THE AMERICAN INTELLIGENTSIA
473
study of political structures between two types of politicians, those
who lived for politics and those who lived off politics. The former
have an emotional investment in particular ideologies which converts
their job into a devotion to a calling, whereas the latter are in
politics merely as a way of making a living. We may use this di–
chotomy broadly in subdividing types of intellectuals in America.
Those who conceive of their role as a devotion to a calling live for
ideas, even though they do live off their intellectual production in
a psychological sense. This group formally includes members of the
faculties of the universities and the few writers in the large cities
who do independent critical work pitched beyond the level of com–
mercialism. These find their outlet in the little magazines. In the
latter group-those who live off ideas--would be included the journal–
ists of the large city dailies and the writers for the organs of public
opinion on a mass scale such as the Luce publications.
There is another distinct group which fits into neither of these
categories, whom we shall call the ideologists. They are, in America,
the acolytes of Stalinism such as the contributors to the
New Masses,
also the writers on the staff of
PM
and the facile popularizers who
desserninate the orthodox views of the party, sugar-pilled for mass con–
sumption. The ideologists' attitude toward ideas is ruthlessly prag–
matic. Their touchstone for the evaluation of an idea is whether or
not it contributes to the realization of the party program. Thus every
idea is judged in terms of its political manipulability. The ideologists
also carry with them numerous dupes, intellectuals who because they
want to be considered revolutionary or "progressive"-the word
debased to party usage nowadays-support the Stalinist position
with trivial reservations. In doing so they serve the useful func–
tion of making Stalinist propaganda respectable. This group has been
aptly named the "totalitarian liberals" by such trenchant analysts of
their social role as Sidney Hook.
In the historical tradition of Western culture the academic in–
tellectuals are the direct descendants ' of the clerks who formed, in
the medieval period, the nucleus of what was to become the modem
university. Even in America this heritage, however much dissipated
by the norms and practices of capitalist democracy, can be discerned
in the academic attitude. In a secularized social frame this manifests
itself in a cloistered disinterested pursuit of knowledge for its own
sake. The secularized function of salvation is served by the contri–
bution, however small, of a scrap of knowledge to the particular
