The American Intellectual Elite

John Sommer, Charles Kadushin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138534209
• eBook ISBN: 9781351486033
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Classes & Economic Disparity
• Index: Social Sciences

There are almost as many works about intellectuals as there are intellectuals. Perhaps this is because intellectuals are masters of the word and their mastery is often used to write about themselves. Indeed, with the possible exceptions of sports figures and film actors, intellectuals may be the most overpublicized people in America. In this classic study, originally published in 1974, Charles Kadushin examines the attitudes of that class of people known as the American intellectual elite.

While most works on intellectuals first establish who should be included under the title "intellectual," and debate their characteristics, Kadushin instead sets forth a sociological history of leading American intellectuals of the late 1960s. The book's concern, however, is primarily with time and place. While The American Intellectual Elite is very much about social circles and the networked "small world" of intellectuals defined by the institutions such as the journals and magazines around which they gathered, the uniqueness of this volume is the recognition that fact must come before theory. Thus, the collective attitude of leading intellectuals of the sixties are presented in a straightforward and dispassionate manner on topics as diverse as the Vietnam War, race relations, foreign and domestic policy, and the place of intellectuals in the resolution of such issues.

Now in paperback with a new introduction by the author, The American Intellectual Elite is an influential work that will be valued by students of sociology, members of the intellectual elite, and professionals and students of contemporary American history.

I
The Shape of Intellectual Life in America

1
Who Are the Elite American Intellectuals?

There are almost as many works about intellectuals as there are intellectuals.¹ Intellectuals are of course masters of the word and their mastery is often used to write about themselves. So it may very well be that aside from ballplayers and actresses, intellectuals are the most overpublicized people in America. In this literature there are widely differing views as to who might be said to be an intellectual, much less an elite intellectual. For the most part, works on intellectuals follow a pattern. Almost half the work is devoted to a definition of who should be included under the title intellectual. Reference is often made to the development of the term “intelligentsia” in nineteenth century Russia. Arguments are then advanced as to the viability of the term today: are all “intellectual workers,” from engineers to poets, to be considered intellectuals? Once the matter of definition is settled, the characteristics of intellectuals are debated: are intellectuals today old or young; are American intellectuals all to be found in New York City or has the growth of universities dispersed them around the countryside; is there an innerclique or family of intellectuals who rule the roost; is it true that most intellectuals are Jews; is there a two- or three-culture system in which scientists and perhaps social scientists are exiled to a world separate from the literary elite? After these characteristics are decided upon, the denouement consists of an attack on or defense of the role of intellectuals: are they critical enough or too critical of the “system,” are they a priesthood defending current values or are they a revolutionary wave with new and better ideas and values; or perhaps the problem is that they are beside the point and focus mainly on their own irrelevant little intellectual world.

A version of this chapter appeared as “Who Are the Elite Intellectuals?” in The Public Interest, 29 (Fall 1972).

Definitions of “Intellectual”

Many of the findings and much of the controversy depends on how one goes about defining the term “intellectual,” so we shall follow the formula right from the start and spend a little time on definitions. While there is considerable debate about the precise time when the term appeared and could properly be applied to a group of persons, there is little argument that the term “intelligentsia” originated in nineteenth century Russia and referred, essentially, to persons who (1) were concerned with matters of public interest; (2) felt personal responsibility for the state and solution of these problems; (3) tended to view political and social questions as moral ones; and (4) felt obligated to do something in life as well as thought.² The term “intellectuals” appears in the January 14, 1898, “Manifeste des Intellectuels,” published in L’Aurore protesting the Dreyfus affair.³ The format would appear familiar to readers of petitions on the war in Vietnam⁴ and the signatories included Zola, Anatole France, Proust, Leon Blum and others we would call intellectuals. Today, Fyvel⁵ has observed that the term is in more common use in the United States than in Great Britain.

The history of the term “intellectual” is interesting, but in some ways irrelevant to our interests, for the role of the intellectual has always existed quite independently of the term. Surely some nineteenth century clergymen in the United States played roles as intellectuals. Intellectuals flourished during the Enlightenment, were the hallmark of the Reformation and Renaissance, and were the pride of ancient Greece and rabbinic Judaism. Even in preliterate societies, intellectual functions were an important aspect of the medicine-man or shaman role. We are obviously dealing with a function which in different societies is designated by different words. Since our major interest is in the contemporary United States, we must devote attention to particular processes by which some persons acquire the label of elite intellectual.

