Intellectuals and society

523 Pages·2009·2.892 MB·English

by  Sowell, Thomas

Table of Contents

Title Page
Preface
Acknowledgments
PART I - INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 - Intellect and Intellectuals
INTELLIGENCE VERSUS INTELLECT
IDEAS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Chapter 2 - Knowledge and Notions
COMPETING CONCEPTS OF KNOWLEDGE
THE ROLE OF REASON
PART II - INTELLECTUALS AND ECONOMICS

Chapter 3 - “Income Distribution”
EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
MORAL CONSIDERATIONS
THE POOR AS CONSUMERS
Chapter 4 - Economic Systems
CHAOS VERSUS COMPETITION
ZERO-SUM ECONOMICS
Chapter 5 - Government and the Economy
BUSINESS
RECESSIONS AND DEPRESSIONS
PART III - INTELLECTUALS AND SOCIAL VISIONS

Chapter 6 - A Conflict of Visions
OPPOSING SOCIAL VISIONS
THE LEFT-RIGHT DICHOTOMY
YOUTH AND AGE
Chapter 7 - Abstract People in an Abstract World
DISPARITIES AND THEIR CAUSES
INTERTEMPORAL ABSTRACTIONS
EQUALITY
Chapter 8 - Arguments Without Arguments
“SIMPLISTIC” ARGUMENTS
UNWORTHY OPPONENTS
UNWORTHY ARGUMENTS
THE RHETORIC OF “RIGHTS”
“SOCIAL JUSTICE”
Chapter 9 - Patterns of the Anointed
“CHANGE” VERSUS THE STATUS QUO
ATTITUDES VERSUS PRINCIPLES
A SEALED BUBBLE
CRUSADES OF THE ANOINTED
PART IV - OPTIONAL REALITY

Chapter 10 - Filtering Reality
SELECTIVE SAMPLES
SUPPRESSING FACTS
FICTITIOUS PEOPLE
VERBAL CLEANSING
OBJECTIVITY VERSUS IMPARTIALITY
Chapter 11 - Subjective Truth
THE LOCALIZATION OF EVIL
THE INVIDIOUS AND THE DRAMATIC
PART V - INTELLECTUALS AND THE LAW

Chapter 12 - Changing the Law
METHODS OF CHANGE
Chapter 13 - Law and “Results”
BURDENS OF PROOF
PROPERTY RIGHTS
CRIME
PART VI - INTELLECTUALS AND WAR

Chapter 14 - The World Wars
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Chapter 15 - The Cold War and Beyond
REPLAYING THE 1930s
THE IRAQ WARS
PATRIOTISM AND NATIONAL HONOR
PART VII - INTELLECTUALS AND RACE

Chapter 16 - Disparities and Their Causes
GENETIC DETERMINISM
THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
RESPONSES TO DISPARITIES
Chapter 17 - Race and Intelligence
HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT
THE MAGNITUDES IN QUESTION
PREDICTIVE VALIDITY
ABSTRACT QUESTIONS
TEST SCORE DIFFERENCES
DURATION OF MENTAL TEST RESULTS
Chapter 18 - Liberalism and Multiculturalism
THE LIBERAL ERA
THE MULTICULTURALISM ERA
Chapter 19 - Race and Cosmic Justice
DISPARITIES VERSUS INJUSTICES
RACE AND CRIME
SLAVERY
PART VIII - AN OVERVIEW

Chapter 20 - Patterns and Visions
VALUE PREMISES
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT FACTS
INTELLECTUAL STANDARDS
Chapter 21 - Incentives and Constraints
THE SUPPLY OF PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
THE DEMAND FOR PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
Chapter 22 - The Influence of Intellectuals
THE NATURE OF INTELLECTUALS’ INFLUENCE
A COGNITIVE ELITE
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICIANS
THE TRACK RECORD OF INTELLECTUALS
SOCIAL COHESION
ANTI-INTELLECTUAL INTELLECTUALS
IMPLICATIONS
NOTES
INDEX
Copyright Page
PREFACE

