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PARTISAN REVIEW
gifted-enlightened dukes, plus miners' sons plus General Practition–
ers. The intelligentsia of a given period and place is of a fairly
homogeneous social texture: loose threads only appear on the fringes.
Intelligence alone is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to
become a member of the Intelligentsia. Instead, we have to regard
the formation of this particular group as a social process which, as
far as modern society is concerned, begins with the French Revolu–
tion.
II
THE INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE THIRD ESTATE
Among the upper strata of the Third Estate the aspiration to in–
dependent thinking was not a luxury but a dire necessity of survival.
The young bourgeoisie, hemmed in by the stultifying feudal structure
had to conquer its historic lebensraum, and this conquest was only
possible by blowing up the feudal totems and taboos with the dyna–
mite of 'independent thought.' The first modern intellectuals were
the Encyclopredists, and they enter the historical stage as the great
debunkers and iconoclasts. Goethe resurrected is unimaginable in our
time, but Voltaire would be within a fortnight acclimatized in Blooms–
bury, winning all weekend competitions of the
N ew Statesman.
For
Goethe was the last Renaissance genius, a direct descendant of Leo–
nardo, and his attitude to Society that of a courtier of some enlight–
ened Florentine prince; whereas with Voltaire, the great debunking
of feudal values begins.
The intelligentsia in the modern sense thus first appears as that
part of a nation which by its social situation not so much 'aspires' but
is
driven
to independent thought, that is to a type of group behaviour
which debunks the existing hierarchy of values (from which it is
excluded) and at the same time tries to replace it with new values of
its own. This constructive tendency of the intelligentsia is its second
basic feature. The true iconoclasts always had a prophetic streak, and
all debunkers have a bashfully hidden pedagogic vein.
But where had these new values of their own come from? This
is the point where Marxist analysis ends in over-simplified schemata:
'The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary
part . . . Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted dis–
turbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast–
frozen, relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices
and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy
