THE AMERICAN INTELLIGENTSIA
479
pointed out that as a result of industrialism and the abstract social
relations which it brought there is a growing tendency for the in–
dividual to suffer from an unrelatedness to the group. He called
this condition
anomie.
The intellectuals as a whole are subject to
this condition more than other members of society, and among the
intellectuals it is the bohemians who are more likely to find them–
selves without a bulwark of values and hence forced to plot their
way through a spiritual wilderness. It is they who most strongly
exhibit the characteristics of
anomie.
The bohemians are, generally speaking, recruited from two
social areas. There are those who grew up in metropolitan centers
and are for the most part members of minority groups. Because
of this background they are able to see more: clearly the
faults of the existing system, having directly experienced its con–
tradictions. They usually come from proletarian or lower mi.ddle
class homes and go through a stage of intense political activity in
high school or college.
If
they reject the Stalinist ideologists, to
whom they are initially drawn, it is often because of an esthetic
sensitivity which brings home to them the true meaning of Com–
munism. Manipulation of ideas and of the processes of art for party
ends hampers the free flow of intellectual creativity to which the
bohemian is committed.
The other major source of bohemian recruitment is from the
small towns in the American heartland where native talent, be it
genuine or illusory, is stifled by provincialism. Both lower and upper
middle class recruits come to bohemia from these towns. In their
own class the bourgeois bohemians are a tiny minority. It is a class
in which conspicuous leisure and consumption make possible the
patronizing of art and the intellect. Social security and established
position allow
this
cursory interest, whereas in the lower strata
of
the middle class, especially in the smaller cities and towns, ideas and
art are suspect because insecurity, both soe,ial and economic, enforces
rigid conformity to conventional values. In these strata intellectualism
immediately takes on revolutionary implications, adding to the al–
ready existing anxiety brought on by a problematic status in society.
The upper middle class deviants are given the opportunity for
cultivation in their own milieu, but because of the acute realization
that in this milieu intellectual and artistic endeavor is at bottom con–
sidered to
be
nonessential and ornamental they are led to cut their
social ties and to drift into the centers of bohemia. This divorce from
their background, if accompanied by contradictions in their personal
