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advisers without probing what values other than naked self-interest
make the social engineering role so attractive .
The book, as the author correctly observes , is not likely to
please intellectuals as it is an exercise in the demystification of their
social-political roles. At the same time this study creates a somewhat
misleading impression of Western intellectuals as pragmatically and
cheerfully predisposed to dispense advice and assist the powers-to-be
in their "system maintenance" and motivated by an unshakeable , if
self-interested, faith in benevolent social engineering. While doubt–
less many Western intellectuals could thus be characterized, an
equally important (if not larger) portion of them have withdrawn in–
to a reflexive denigration and embittered criticism of their social–
political institutions and systems, hardly inclined to dispense advice
on how to improve them .
It
would have been of interest to cast at least a fleeting glance at
comparable (and even more resounding) failures of knowledge elites
in non-Western, state-socialist societies where social engineering has
been a totally institutionalized and politicized activity legitimated
largely by Marxism-Leninism and engaging knowledge elites far
more closely integrated with the government bureaucracy.
It
is also to be regretted that this lucid and thoughtful volume
says virtually nothing about the moralizing functions and activities
of the knowledge elite, although it would seem that public moraliz–
ing - whether of the legitimizing or delegitimizing kind - has
become a major identifying characteristic of prominent Western
intellectuals. That such public moralizing has often entailed
momentous political-ideological misjudgements, themselves not un–
related to an overestimation of the benefits of social engineering, is
another topic of interest closely bound up with the concerns of this
study . Surely there is more room here for demystification .
It
is the respective strengths and weaknesses of the ideas associ–
ated with liberalism and socialism (preeminent beliefs of Western
intellectuals) which are the major subject of the other two volumes
here commented l.lpon . A scrutiny of these books also brings to light
attributes of these intellectuals not explored or self-consciously
reflected upon by the authors.
Reading
Liberalism and Its Critics,
one is led to wonder why
equality has become such a consuming preoccupation, indeed obses–
sion of Western intellectuals, who by no means underestimate their
own qualifications and often display an elite consciousness and full
awareness of their elite status. Such otherwise egalitarian people
don't shy away from making claims of special competence to be used