This extensively revised and greatly enlarged edition of Intellectuals and Society contains not only
four new chapters on intellectuals and race but also additions, revisions and reorganizations of other
chapters. The new material includes a critique of John Rawls’ conception of justice and a re-
examination of what has been called the “trickle-down theory” behind “tax cuts for the rich.” Yet the
basic themes and structure of this book remain, and are strengthened by the new material and its
implications. This will become especially apparent in the much revised final section, summarizing the
main themes of the book.
There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in
society than the era in which we live. When those who generate ideas, the intellectuals proper, are
surrounded by a wide penumbra of those who disseminate those ideas—whether as journalists,
teachers, staffers to legislators or clerks to judges, and other members of the intelligentsia—their
influence on the course of social evolution can be considerable, or even crucial. That influence has of
course depended on the surrounding circumstances, including how free intellectuals have been to
propagate their own ideas, rather than being instruments of state propaganda, as in totalitarian
countries.
There would of course be little point in studying the ideas expressed by prominent writers like Ilya
Ehrenburg during the era of the Soviet Union, for these were simply the ideas permitted or advocated
by the Soviet dictatorship. In short, the study of the influence of intellectuals is here a study of their
influence where they have been freest to exert that influence, namely in modern democratic nations.
For very different reasons, this study of patterns among intellectuals will pay less attention to such
an intellectual giant as Milton Friedman as to any number of intellectuals of lesser eminence, simply
because Professor Friedman was in many ways very atypical of the intellectuals of his time, both in
his scholarly work that won him a Nobel Prize and in his work as a popular commentator on issues of
the day. A “balanced” general intellectual history of our times would have to give Professor Friedman
a far larger amount of attention than a study which focuses on general patterns, to which he was an
outstanding exception. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was another landmark figure in the intellectual, moral
and political history of his age who was likewise too atypical of contemporary intellectuals to be
included in a study of the general patterns of the profession.
Because this is a study of patterns, it is not confined to contemporary intellectuals but includes
patterns that have, in many cases, existed among the intelligentsia for at least two centuries. Because
it is a study of general patterns, it does not attempt to account for “every sparrow’s fall.” Nor is it
simply a series of critiques of particular intellectuals or particular issues, though one cannot critique
a pattern of thinking without examining concrete examples of that thinking.
In this context, the purpose of discussing the Iraq wars or the war in Vietnam, for example, is not to
determine the wisdom or unwisdom of Americans becoming involved in those wars, but to understand
the role of intellectuals in relation to those wars. Similarly, the purpose of discussing The Bell Curve
is not to determine the merits or demerits of The Bell Curve itself—something I have written about
elsewherea—but to show the implications of the intellectuals’ contentions regarding that book, neither
of whose authors has been sufficiently typical of the patterns found among intellectuals to make The
Bell Curve itself the main focus.
Many books have been written about intellectuals. Some take in-depth looks at particular
prominent figures, Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals being an especially incisive example. Other books on
intellectuals seek general patterns, Ideology and the Ideologists by Lewis S. Feuer being a very
thoughtful and insightful example of this approach. Richard A. Posner’s Public Intellectuals is about
those intellectuals who directly address the public, while the focus in Intellectuals and Society is on
intellectuals who influence—sometimes shape—public attitudes and beliefs, whether or not they are
widely read by the population at large. As J.A. Schumpeter said, “there are many Keynesians and
Marxians who have never read a line of Keynes or Marx.”1 They have gotten their ideas second- or
third-hand from the intelligentsia. Many school teachers may not have read anything by John Dewey,
and yet their whole approach to education may reflect a vision and an agenda formulated a century
ago by Dewey, and permeating schools of education today.
Among the many things said by those who have studied intellectuals, a comment by Professor Mark
Lilla of Columbia University in his book The Reckless Mind is especially striking:
Distinguished professors, gifted poets, and influential journalists summoned their talents to
convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators and that their unconscionable
crimes were noble, when seen in the proper perspective. Whoever takes it upon himself to write
an honest intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach.
But he will need something more. He will need to overcome his disgust long enough to ponder
the roots of this strange and puzzling phenomenon.2

