Norman Birnbaum
THE MAKING OF A VANGUARD
I.
The Technical Intelligentsia
Capitalist and neo-capitalist societies in America and Western
Europe particularly have been marked by an internal development of
the greatest significance, which, while it is based on a change in the
production processes, is creating a new class structure. Knowledge has
become a factor in the production process, and in response what can be
called the technical intelligentsia has not only grown enormously but has
assumed the role of a new class in modern society, affecting the life of
traditional institutions and classes. A new avant-garde has been formed;
and some tentative notions can
be
advanced about its political meaning.
For knowledge has become a factor not only in technology but in
the applied social sciences as well, in law and administration, in eco–
nomics and social research. Indeed, the fusion of administrative, poli–
tical and productive processes in neo-capitalism, as in the emergence of
a "defense" economy in the U.S. and in the regulation of the private
sector by the state everywhere, has made it difficult to draw the line
between production and administration, and has made it virtually
im–
possible to distinguish between "political" and "economic" decisions.
Weber defined a market free
to
develop under the protection of a ra–
tional-legal state as essential to the emergence of rational capitalism;
now entire societies are programmed as markets. Historically, something
of the Saint-Simonian vision of an organization of society by the "in_
dustrialists" has been realized - with one conspicuous difference: the
higher rationality of the whole is missing, and centralization is operated
against, and not on behalf of, the interests of the collectivity. Knowledge,
in these circumstances, does mean power - not the power of the col–
lectivity over nature but of those who control the organization and
application of knowledge.
But the importance of knowledge in the production process does
not mean direct power to the knowers: they are employed l and knowl–
edge is bought. Those with intellectual and technical skills do not exer–
cise autonomous direction of production and the associated social