Though we often speak of the elite intellectual as if he were a person, the intellectual is a social role, for nobody is wholly an intellectual.⁶ Some persons spend most of their time playing this role, some spend less time, and some are not at all in the running. One should not debate whether atomic scientists are just as much intellectuals as are literary critics. Rather, one must consider why, under varying conditions, persons who play certain occupational roles also play the role of intellectual.

Social roles can be defined in terms of their position in society, the general functions they serve, the kinds of specific output they produce, and their rank in the system of stratification. If we choose to define American intellectuals in terms of position, we might say that all college graduates are intellectuals or, more restrictively, that all 400,000 full-time college professors qualify, or still more restrictively, that only the 15 or so on the masthead of Commentary, Partisan Review, or the New York Review of Books are intellectuals. If we are concerned about function we might say that intellectuals are those who submit society and its ideas to basic criticism.⁷ Again, we can be more or less elitist by being more or less fussy about the sort of criticism we have in mind. Most definitions of intellectual include something about the content of intellectual ideas: that is, the output of intellectuals. For example, roles concerned with abstract ideas are said to be intellectual roles.⁸ Most definitions of the intellectual utilize two or three of these characteristics of the role and have an elitist bias. For example, intellectuals might be those whose major occupation requires them to deal with high-quality abstract ideas.

In our search for clarity, let us begin with what seems common to various definitions of intellectuals — the nature of the output. According to both Parsons⁹ and Nettl,¹⁰ who seem otherwise to disagree, the intellectual role is primarily concerned with culture, especially with that aspect of culture concerned with symbols which give meaning to objects and actions. Those kinds of symbols which express some moral apprehension of experience and action are called by Max Kadushin “value concepts.”¹¹ Value concepts include such terms as “rights of man,” “freedom of speech,” “justice,” and the like. Because these symbols are defined essentially in their application rather than in any abstract formulation, any member of the society who knows the terms can manipulate them with fair ease. Precisely because value concepts can be so easily applied to a variety of situations, most societies have a relatively small set of persons, called intellectuals, who are creatively expert in finding the relationship of one value concept to another and in tracing the use and application of these concepts in a society’s tradition.

The intellectual role always stresses high quality and creativity, and so is frequently confused with high intellect of any sort. The role of poet, literary critic, artist, and such require high intellect and creativity, and in addition, are roles which place high priority on the manipulation of symbols of significance.¹² While the symbols of art and literature are not necessarily value terms, they do tend to evoke an esthetic experience — and esthetics are clearly a matter of significance. Because literary and artistic roles center about significance, in most societies litterateurs and artists are considered intellectuals, and intellectuals may frequently be found pursuing literary or artistic careers; at the very least, artists and litterateurs tend to move in intellectual circles.

One interpretation of C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” argument¹³ is that despite the intellectual elegance of science and the high degree of creativity it demands, scientists are usually not called intellectuals. Though Snow bemoans this fact, while others insist science is indeed artistic, his argument that science is a different sort of thing from literature, art and politics is basically sound. To the degree that science is value-neutral, and to the extent that its concern is not directly with esthetics, it does not deal with meaning and significance.¹⁴ To be sure, there are contemporary scientists — for example, Einstein, Russell, Op-penheim or Commoner — whom most persons would list as having played intellectual roles. But this is because they have, in addition to their roles as scientists, dealt with matters that have been broadly related to human affairs. To the extent that scientists participate in, or even initiate, public debates on such problems as radiation, atomic energy, or the quality of the environment, they play intellectual roles, but more about this shortly.

Value concepts can be applied in a number of widely differing areas of life, for there is no area of human interest or activity which is not governed by values. Therefore the expert on values is also a generalist. In this view no one is an intellectual who plays the role of narrow specialist exclusively. Finally, the creative generalist attempts to communicate his findings to a variety of others who he thinks will understand him. These considerations bring us to a rough definition: an elite intellectual is one who is an expert in dealing with high-quality general ideas on questions of values and esthetics and who communicates his judgments on these matters to a fairly general audience.^*

But who or what is to say that a person is an expert and that his general ideas about values or esthetics are of high quality?

To begin with, quality is something that can only be determined by social systems: that is, by people acting in concert. As successive waves of literary and artistic fashions suggest, one group’s high quality is not necessarily that of another. A concern with quality is also intimately tied to the communication process, because only by broad communication of an idea can its worth be evaluated by others. Obviously, persons who are not experts themselves cannot evaluate the worth of expert communications. Colleague evaluation is essential in all endeavors which manipulate high level abstractions. This evaluation is elaborately institutionalized in science and the professions. Only scientists can determine whether or not another person is a scientist.¹⁵ Only colleagues can evaluate the qualifications or the excellence of a physician or lawyer. Thus, the operational definition of “physician” is that he is a person who other physicians think is a physician. Similarly, an elite intellectual is simply a person whom other elite intellectuals believe to be an elite intellectual.

