Intellectuals and Society

Sowell (Hoover Institution, Stanford U.) issues a right-wing jeremiad against the intelligentsia, the membership of which seems to primarily consist of academics, writers, etc. whose views he finds distasteful. If there is a core argument to the work, it is that intellect does not equal wisdom, that the ideas of intellectuals are not subjected to empirical verifiability, and that intellectuals wield an outsized influence on society that often leads to harmful outcomes (less so, he notes gratefully, in the United States than in Europe, although it is telling that he places the high point of US intellectuals' influence as being in the 1960s and 1970s, an era of greater left influence than later decades). However, this core argument appears to be less of a thesis to be proved than a hook upon which to hang a litany of complaints against ideas that he disagrees with in the realms of economics, social visions, the law, and war. With regards to these complaints, Sowell is frequently less than convincing, as he rarely treats the ideas of his opponents with even a semblance of seriousness. On the very first page, for instance, he argues that Marx's idea that labor is the source of all wealth is disproved because, "if this were true, countries with much labor and little technology or entrepreneurship would be more prosperous than countries with the reverse, when in fact it is blatantly obvious that the direct opposite is the case." This is such a laughably ridiculous distortion of Marx's theory of labor value that is hard to imagine that any thoughtful reader could possibly take it, or most of the rest of Sowell's similarly-styled arguments, seriously. Those on the right who merely want their political beliefs reinforced may find the work enjoyable however. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Sowell unravels the world of intellectuals in order to illustrate an important social phenomenon: how the thinkers of a society mold that society, leaving an impact on people in every walk of life, even if these thinkers are basically unknown to the world at large.