Intellectuals in Politics What has been the role of intellectuals in the twentieth-century and what, if any, will be their role in the future? Frequently scorned and reviled, intellectuals have nevertheless played a vital part in shaping our century. From their original intervention in the Dreyfus affair to the case of Salman Rushdie, intellectuals have aroused controversy. Jeremy Jennings and Anthony Kemp-Welch edit a collection of essays from leading academics in the fields of political theory, philosophy, history and sociology. After their introduction on the major issues confronting intellectuals the book explores the various different aspects of the intellectual’s role including: • how to define the role and function of the intellectual • how intellectuals have assumed the status of the conscience of the nation and the voice of the oppressed • the interaction of intellectuals with Marxism • the place of the intellectual in American society Covering countries as diverse as Israel, Algeria, Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Russia and America, this collection considers the question of whether the intellectual can still lay claim to the language of truth. In addressing this question Intellectuals in Politics tells us much about the modern world in which we live. Jeremy Jennings is Reader in Political Theory at the University of Birmingham. Anthony Kemp-Welch is the Dean of the School of Economic and Social Studies at the University of East Anglia. Intellectuals in Politics From the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie Edited by Jeremy Jennings and Anthony Kemp-Welch London and New York First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1997 Jeremy Jennings and Anthony Kemp-Welch, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Intellectuals in politics: from the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie/edited by Jeremy Jennings and Anthony Kemp-Welch. 1. Intellectuals—Political activity—History—20th century. I. Jennings, Jeremy, 1952– . II. Kemp-Welch, A., 1949– . HM213.I5474 1997 96–47160 305.5’52–dc21 CIP ISBN 0-203-44162-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-74986-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-14995-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-14996-7 (pbk) Contents Contributors vii 1 The century of the intellectual: from the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie Jeremy Jennings and Tony Kemp-Welch 1 Part I Insiders and outsiders 2 The intellectual as social critic: Antonio Gramsci and Michael Walzer Richard Bellamy 25 3 Between autonomy and responsibility: Max Weber on scholars, academics and intellectuals Alan Scott 45 4 Of treason, blindness and silence: dilemmas of the intellectual in modern France Jeremy Jennings 65 Part II Priestly interventions 5 Algeria and the dual image of the intellectual Lahouari Addi 89 6 Between the word and the land: intellectuals and the State in Israel Shlomo Sand 102 7 A product of history, not a cause? Yeats, the ‘Auden generation’, and the politics of poetry, 1891–1939 D.George Boyce 120 v vi Contents Part III Slavonic jesters 8 Revolutionaries and dissidents: the role of the Russian intellectual in the downfall of Tsarism and Communism Edward Acton 149 9 Politics and the Polish intellectuals, 1945–89 Tony Kemp-Welch 169 10 Intellectuals and socialism: making and breaking the proletariat Neil Harding 195 Part IV American agnostics 11 Freedom, commitment and Marxism: the predicament of independent intellectuals in the United States, 1910–41 Steven Biel 225 12 The tragic predicament: post-war American intellectuals, acceptance and mass culture George Cotkin 248 13 Are intellectuals a dying species? War and the Ivory Tower in the postmodern age David Schalk 271 Epilogue 14 What truth? For whom and where? Martin Hollis 289 Index 300 Contributors Edward Acton is Professor of Modern European History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary (1979), Russia: The Present and the Past (1986) and Rethinking the Russian Revolution (1990). A revised and expanded edition of his history of Russia has been published as Russia: the Tsarist and Soviet legacy (1995). Lahouari Addi is Professor of Politics at the Université de Lyon II. He is the author of État et Pouvoir (1990), L’impasse du populisme (1991) and L’Algérie et la démocratie (1994). He is a regular contributor to Le Monde on Algerian affairs. Richard Bellamy is Professor of Politics at the University of Reading. His many publications include: Modern Italian Social Theory (1987), Liberalism and Modern Society (1992) and Gramsci and the Italian State (1993). Steven Biel teaches at Harvard University. He is the author of Independent Intellectuals in the United States, 1910–1945 (1992) and Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster (1996). George Boyce is Professor of Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea. He is the author of The Irish Question and British Politics (1988), Nineteenth- Century Ireland: The Search for Stability (1990), Nationalism in Ireland (1991), Ireland, 1828–1923: From Ascendancy to Democracy (1992) and co- editor of Political Thought in Ireland since the Seventeenth Century (1993). George Cotkin is Professor of History at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo. He is the author of William James, Public Philosopher (1990) and Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880–1900 (1992). He is currently working on an intellectual and cultural history of existentialism in America. Neil Harding is Professor of Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea. He is the author of Lenin’s Political Thought (1983), winner of the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize, and editor of Marxism in Russia (1983) and The State in Socialist Society (1984). vii viii Contributors Martin Hollis is Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of many books, amongst the most recent of which are The Cunning of Reason (1989) and The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1994). Jeremy Jennings is Reader in Political Theory at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Georges Sorel (1985) and Syndicalism in France: A History of Ideas (1990), and editor of Intellectuals in Twentieth- Century France: Mandarins and Samurais (1993). Tony Kemp-Welch is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of The Birth of Solidarity (1991), Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia (1994) and editor of The Ideas of Nikolai Bukharin (1992). Shlomo Sand is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tel Aviv and Associate Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is the author of L’Illusion du politique (1985) and (with Jacques Julliard) of Georges Sorel en son temps (1985). He is the editor of a recently published collection of the writings of Bernard Lazare. David Schalk is Professor of History at Vassar College and Visiting Professor at the University of Columbia and the Institute of French Studies at NYU. He is the author of Roger Martin du Gard: The Novelist and History (1967), The Spectrum of Political Engagement (1979) and War and the Ivory Tower: Algeria and Vietnam (1991). Alan Scott is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Ideology and New Social Movements (1990), co-author of The Uncertain Science (1992) and editor of The Limits of Globalization (1997). 1 The century of the intellectual From the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie Jeremy Jennings and Tony Kemp-Welch Every year the BBC organizes a series of lectures in London. Dating from 1948, when they were first given by Bertrand Russell, the Reith Lectures are a major event in British cultural life and generally lead to wider public discussion. In 1993 the person chosen to present these lectures was Edward Said: his subject was the role of the intellectual. Said is a fascinating figure. A Palestinian Christian, educated in Cairo, he is now Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. When his lectures referred to the intellectual in exile there was a clear element of autobiography. Moreover, Professor Said’s academic interest in intellectuals is of long-standing. Ten years earlier he had described them as a ‘class badly in need today of moral rehabilitation and social redefinition’1 and he vigorously restated this view in his widely read Culture and Imperialism.2 There, the argument was directed against the American intellectual cocooned in the ‘munificence’ and ‘Utopian sanctuary’ of the American university campus. The professionalization of intellectual life, Said contended, was such that the ‘true’ intellectual had all but disappeared, leaving the landscape to be dominated by ‘policy-oriented intellectuals’ who had internalized the norms of the state. This was most obviously the case in foreign policy where the necessity of American use of force and the ultimate justice of its cause was never to be questioned. Wider social and economic issues, such as racism, poverty, ecological disaster and disease were now thought to be none of the intellectual’s concern. Intellectuals had been ‘defanged’ and their task had been reduced to that of the ‘manufacturing of consent’.