Re: DUPREE and radical intellectuals

[Rubyg580@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 96-04-12 Ed Dupree wrote:

>   Very interesting and troubling topic--if workers need intellectuals to
>bring them theory and political knowledge, how is self-emancipation
>possible for workers?

I don't think this is an insurmountable contradiction.  I believe it was Marx
himself who said that proletarian ideology needs to be brought to the
proletariat from outside it; it needs to be brought to the proletariat by
revolutionary intellectuals. But taking proletarian ideology to the
proletariat
is, in a very real sense, taking it "home".  Because dialectical materialism
describes the reality that workers deal with every day as they transform
raw materials into usable objects.

It's also not that hard to see why it would be the case that proletarian
ideology first arises, not among the working class, but among the
intellectuals.  In class society, the most basic division of labor is between
those who do primarily manual work and those who do primarily mental
work.  The struggle for survival does not leave the working class with
enough free time to persue the kind of knowledge of history and social
and political development that is necessary to formulate the principles
of dialectical and historical materialism.

This work had to be done by intellectuals.  But these principles have to
be brought TO the proletariat, the class whose basic interests they
reflect, and the ONLY class that can actually use them to transform
the world in the interests of all humanity.

> I was recently reading Alvin Gouldner's book The
>Future of Intellectuals and the New Class; it has focussed this
>question for me, but provided no answers beyond G.'s closing observation
>that although radical intellectuals do constitute a class of their own,
>with their own interests, whether they admit it or not, on the whole
>they (we) are a progressive force anyway, provided we're modest &
>self-critical enough.

I'm not familiar with this book or its analysis of the radical intellectuals
as a separate class.  That seems wrong to me.  Radical intellectuals,
like all intellectual workers under capitalism, are part of the petty
bourgeoisie.  I don't remember the exact quote, but Lenin described
that this is because the intellectual on his own, faces the same
limitations in his thinking that the small producer faces in his material
conditions.

It's important for radical intellectuals to grasp this, because they can
only get beyond these "small producer" limitations by recognizing
that it is the PROLETARIAT, that class of people that their class has
been taught to look down on and be fearful of, who are the only ones
who can actually implement the principles that the radical intellectual
is studying and pomoting.  In other words, if the radical intellectual
doesn't take his radical theory to the proletariat, so that they can use
it for "self -emancipation" which, because of the class position of the
proletariat is the ultimate emancipation of all of humanity, then he
remains nothing but just another petty bourgeois intellectual.

There's lots of those who post to this list.

>       Is anybody else interested in this topic, or in Gouldner's book?
>Has the list carried this sort of discussion in the past? (I'm brand new
>to the list , and to the e-mail biz.)
>                                              red regards to all,
>                                                        Ed Dupree

Regards, and welcome!
Gina/  Detroit


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