While Intellectuals and Society is not an intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe—that
would be a much larger project for someone much younger—it does attempt to unravel some of the
puzzling phenomena in the world of the intellectuals, as that world impacts society at large. Rather
than simply generalizing from the writings or behavior of particular intellectuals, this book will
analyze both the vision and the incentives and constraints behind the general patterns found among
members of the intelligentsia, past and present, as well as what they have said and its impact on the
societies in which they said it.
Although we already know much about the biographies or ideologies of particular prominent
intellectuals, systematic analyses of the nature and role of intellectuals as a group in society are much
less common. This book seeks to develop such an analysis and to explore its implications for the
direction in which the intelligentsia are taking our society and Western civilization in general.
Although this book is about intellectuals, it is not written for intellectuals. Its purpose is to achieve
an understanding of an important social phenomenon and to share that understanding with those who
wish to share it, in whatever walk of life they might be. Those among the intelligentsia who are
looking for points to score or things at which to take umbrage will be left to their own devices.b This
book is written for those readers who are willing to join with me in a search for some understanding
of a distinct segment of the population whose activities can have, and have had, momentous
implications for nations and civilizations.
While some studies of intellectual history, and especially studies of ideological differences, seek
to explain conflicting social visions by differing “value premises” among those on opposing sides of
various issues, Intellectuals and Society seeks instead to explain ideological differences by
differing underlying assumptions about the facts of life, the nature of human beings and the nature and
distribution of knowledge.
Ideological differences based on differing value premises are ultimately differing tastes, on which
there is said to be no disputing. But differences based on beliefs about facts, causation, human nature,
and the character and distribution of knowledge, are ultimately questions about different perceptions
of the real world, leading to hypotheses which can be tested empirically.
Beliefs about facts and causation can change—sometimes suddenly—in the wake of new empirical
evidence or a new analysis. The long history of large and sweeping changes in individuals’
ideological positions—sometimes rather abruptly, like “road to Damascus” conversions—seems far
more consistent with discovering that the facts about the world are very different from what had been
initially assumed, sometimes as a result of some dramatic event such as the French Revolution or the
Nazi-Soviet Pact, and sometimes as a result of a more gradual or more personal unfolding of events
inconsistent with expectations based on an existing ideological vision. Such changes apply far beyond
intellectuals, and have been captured in such phrases as “radicals in their twenties and conservatives
in their forties.” But intellectuals have left us concrete records of their changes in ideological
orientations and those records are worth exploring.
A remarkable and moving record of such personal changes was a book written long ago, titled The
God That Failed. It chronicled various intellectuals’ breaks with communism, which captured the
essence of a process that has applied far more widely, over many centuries, to many visions of the
world, both secular and religious, which have been abandoned in the light of experience, and often
more rapidly than one is likely to abandon what one fundamentally values. Those who saw Marxism
as the way to improve the lot of the poor, for example, may come to see other paths to that goal as
more promising, without having changed the goal at all or the value premises behind that goal. For
our purposes—trying to understand general patterns of beliefs and tactics among intellectuals—the
validity of their assumptions and the consequences of their conclusions are things we can test, in a
way that we cannot test opaque value premises. We can also observe the consequences of the
prevailing views among intellectuals on the larger society around them, often with dismay.

Thomas Sowell

Hoover Institution
Stanford University
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like other books of mine, this one owes much to the dedicated work of my outstanding research
assistants, Na Liu and Elizabeth Costa. Ms. Liu, having worked with me for more than twenty years,
has not only ferreted out many facts but contributed many insights to this book, as she has to others.
Now she also creates the computer files from which my books can be printed directly. My other
assistant in recent years, Ms. Costa, does the copy-editing and fact-checking for me, and seldom does
a lapse on my part escape her scrutiny. I have also benefitted from information or comments supplied
by Dr. Gerald P. O’Driscoll of the Cato Institute, Professor Lino A. Graglia of the University of Texas
at Austin, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution and Professor William R. Allen of the
University of California at Los Angeles. Any errors or shortcomings which survive despite their
efforts can only be my responsibility.
PART I

INTRODUCTION