Why are intellectuals overwhelmingly leftist?

Originally posted by Justinian Originally posted by Genghis My opinion is that people like English professors are liberal is because they're isolated from the real world and unlike technical specialists needn't worry about things like efficiency so long as there are intangible aspects which gratify them like "fairness" and "caring". Thats an interesting point that I for the most part agree with, engineering types work with math a lot where there is a right and wrong answer.  You are less likely to think in the abstract.  With those who study english there is no right and wrong answer, it is all opinion, therefore you think abstractly rather often.  I don't know if they are isolated from the real world but they think about it in a much different way because of their profession.

But there is another reason that the student of engineering already knows: money. Technical careers are the ones more likely to pay better dividends and the people that course them are already more materialistic and less vocational than average, individualists that want money, money, money.

One former friend of mine, a very nice guy, was very leftist and was studying engineers. He told me once: "let's be realistic: now I vote for the Basque Left but, in a decade or so I will probably be voting the Spanish Tories". I don't know if it's actually the case, after all he was a exceptional case of leftist engineer, but it has some class logic.

This contempt of intellectuals (believing that they are isolated from reality) is also typically Conservative, and stems from the fact that the more educated someone is the more likely he is to be left-wing. 

That's debatable, and there are just as many smart conservatives as there are smart liberals.  From what my poli sci professor told my class last year (at least in America) the more educated you are, the more conservative you become until you get your Phd, which makes you overwhelmingly more liberal.

You may like to check the dictionary to see what it means, then.

I did, and I'm still conservative, you lose.

This is due to abundance, not efficiency. In a European country, vegetables which can be grown locally are flown in on a daily basis from starving Africa, and then flown out to Poland to be cleaned by cheap labour, and then flown back in for the enjoyment of consumers, because that's the cheapest way. So, in the supermarket you can find cleaned vegetables wrapped in plastic. No matter how bad your grades were in the uni, if you are a self-respecting engineer you won't call this efficiency. No one does, actually, except insane market fundamentalists like you.

It's called comparative advantage, if Europeans can make cars better than they can grow potatoes, they should make cars and import potatoes from abroad.  That's not market fundamentalism, it's just common sense.

Others' incompetency does not make you efficient. Command economies were often less efficient, yes. But they managed to feed everyone when there was a food surplus (with the exception of dictatorial rule like Stalin's case), and this is what counts for me. So, you see, unlike you, I am not attributing efficiency to an economic system because of ideological conviction. You are just a market fundamentalist who believes that free markets always work, and profit comes before human life. 

Pretty much every liberal market economy is able to do the same thing, while also provide luxuries such as televisions and other things that were never produced in adequate amounts by central planners.

Look at your own country, USA is filthy rich, but you have people starving.

That's because when the free market can decide wages, the most useless people won't get enough, which is better than them weighing down the rest of society.

Anyway, let's compare free market Russia to the Soviet Union, same f**king country, which one's more efficient? Most Warsaw pact countries are still not up to their GDPs 15 years ago. Hundreds of Russians have frozen to death the last week... That's capitalist efficiency for you.

Fine, let's look at the Warsaw Pact, when I was in Hungary last spring I read in one of their great museums that after they became Communist Hungary went from a net exporter to a net importer of food.  Or look at China, their economy has made impressive gains under market reforms.  Mosquito, can you tell us how life has changed since Poland moved to a free market?

Furthermore, if life was so peachy behind the Iron Curtain, why did their planned economies completely collapse?

Let's compare how many people died when the same hurricane hit poor inefficient Cuba (none died because everyone was relocated out of its path by the government), and the efficient USA where the evacuation was left to the free market?

The market isn't left to do everything in this country.  How is the market going to evacuate people?  Pay them to leave?  That's a totally nonsensical example.

In addition to all this, your ideas about engineers and physicists being 'goal oriented' rather than 'understanding oriented' are vast generalisations. It sounds a lot like BA mumbo jumbo, are you sure you are an engineer?

I think I know what my own major is.  You said you are a technical specialist, which type?

Edited by Genghis

Originally posted by Genghis Notice, you still only asked humanities and social scientists.  If you asked engineers, economists, physicists, and chemists you probably would have had some people say they were going to vote for the Conservative party.

Your observation is definitely right. (But I don't have any friends in those departments except a chemistry dude.) I have absolutely no idea what the ideological/political inclination of engineers, economists, physicists, and chemists is.

However, with the exception of the economists, engineers, physicists, and chemists are not social thinkers. They may be people of great intellect, but they are certainily not trained to look at the way society functions. If one accuses those humanities/social science teachers/intellectuals of living in the ivory tower (an accusation that I strongly disagree - a lot of these people are social activists, not just social thinkers), I would think physicists, chemists, or engineers are the real ones living in the ivory tower divorced from the real world.

So how do we explain the "economists"? Economics as an academic discipline is no longer a "social science". It is an applied mathematical/statistical science. So economics share something in common with other physical and engineering sciences - they all strive to come up with the cleanest and simplest formula (mathematically of course) for even the most complex phenomenon. To do that, it requires tremendous amount of intelligence, so saying that all these people strive to come up with the simplest solution to the most complex problem does not imply that these people themselves are simple, let alone stupid. It's simply the nature of their disciplines that dictate their methods for scientific enquiry.

So I agree with Justinian's observation and disagree with Genghis's comments (regarding English professors).

Originally posted by Justinian Originally posted by Genghis My opinion is that people like English professors are liberal is because they're isolated from the real world ...  ... engineering types work with math a lot where there is a right and wrong answer.  You are less likely to think in the abstract.  With those who study english there is no right and wrong answer, it is all opinion, therefore you think abstractly rather often.

Intellectuals/professors in the humanities and social sciences are much more capable of looking at society from an abstract and systemic way than their "mathematical science" counterparts. And looking at things from their multidimensionality and totality and offering "solutions" that are multifaceted are the characteristics of the former; while looking at things in terms of mathematics and offering simple clear-cut solutions are the characteristics of the latter. (But Genghis seems to confuse "clear cut solutions" with "efficiency". Simple solutions do not guarantee "efficiency". Simple solutions are just what they are - they are simple, but of course they are not necessarily wrong.)

For a lot of Conservatives, at least the way I see it, they tend to look at the world, at least when it comes to social issues, in a very black-and-white manner, hence their "solutions" to social problems are usually very one dimensional. For instance, if you commit a crime? I will lock you up so problem solved. Hence we should build more prisons.

The same logic also seems to apply to issues like abortion. I always tell my students that while "pro-choice" does not mean "anti-life", "pro-life" definitely means "anti-choice". What the "pro-choice" camp is arguing is not for the merciless massacre of "innocent unborn babies". What they are arguing for is the availability of OPTIONS for women. But for the "anti-choice" camp, it basically means options for abortion shouldn't even exist - hence one dimensional solution to a complex problem.

Let's look at the issue of marriage. For most conservatives, there is only ONE definition for "family" (i.e. marriage). Again, no other options. It's black and white. But for the so-called "liberals", what they are saying essentially is that, "Let the people decide what kind of family or marriage they would like to have." In other words, a much more multifaceted worldview for a complex world.

Let's also look at social policies. For the Conservatives, if you don't work, you don't deserve a good life, so let society punish you for not working. In other words: guys who work are good guys and guys who don't work are bad guys. It's as black and white as that. For the so-called leftists, when we see someone not working, instead of immediately applying the social Darwinian principle to that person, we ask questions: Why does he not work? Can he work? What stops him from working? And the solutions we try to offer correspond to the idiosyncracies of that individual.

These two conflicting world views correspond quite nicely to (if such a split is indeed "proven") the two different methods/rationales utilized by the mathmatically-minded physical and economic scientists and the systemically-oriented social thinkers.

but ,who pulled the chestnuts out of the fire ,not the intellectuals ,the workers ? while many of the intellectuals were sitting in their ivory -tower and had discussions about god and the rest of the world !!!!!

Originally posted by Genghis This is due to abundance, not efficiency. In a European country, vegetables which can be grown locally are flown in on a daily basis from starving Africa, and then flown out to Poland to be cleaned by cheap labour, and then flown back in for the enjoyment of consumers, because that's the cheapest way. So, in the supermarket you can find cleaned vegetables wrapped in plastic. No matter how bad your grades were in the uni, if you are a self-respecting engineer you won't call this efficiency. No one does, actually, except insane market fundamentalists like you. It's called comparative advantage, if Europeans can make cars better than they can grow potatoes, they should make cars and import potatoes from abroad.  That's not market fundamentalism, it's just common sense.

It's called stupidity.

The question is that we are most severely and maybe irreversibly damaging our planet, the only place where we can live in, with such waste of transportation, frigorifics, useless envasage, etc.

The question is that Capitalism transfer the costs of such procedures largely to the enviroment and this doctrine and behaviour is inefficient and most dangerous.

Others' incompetency does not make you efficient. Command economies were often less efficient, yes. But they managed to feed everyone when there was a food surplus (with the exception of dictatorial rule like Stalin's case), and this is what counts for me. So, you see, unlike you, I am not attributing efficiency to an economic system because of ideological conviction. You are just a market fundamentalist who believes that free markets always work, and profit comes before human life.  Pretty much every liberal market economy is able to do the same thing, while also provide luxuries such as televisions and other things that were never produced in adequate amounts by central planners.

What a typical hypocritical Buregueois comment. Luxuries, by definition are things that aren't necessary. So you prefer to sacrify the needs to the caprice. What kind of attitude is that?

Look at your own country, USA is filthy rich, but you have people starving. That's because when the free market can decide wages, the most useless people won't get enough, which is better than them weighing down the rest of society.

This is a criminal attitude and worth of a criminal process. What you are advocating is murder. 

Furthermore, if life was so peachy behind the Iron Curtain, why did their planned economies completely collapse?

They collapsed due to lack of democracy and flexibility.

There was a shy and very late (too late) attempt to restore the original soviet system as it was supposed to be: control of society via quasi-direct democracy at the soviets (elected councils), yet this attempt was aborted and market economy and a centralized authoritarian republic stabilished instead.

The problem of the planified economies wasn't so much in the planning but in the disconnection with the bases: the people, due to lack of effective democracy.

That system worked rather well anyhow during the disciplinary phase of Capitalism (Fordism) but was unable to adapt to the new demands of the full phase (Toyotism). Possibly if that aberration (socialism wasn never thought that would work in a pre-Capitalist country, though in the end it worked better than expected) would have been democratic, as the system was supposedly concieved to be, things would have been very different.


Edited by Maju

Very interesting topic nevertheless... Although I am tempted to take a bite at the original question, I won't... Bey and Maju have done a great job presenting the truth... maybe later I'll join in my fellows from the Left into completing the utter decomposition of poor Ghenghis

 Just remember one thing: if you are a)smart and b)have even vaguely human feelings, you are on the Left. Exeptions apply, of course, but are few and scattered around - ie. Smart and Humane right wingers. I fear young Ghenghis, with his parroting of the old, tired, downright stupid and moronic Libertarian propaganda, proves point a) is quite far away from him, while his attitude towards those who are not "productive" in the libertarian fashion ("I say, shoot them all! What do we need the poor for?" - quick trivia: where's that quote from?) proves that humane feelings are as alien to him as they are to the White House Chikenhawks gang of Murderous Morons

Originally posted by Scytho-Sarmatian Basically, it's because brainy people (intellectuals) are often good at cheating people, and leftist politics is mostly about cheating people.  Actually, the problem isn't so much the left as it is totalitarianism in general.  Far rightists can be just as bad, if not worse, but they would generally resort to in-your-face strong-arm tactics rather than trickery.  Then again, you have the commies who are tricky ultra-leftists who also use in-your-face strong-arm tactics.

I certainly do hope you are kidding... otherwise I am really, really, really owerwhelmed by this

And where are you, my friend? Sitting on the fence? There's no such thing, you know.

Edited by Alkiviades

A good job payed by stupid people? Not really, I am working in the private sector as a pro-writer, and by any market-guru standards I am considered a highly effective employee.

Contradicts with your stereotypical image of leftists as state-sponsored bugs, huh? Well, get over it   After all, in my part of the world the state-sponsored bugs are usually conservatives, they are afraid of any change that could potentially endanger their high-paid minimal-work jobs.

Well, I am an anarchist of the Left, where does that put me in your black-white conceptual spectrum?

I am wholly against totalitarian regimes, after all the main premise of a good anarchist is the belief on the freedom of the individual. And the greaviest danger for individual freedom in our world (in the post-cold war, post-Keynes, post-socialism, libertarian, neo-classical world) is not some imaginary "reds" or "blacks", but the very real corporations and capitalist moguls, who are stopping in front of nothing in order to make more profit. We are heading towards a neo-feudalism (corporate feudalism, if you like) and I absolutely hate this!

You are afraid of totalitarian regimes? Well, I got good news for you: there's no such thing predicted for the near future. What lies there for us, is a happy, consumeristic future, where we'll be working 16 hours a day to make some rich bastards even richer, so we can earn enough to survive and for the essential luxuries we'll have to borrow from the bank... uh, wait, isn't that already here?

Our choices are limited, you see. It's that, or we'll have to pull ourselves out of the mainstream and into the margins... You like that future? Because I frankly am horrified by it...

Originally posted by Alkiviades  And the greaviest danger for individual freedom in our world (in the post-cold war, post-Keynes, post-socialism, libertarian, neo-classical world) is not some imaginary "reds" or "blacks", but the very real corporations and capitalist moguls, who are stopping in front of nothing in order to make more profit. We are heading towards a neo-feudalism (corporate feudalism, if you like) and I absolutely hate this!

Well said. I can only add another probably unavailing plea for people to stop calling large-corporation-dominated, protectionist systems 'free market' ones.

All the technical advantages of free markets, and there are many, are destroyed by protectionism, limitations on the power of unions to organise, over-restrictive patents, impediments to the free movement of peoples and the growth of large bureaucratic, directorate controlled corporations that are not even answerable to their shareholders.