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"Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?" by Robert Nozick

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Being that he was a philosopher, I decided to put this under philosophy. I respectfully ask that you read the whole essay before responding.

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

Some excerpts:

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.

From the beginnings of recorded thought, intellectuals have told us their activity is most valuable. Plato valued the rational faculty above courage and the appetites and deemed that philosophers should rule; Aristotle held that intellectual contemplation was the highest activity. It is not surprising that surviving texts record this high evaluation of intellectual activity. The people who formulated evaluations, who wrote them down with reasons to back them up, were intellectuals, after all. They were praising themselves. Those who valued other things more than thinking things through with words, whether hunting or power or uninterrupted sensual pleasure, did not bother to leave enduring written records. Only the intellectual worked out a theory of who was best.

What factor produced feelings of superior value on the part of intellectuals? I want to focus on one institution in particular: schools. 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?

There is a further point to be added. The (future) wordsmith intellectuals are successful within the formal, official social system of the schools, wherein the relevant rewards are distributed by the central authority of the teacher. The schools contain another informal social system within classrooms, hallways, and schoolyards, wherein rewards are distributed not by central direction but spontaneously at the pleasure and whim of schoolmates. Here the intellectuals do less well.

It is not surprising, therefore, that distribution of goods and rewards via a centrally organized distributional mechanism later strikes intellectuals as more appropriate than the "anarchy and chaos" of the marketplace. For distribution in a centrally planned socialist society stands to distribution in a capitalist society as distribution by the teacher stands to distribution by the schoolyard and hallway.

Do you believe this is a reasonable philosophical explanation? Why/why not?

Again, read the WHOLE ESSAY. Not just the excerpts.
 
Being that he was a philosopher, I decided to put this under philosophy. I respectfully ask that you read the whole essay before responding.

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

Some excerpts:









Do you believe this is a reasonable philosophical explanation? Why/why not?

Again, read the WHOLE ESSAY. Not just the excerpts.

The essay provides a good case study for the dangers of conflating philosophy with pop psychology.

I doubt that envy heavily informs the thoughts of many intellectuals, since people who pursue that lifestyle as a rule are pretty content with their books -- they live far more on ideas than luxuries and tend to be happy that they are one of the lucky people who can have a career doing it (of the many who try).

Being an intellectual helps you see through the fog a bit and realize how artificial many of society's cultural and economic conventions are, and how, if you are willing to use the polity to revise them, you can obtain much more optimal results in providing people with the resources to pursue happiness than they receive from the status quo.
 
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The essay provides a good case study for the dangers of conflating philosophy with pop psychology.

I doubt that envy heavily informs the thoughts of many intellectuals, since people who pursue that lifestyle as a rule are pretty content with their books -- they live far more on ideas than luxuries and tend to be happy that they are one of the lucky people who can have a career doing it (of the many who try).

Being an intellectual helps you see through the fog a bit and realize how artificial many of society's cultural and economic conventions are, and how, if you are willing to use the polity to revise them, you can obtain much more optimal results in providing people with the resources to pursue happiness.

My thoughts exactly.
 
What a joke. While the writing style is far superior, the overall quality of argument is no better than the stuff the hacks spout here on DP. He writes an entire essay to say "anti-capitalist intellectuals are arrogant statist stupidheads." What really gets me is that he is the same ivory tower fantasy intellectuals he criticizes. His writing is nothing more than a combination of wannabe-freudian psychoanalysis combined with his personal biases.
 
A painful read. Struck me as pomp and air more than anything concrete or stimulating.
 
I wouldn't say I "oppose" capitalism, I think I oppose this viral form of capitalism America has invented, I think their corporations are too powerful and too involved in politics, I think they have bad business practises and I think its sad that many in America have bought into it, the system is fixed, its not a free market at all, depending on the situation.

I have found that balance is absolutely key to long term stability, and by that I mean a mixed economy, but EFFECTIVE mixed economy.

It'll never work in America, because you vote one party into power that would like to try it, but end up passing inept and weak legislation because they're bought by corporations too, and then you have the other side which is determined to break down the government apparatus and make it less effective, unless of course its your civil liberties and who you wanna marry.

Anywho, I'm not against private wealth creation or the free market or any of that crap, I just feel that corporatism isn't the way to go for a healthy, free and harmonious society.
 
The "intellectual" asks "Why do intellectuals hate capitalism?"

The real question is "Why do rightwingers hate intelligent people?"
 
The real question is "Why do rightwingers hate intelligent people?"

Stupid people hate intelligent people. There are lots of intelligent righties, maybe harder to run across :shrug: but they're around.
 
I'm sure for some intellectuals the essay hits the nail on the head and for others the reasons are considerably more complicated.

Generally, when I meet an intellectual they do not favor an economic philosophy. There are few intellectuals who would profess to be socialist or capitalist. History and human nature have shown us that no matter what economic system you embrace, the political system will influence it and plant the seeds of its inevitable demise. A democracy ensures a redistribution of wealth to the poor, a republic ensures a redistribution of wealth to the wealthy, and an autocracy ensures a redistribution of wealth to the central authorities. As such, all economic systems eventually fail.

I also would disagree with the author's perception of philosophers. What Plato admired most was not the intellectual whose head was found in the abstract clouds, but the pragmatist whose reasoning was grounded, diplomatic, strategic, and compromising.

We are in a time when we need pragmatists but we have elected people guided by abstract, intellectual ideologies. It should be of no surprise that we have not been able to garner the confidence needed to allow our markets to recover.
 
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Actually, Aristotle was the grounded one

Have you read Nicomachean ethics? Although, in fairness, I suppose all philosophers get a bit "meta" as they say nowadays.
 
The essay provides a good case study for the dangers of conflating philosophy with pop psychology.

I doubt that envy heavily informs the thoughts of many intellectuals, since people who pursue that lifestyle as a rule are pretty content with their books -- they live far more on ideas than luxuries and tend to be happy that they are one of the lucky people who can have a career doing it (of the many who try).

Being an intellectual helps you see through the fog a bit and realize how artificial many of society's cultural and economic conventions are, and how, if you are willing to use the polity to revise them, you can obtain much more optimal results in providing people with the resources to pursue happiness than they receive from the status quo.

He more-or-less acknowledges that. I don't think that amounts to rejection of the essay.

Robert Nozick said:
In saying that intellectuals feel entitled to the highest rewards the general society can offer (wealth, status, etc.), I do not mean that intellectuals hold these rewards to be the highest goods. Perhaps they value more the intrinsic rewards of intellectual activity or the esteem of the ages. Nevertheless, they also feel entitled to the highest appreciation from the general society, to the most and best it has to offer, paltry though that may be. I don't mean to emphasize especially the rewards that find their way into the intellectuals' pockets or even reach them personally. Identifying themselves as intellectuals, they can resent the fact that intellectual activity is not most highly valued and rewarded.
 
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