This way of identifying intellectuals is not as circular as it sounds. Each field has a regularized method for certifying its members. There are boards of physicians and Ph.D. committees of scientists. We shall argue that in contemporary America the “board” or “examining committee” that admits a person to elite intellectual status is the editorial board of the intellectual journal. A leading intellectual is simply any person who writes regularly for leading intellectual journals and/or has his books reviewed in them. While the sheer number of appearances in these journals will be seen to be strongly related to intellectual prestige, it is not the only indicator. There are some leading intellectuals who write only infrequently but who are nevertheless highly regarded by the entourage or circle which surrounds most of these intellectual journals. In fact, for many years, the circle was the key to the certification of intellectuals. Let us look more carefully into the matter of circles and networks.

The modern division of labor tends to force roles into narrowly defined occupational limits, whereas the intellectual claims to speak about matters that are meaningful and significant for a very wide range of human interests and behavior. The claim that intellectuals engage in high-quality discussion of these matters, however, also implies that some social structure must exist which separates the wheat from the chaff. The intellectual appears disorganized, if not unorganizable, mainly because his mode of organization does not follow the most common social structure in modern life: the formal organization as typified by businesses, factories and universities. Rather, the characteristic form of intellectual social organization is the social circle — a loose network of relationships which nevertheless control and direct intellectuals and intellectual expression.

A social circle has three characteristics: though it may have a central core of notable figures, it does not have formal leadership because it has no formal roles; the relations between members are not instituted, though some traditional forms may evolve; most important, though some relationships are face-to-face, others are indirect (that is, members may be held together by a chain in which A relates to B who in turn relates to C).¹⁶ Members of a circle relate one to another because of some interest they have in common. These interests may be economic, political, cultural, or personal. The presence of a common interest distinguishes a circle from a latent network in which chains may consist of a linking quality or property which is not salient at the moment to the members of the network. This results in the “small world” phenomenon.¹⁷ For any given purpose — say, reaching an unknown person with given attributes — it is possible to activate a latent network such that even in a mass society the average distance from any given “target” is about seven individuals. In common with all networks, however, the full extent of any circle cannot be visible to any one participant, a fact that leads to the characteristic denial on the part of many intellectuals that they belong at all to any “group.”

The loose form of a social circle is well suited to the requirements of organizing intellectual life: ideas and individuals must be rated, new ideas communicated, and opinions must be formed across the boundaries of individual formal organizations and even across the boundaries of different institutional areas. The requirement that new ideas receive some kind of hearing is met better by loose structures than by more formal ones which tend to associate ideas with entrenched social positions.

To the extent that all social institutions serve social needs, solve social problems, or produce social consequences, to that extent they have a history. Social circles of intellectuals have grown out of particular historical circumstances which have shaped their nature and structure. In particular, as western industrial society developed, the function of circles in defining who are the leading intellectuals has undergone considerable change.

In the past two hundred years, there have been three main types of nonreligious social circles among intellectuals. Some were mainly concerned with political values, some with cultural life-style values, and some with both. (The fourth logical type, concerned with neither politics nor life-styles, covers a wide range of possibilities, including religion, but is not our concern here.) The purely political circle gave rise to the classic revolutionary cabal; the purely life-style circle gave rise to the classic Bohemia; the third existed as the classical cultural-literary-political salon. The last, because it was the least specialized, had the highest prestige. By “classical” we refer, of course, to the salon of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, because the appearance of the intellectual roles as an interstitial one — that is, a role fitting between the crevices of formal structures — became most apparent only when the rest of the society became segmented as a result of the industrial revolution, and of the decline of the church and nobility as integrating factors.¹⁸

New styles of what we now call counterestablishment politics, which emerged in both England and France in the eighteenth century, required more flexible social forms. So did a high level of artistic production, which began to break with established institutional arrangements for the distribution, judgment and appreciation of art.

Although the several types of social circles have somewhat different characteristics, they do intersect. The Bohemian network extends into the political, and both meet with the literary-political salon. In the United States, the pre-World War I salon of Mabel Dodge is a classic example. Part of the reason for the intersection of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• I The Shape of Intellectual Life in America
• II The War in Vietnam: The Perspective of the Intellectual
• III American Social Problems and the Intellectual Elite
• IV The Place of Elite Intellectuals in the Resolution of American Social Problems
• Appendix
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography