Professional intellectuals, in particular social scientists, have unavoidably to live a dual life. An intellectual is first a subject and actor in social life and secondly a neutral observer and interpreter of institutions and processes. In the first role, they may be passionate activists and in the second role, they are neutral observers and resource providers for corrective or progressive recourse.
Marxism advocates activist intellectualism. They make a gross fallacy. The sway of teleologism and economic determinism over the intellectuals of this school is a telling example of intellectualism gone wrong. First, the doctrine asserts that social dynamics are determined by their scientific rules and contradicting the same, its successive ideologues kept on devising comprehensive plans and organisations for social action and resorted to propaganda to make what they perceived as scientific inevitability happen. In fact, they were trying to make up for a deficient doctrine.
The point here is that an intellectual has a greater role than just acting and reacting in response to events and has to rise above personal likes and dislikes. They need to delve deeper and find out causes and underlying currents to identify the true nature of social phenomena and to suggest means to improve societal practices and direct the social dynamics in a desirable direction.
A passionately activist intellectual mostly thinks unilinear and takes a predicament as a given, which they seek to fight with the force of sheer numbers or by making loud noises. They also turn partisan as a result of this proclivity and mainly play the role of cheerleaders or mourners as per the fate of their chosen outfit. They also do not serve their group as they can only charge their fellow activists emotionally and they do not point to the strengths and weaknesses of their programme or agenda or of those of their adversaries.
Intellectuals need to review their professional role with some seriousness.
Niraj Kumar Jha
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