What stood out to me the most from our conversation in last week’s class was the bizarre self identification associated with the intellectual class. It surprised me that they see themselves as a subset of the working class. When I think of someone who is an intellectual I immediately associate them with the bourgeoisie. I think this misconception comes from the fact that typically intellectuals are extremely well educated and to me having access to higher levels of education is a sign of privilege. Also intellectuals often hold powerful positions in society and determine how society should be governed. This further made me think that they are associated within some subset of the bourgeoisie. In reality they consider themselves to be subset members of the proletariat class. This could be because of their view that workers are the agents of political change. It interested me that some intellectuals have opposing views on what to do with workers. Some think that they should directly involve themselves and even encourage a revolution from the working class. These intellectuals think that workers are so diluted by bourgeoisie capitalist power that they can’t help themselves without a vanguard to show them the way. They want to go along and push the process ahead. Some intellectuals go as far as having the desire to fight on the battlefield alongside their worker allies. Other intellectuals isolate themselves and think that only the workers are the ones capable of creating change. Some even think that intellectuals themselves are a part of the problem in society and society should be run by workers. This relates to our discussion of utopia and how intellectuals have different views on how we can achieve a utopian society through the working class.
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One reply on “Week 6 blog part 1”
I think that this idea Emily is talking about directly relates to the alienation concept that we have been talking about all semester. It could be that intellectuals do not want to identify with the bourgeoisie, simply because they view themselves as higher than that in a way that is not related to class. I feel that intellectuals want to feel apart of something, but they do not identify with the bourgeoisie. Many members of the bourgeoisie may have ended up in that class simply because they were born into it, not because of their intellectual capabilities. I feel that the intellectuals may really identify with the working class and state they believe they work just as hard. Intellectuals typically look down on certain professions such as working on wall street or business because they believe they have a higher level of knowledge than them. There is a large focus in today’s society on people studying business, largely looking down on them. For example, at Bucknell, most people were very upset that Holmes Hall was built because there are other academic disciplines that people believe need more attention. Most of these people who were upset by this weren’t saying that their own discipline they are studying should have gotten more attention, they believed that other disciplines deserve more praise. This directly relates to the intellectuals not wanting to be identified with the bourgeoisie. There is a negative connotation, and I think intellectuals never want to be associated with a negative connotation because they believe they are far above that.