Intellectuals and Social Change*

The decline of the intellectual is profoundly rooted in changed conditions and relations. Intellectuals are needed by political-ideological elites, while the life of technological-bureaucratic societies tends to bypass the scrutinization of ideas and ideologies. The bureaucratic pathos becomes complete, all the while celebrated by ex-intellectuals turned technicians. The break in function between intellect and practicality becomes complete. But the "decline" of the intellectual has to do precisely with his casting about for some other lost paradise of the whole man. Intellectuals have flourished in a climate of ideologies and counter-ideologies, so that Molnar&s;s call for an end of ideology and a return to philosophy is simply a misanthropic expression of that very decline of intellectual activity. But the decline of the intellectual is profoundly rooted in changed conditions and relations. The thesis offered by the emergence of the intelligentsia as a social force has to do with its capacity to act as an agency for social change.