Class will cite science when convenient, usually out of context. In any event, science takes a backseat to the hysteria that is socially acceptable when it comes to environmental issues.
Even the most remote possibilities of disaster are taken seriously and arouse calls for instant government action that are often based on inadequate data, poorly thought through, and often counterproductive. Cost-benefit calculations are rarely done and are imprecise when they are done. Instead, the New Class tends to believe that the ends justify the means, no matter what the means may cost.
|
I can see now that I was too conservative and understated the problem.
Editor's note: Casey Research publishes these conversations between Doug and Louis every Wednesday. And recently, they compiled their favorites into a new book, Totally Incorrect.
Porter has called it "the most important... and dangerous" book he's read recently. He found the insights in it so vital... he ordered several thousand copies to give to subscribers – for free. You won't even have to pay shipping and handling. If you'd like to find out how to get a copy... click here.