Book Reviews and Studies

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Notes

But it often can. Over thirty years ago, conservative political activist, Irving Kristol, in “American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy” (in, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed., Fifty Years of Foreign Policy, [New York: Praeger, 1972, pp. 368‐383]) pointed out that:

An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence. This definition sounds ironic, but it is not. The authority is real enough, just as the lack of specific competence is crucial. An economist writing about economics is not acting as an intellectual, nor a literary critic when he explicates a text. In such cases, we are witnessing professionals at work …

Precisely which people, at which time, in any particular social situation, are certified as “intellectuals” is less important than the fact that such certification is achieved—informally but indisputably. And this process involves the recognition of the intellectual as possessing the prerogative of being the moral guide and critic to the world …

It has always been assumed that as the United States [and any other developed nation] became a more highly organized national society, as its economy has become more managerial, its power more imperial, and its populace more sophisticated, the intellectuals would move inexorably closer to the seats of authority—would, perhaps, even be incorporated en masse into a kind of “power elite”. Many writers and thinkers—and not only on the political left—have viewed this prospect with the greatest unease, for it seemed to them to threaten the continued existence of intellectuals as a critical and moral force …

Well, it has happened here—only, as is so often the case, it is all very different from what one expected. It is true that a small section of the … intellectual class has become a kind of permanent brain trust to the political, the military, the economic authorities … But what has also happened, at the same time, is that a whole new intellectual class has emerged as a result of the explosive growth, in these past decades, of higher education … And these “new men”, so far from being any kind of élite, are a mass—and have engendered their own mass movement.

And, to Kristol (and other “power élite” members), this democratization of intellect is what is most bothersome to them, for it robs the “leadership class” of their legitimacy. Hence, moves to restrict access to true “higher” education has been seen as a policy imperative for a long time, either by restricting numbers, watering down the curriculum, demeaning the resulting credentials, etc. The manufactured “over‐education” thesis thus “fits the bill” nicely, at least for the folks already inside the “club class”.

Following this striking (non)erotic imagery, consider the analysis of Kenneth Burke on the “demonic trinity” as an organizing principle of theoretical reflection and deflection: “the substantial nature of imagery may often produce an unintended burlesque of substance, in drawing upon the ambiguities of the cloacal, where they are united in a ‘demonic trinity’, the three principles of the erotic, the urinary, and the excremental.” (A Grammar of Motives [Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1969], pp. 300–303). In link with the present works under review, one can say with assurance with Henry Kissenger that while “power is the best aphrodisiac” for the élite, the workers' desire to be free of the rigidities of globalized capital may also be released in a “shower” of discontent and protest, all to better point out the inevitable “excrement” of wasted “human resources” produced by the system, which the bourgeoisie, in its most characteristic Puritanical anal‐retentive mode, will do its very best to “hold in”, i.e., control. Failing that, the rulers of the game will forthrightly deny the evidentiary stain of their political class failure, when the “bowels” of the economic system inevitably move to quickly expel unneeded proletarian human capacities from the system (that is, until the “seeds” of its thorough‐going economic/organizational logic of “ever‐present corporate revolution” seeks to likewise expel them.) This brutally materialistic dialectic also well explains the persistent problem of intellectual “leakage” from national economic systems, i.e., “brain drain”.

In “The Irrational Chasm Between Subject and Object”, in, Charles Lemert, ed., Social Theory, 2^nd ed., (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 206–208.

When Society Becomes an Addict (New York: Harper and Row, 1987). See also Jennifer Brostrom, “The Time Management Gospel” (in, Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland, eds., Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler, New York: Norton, 1997, pp. 112–120) about the evangelization of corporate America in all its cloacal artistry by “Franklin Planners”, products of Franklin Quest, Inc.:

Time Management, by Franklin Quest cofounder Richard Winwood, lays out the theory behind the [time management] revolution, fusing aspects of the self‐help, inspirational, and business genres, and declaring time management and self‐esteem to be the keys to personal fulfillment and skyrocketing profits—as if the two were somehow interchangeable. The ideal man that emerges from its pages is one of exquisite mediocrity…. Our hero is lucky to live in such a convenient century in which all sorts of calendars and digital instruments are available for measuring time, because these things help him produce more … His mind and soul are a grab bag of vague philosophies and desires. That is his problem. He has no definition, no control. He's settling for less, which, for an American, is virtually a sin against nature. Gradually, however, with the help of the Franklin system, he can put his mind in order. First, he can prioritize each of his values, and then mold them into affirmations … Being of rather dull and conventional character, the Productive Man has no problem selecting the most important values (presumably passed on to him by his parents, school, and church) and writing them into his Franklin Planner, where they will provide the basis for his newly emerging mind. Luckily, none of his values contradict one another.

His new mind—a Franklin mind or “productivity pyramid”—assumes the simple shape of a triangle. It is an aerodynamic mind. Uncluttered by passion or confusion, it is driven like a missile to achieve its goals. The Productive Man documents specific long‐term and short‐term goals in his Planner, and from these he formulates the pointed tip of his consciousness—his Daily Task list. This will give his existence structure, direction, and meaning.

The goals he has selected for himself are in perfect harmony with his company's goals … His thought processes are governed by “return on investment” analysis that determines the priorities that structure his life. In this way, he remains in control, which elevates his self‐esteem, which in turn increases his productivity. Higher productivity means he feels even better about himself. While his psychological profile increasingly represents an addict's, he has confined his addiction to the legal drug of time management.

The new problem of now outsourcing the very “high skilled”, “high wage” jobs that had been the mantra of policy gurus from the United States to lower‐wage countries is a strong counterpoint to the “soft‐world” globalizing scenarios often offered.

In A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 256–257.

In, “The Irrational Chasm Between Subject and Object” by Charles Lemert, ed., Social Theory, 2^nd ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), p. 208.

In S. Foss, K. Foss, and R. Trapp, Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, 2^nd ed., (Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1991), p. 198.