It comes down to a question of roles. The American intelligentsia asks, What is to be done? That same question was posed by the Russian intelligentsia in the suffocating society of 19th century Russia so reminiscent of today’s America.
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| The Intelligentsia and its revolutionary mission |
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I keep returning to the Russian example because just as the intelligentsia in pre-revolutionary Russia set its stamp on the development of the idea of Socialism there (after all, making the greatest revolution of modern times!), we believe that when the propitious moment arrives, when what was inexpressible becomes expressible, when events have created a universal mood of revolutionary discontent with the existing system, when tensions reach the boiling point, the American intelligentsia, together with the American wage earners and the ever vaster, ever multiplying, ever angrier and, one hopes, awakened middle class, will rise against the capitalist system and salvage the positive parts of America and bring about radical change.
Change is a word that both the intelligentsia and intellectuals of America should be discussing together. What kind of change do they mean? Intellectuals mean one thing. Usually reform. The intelligentsia means another. Radical change. It’s an unfortunate paradox that the intelligentsia doesn’t always know what exactly to do with pure intelligence.
The change is not the change promised in electoral campaigns, not the change written on the little cards held in the hands of backers of one candidate or the other. The goal has to be the radical transformation of the entire society. The idea of change right now is so potent that even the establishment’s figureheads, Obama and McCain, are brawling to own the “brand”.
The American intelligentsia might keep in mind one comforting thought: of major world countries today perhaps only America is still economically self-contained and self-sufficient enough to support and survive the upheavals of a new social revolution.
The great historical contradiction however is that in no other country is real capitalism so strong and the positive idea of Socialism so weak as in the United States of America, which in turn has made Socialism so difficult to achieve elsewhere.
So the quandary for the American intelligentsia is: What is to be done? Or, What can be done? For to our great misfortune—even if the American intelligentsia-radical Left had the means to address the rising wage earner-middle class coalition—what message would it send to them, the new masses?
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