180
IRVING HOWE
class, that might provide a new motor for social energy. Still others
have settled into political empiricism, content to work within the
limits of "the given."
While it seems to me almost impossible for a man of critical
intelligence to retain belief in such crucial aspects of political Marxism
as the "revolutionary potential" of the working class, the "withering
away" of the state and the "dictatorship of the proletariat," we must
acknowledge that the Marxist heritage, no doubt shaping our thought
in more ways than we know, remains powerful, and that the Marxist
method, especially if it becomes absorbed with a minimum of self–
consciousness into a larger style of thought, can still
be
valuable in
sharpening the issues of political debate.
A considerable change in the social status) economic condi–
tion and prestige ranking of the inteUectuals as a group.
The intellectuals can no longer be said to live beyond the mar–
gin or within the crevices of society. Those who continue in bohe–
mian poverty must often choose to remain there. The honorific role
accorded the intellectuals under the Kennedy administration was
merely a symbolic climax to a process long under way-a process
bringing to a virtual end that condition of psychic displacement and
political estrangement which had first begun in the early or mid–
nineteenth century. Today the intellectuals are, as a rule, firmly
entrenched within the society: as academicians in a growing uni–
versity system; as middlemen whose skills are exploited, while their
tastes are violated, in the industries of cultural entertainment; as
members of a slowly cohering elite within or near the government.
The term "Establishment" has been used with a comic recklessness
in the last few years, mostly as a "put down" of those unfortunate
enough to be over thirty, regularly employed and addicted to suits
and shaving; but for the first time we are perhaps
beginni~g
to have
in the United States the kind of coherent and influential formation
of intellectuals which in England
is
called "the Establishment."
The Cold War has shaped-I would say, mostly mis–
shaped-intellectual life to a very large) though unmeasured)
extent.
It requires an effort to remember the atmosphere in this coun–
try during the early fifties. A good many intellectuals formerly on
the Left were engaged in a flight to conservatism that was as un–
gainly as it was premature. Seriously entertained, conservatism can
