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http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html

Excerpt:

By intellectuals, I do not mean all people of intelligence or of a certain level of education, but those who, in their vocation, deal with ideas as expressed in words, shaping the word flow others receive. These wordsmiths include poets, novelists, literary critics, newspaper and magazine journalists, and many professors. It does not include those who primarily produce and transmit quantitatively or mathematically formulated information (the numbersmiths) or those working in visual media, painters, sculptors, cameramen. Unlike the wordsmiths, people in these occupations do not disproportionately oppose capitalism. The wordsmiths are concentrated in certain occupational sites: academia, the media, government bureaucracy.

Wordsmith intellectuals fare well in capitalist society; there they have great freedom to formulate, encounter, and propagate new ideas, to read and discuss them. Their occupational skills are in demand, their income much above average. Why then do they disproportionately oppose capitalism? Indeed, some data suggest that the more prosperous and successful the intellectual, the more likely he is to oppose capitalism. This opposition to capitalism is mainly "from the left" but not solely so. Yeats, Eliot, and Pound opposed market society from the right.

The opposition of wordsmith intellectuals to capitalism is a fact of social significance. They shape our ideas and images of society; they state the policy alternatives bureaucracies consider. From treatises to slogans, they give us the sentences to express ourselves. Their opposition matters, especially in a society that depends increasingly upon the explicit formulation and dissemination of information.

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Phoenix

cause they care about the small people

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Michaelious

Cos they like to think about new ideas and ways of doing different things.

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polish_aristocrat

Not all of them oppose capitalism, some of them oppose capitalism in a particular form (one could say that there's only one form of real capitalism but that's obviously not true since there's no area or country where business is done in a 100% free environment) or just propose capitalism with a more human and responsible face.

They see many disadvantages of capitalism, such as :

- the fact that capitalism results in constantly increasing economic disproportions (both within one country as well as globally)
- the fact that capitalism promotes or equals commercialism in its worst forms and leads to a decrease of valuable, non commercial activities, or higher forms or expressing yourself
- the fact that pure capitalism concentrates on solely economic gain and growth at the same time ignoring the enviroment, natural resources etc (which is long term dangerous)

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Riiiiight. Or it could be this:

"Why then do contemporary intellectuals feel entitled to the highest rewards their society has to offer and resentful when they do not receive this? Intellectuals feel they are the most valuable people, the ones with the highest merit, and that society should reward people in accordance with their value and merit. But a capitalist society does not satisfy the principle of distribution "to each according to his merit or value." Apart from the gifts, inheritances, and gambling winnings that occur in a free society, the market distributes to those who satisfy the perceived market-expressed demands of others, and how much it so distributes depends on how much is demanded and how great the alternative supply is. Unsuccessful businessmen and workers do not have the same animus against the capitalist system as do the wordsmith intellectuals. Only the sense of unrecognized superiority, of entitlement betrayed, produces that animus."

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Dollarmansteve

it's a paradox - the capitalist system allows them to be free and wealthy, so they can spend there time thinking about abstract concepts.

In theory, many concepts are 'better' than capitalism, but in practice, the great irony is that without capitalism no one would ever have the free time to speculate on these theories... free of prejudice, etc, etc...

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Exactly. The free market system enabled schools to flourish widely. But paradoxically, the SCHOOL bred resentment against the MARKET. From the article:

"....As book knowledge became increasingly important, schooling--the education together in classes of young people in reading and book knowledge--spread. Schools became the major institution outside of the family to shape the attitudes of young people, and almost all those who later became intellectuals went through schools. There they were successful. They were judged against others and deemed superior. They were praised and rewarded, the teacher's favorites. How could they fail to see themselves as superior? Daily, they experienced differences in facility with ideas, in quick-wittedness. The schools told them, and showed them, they were better.

The schools, too, exhibited and thereby taught the principle of reward in accordance with (intellectual) merit. To the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher's smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards.

The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority "entitled" them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?"

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Dollarmansteve

- you cannot deny that capitalism is also responsible for a rising tide.. yes, there are vast discrepencies in the sizes of the ships.. but ALL SHIPS RISE IN THE TIDE.

- This only happens in the short-to-medium run. A free economic system will always recognize value in a tangible way over the long term. If something contributes to society (ie the economy) it will assume a tangible value. Take the "services" economy we live in now... such a thing didn't exist 100 years ago.

- A truly free economic system will pass the cost of economic degredation into the system, there are MANY mechanisms for this. It happens right now, everyday.. but the science of environmental economics is VERY new..there are not enough tested models.

Just because something isn't apparent doesn't mean it's not there...

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Dollarmansteve

I think there's a great way to summarize:

"Pop will eat itself"

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sltr

intellectuals do not get a lot of punani either, so it's a double-whammy!

Pornwolf

That's true. Intellectuals don't usually make a lot of money and they don't get a lot of "punnani" so they are bitter.

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I believe the Naughty America site NAUGHTY BOOKWORMS has the intellectual market in mind

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cykoe6

Great article. Nice to see a break from the usual nonsense.

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papill0n

5$ submissions thanks for another great post!

Can I ask you what webmaster related rss feeds you subscribe to?

DaddyHalbucks

Because they are too idealistic, they want a perfect world, but human nature and society are not perfect.

Capitalists are realists.

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Boner Money

$5 submissions

Check out my posts about SEO, I subscribe to those feeds. I also posted a huge list earlier of SEO blogs, you may want to subscribe to those.

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yahoo-xxx-girls.com

Word games are fine $5 submissions, however, the social structure of any country has many different elements and even in a mainly capitalists society like the US or Canada you will find the people not following the "capitalist" structure to the T. Some people think there are hidden classes of people while others say that the public should know all since tax dollars funds many public programs...

The US structure seems to have elements of capitalism/fascism... but that just my view...

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