Aaron Ross Powell: Welcome to Free Thoughts
from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute.
I’m Aaron Powell.
Trevor Burrus: I’m Trevor Burrus.
Aaron Ross Powell: Today we’re joined by
our colleague Jason Kuznicki, a research fellow
at Cato and editor of Cato Unbound. Today
we want to talk about an essay by the philosopher
Robert Nozick on what’s a pretty interesting
question and one that a lot of people have
spent a lot of time trying to answer including
many of us here, which is the title of the
essay, Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?
You should note the essay is up on Libertarianism.org
and we will put a link to it in the show notes.
So in this short essay, Nozick gives what
he thinks is the reason which has to do with
schooling and so to very briefly summarize
the ideas that intellectuals of the kind he’s
talking about, and we will get to his definition
of intellectual in a second, tend to do very
well in school and they tend to receive a
lot of praise in school.
As a result, they think that the way school
operates is the way that society ought to
operate because each of us would like society
to be structured in such a way that we come
out on top and we receive the prestige that
we think we deserve and that the way the schools
are structured looks more like a command-and-control
economy, more like socialism than it does
like capitalism. Therefore intellectuals oppose
capitalism and support socialism.
Trevor Burrus: More or less, yeah. I think
that the first important proviso I think we
should have on this episode is that we are
not doing or at least I’m not doing – I
don’t know about you guys – but we are
not doing a pathologizing of our opponents.
This is something I always try and warn people.
There is a very big tendency in political
discussions and political thought to pathologize
your opponents, to explain the reasons they
disagree with you as some sort of like mental
illness and the classic example of this is
at least recent is Dinesh D'Souza’s The
Roots of Obama’s Rage, which has tried to
explain why President Obama has pretty milk
toast leftist policies via some sort of father
complex. I have never read the book but this
is very dangerous. There are reasons people
can disagree with you that are valid, that
do not require them to have some sort of mental
condition.
But it is important to try and explain when
there’s a disproportionate amount of people
who hold one type of belief in one area. Then
it is something that is worth an explanation.
It’s not an equal distribution of pro capitalist
and the intellectuals we’re talking about.
So we’re trying to talk about a phenomenon,
not saying, well, here’s why stupid people
– why the people are dumb and why they have
a mental block in disagreeing with us.
Jason Kuznicki: Well, yeah. I mean it is a
phenomenon and it’s fair to observe it,
something that people on the left have also
observed. It’s not something that we have
made up. It doesn’t involve necessarily
psychological factors.
One way that this has been discussed in particular
by people on the left themselves is that what’s
happening is what might be called a long march
through the institutions that if you want
to achieve social change in a leftist direction,
the way to do that is to simply insert yourself
into positions of power in important institutions
in society and take them over and it doesn’t
have to be a bloody revolution. It doesn’t
have to be violent. It can simply be a gradual,
peaceful takeover and people on the left have
in fact said that this is what’s happening.
Now Nozick doesn’t seem to agree with that.
He doesn’t talk about it really. He has
a different set of explanations for it.
Trevor Burrus: Well, I think that the – that’s
an important point too and it’s also important
that we don’t necessarily have to criticize
them for that because you could say that libertarians
have had our own strategy for trying to get
people into places of influence or influencing
people, Cato. We do it with voluntary contribution
more often than government money.
Aaron Ross Powell: Right. Every ideology spends
time thinking about how can I convince other
people that I’m right.
Jason Kuznicki: Yeah. Once you take out the
long march thing, I mean it’s really – everybody
is doing it. Just avoid the loaded term there
and yeah, we’re all doing it. It’s all
that anybody does.
Aaron Ross Powell: And I feel like we ought
to acknowledge upfront there is also the possibility
that the reason that intellectuals oppose
capitalism, that the reason intellectuals
embrace socialism – I don’t think this
is true but intellectuals are highly educated
people. They know a lot. They tend to be very
smart and maybe it simply is the fact that
capitalism doesn’t work and that socialism
does and that the reason that they oppose
capitalism and support socialism is because
of that, that they’re simply right and that
the more you know and the smarter you are,
the more likely you are to believe true things
and therefore they’re correct.
I mean we should – that’s like the argument
that they would of course give and you hear
that all the time. The democratic policy proposals,
progressive policy proposals are supported
by smart people because they’re good proposals.
Jason Kuznicki: Except in economics departments.
In economics departments, people tend to be
much, much more supportive of the free market
than say in sociology or literature departments.
Trevor Burrus: Well, the – I think that
the average professional economist professor
of whatever sort is to the right of his colleagues
in the humanities department, maybe substantially
so when it comes to sociology or anthropology
or things like this, and maybe slightly to
the right of the average person but maybe
not. I’m not sure. I think that I’ve read
this – I think that they’re left of the
average like medium …
Aaron Ross Powell: But they’re not marketing
anarchists.
Trevor Burrus: No.
Jason Kuznicki: No, no, no.
Aaron Ross Powell: But this is a good time
to move into – I mean Nozick has something
very specific in mind when he says intellectuals
and so he would actually I think exclude the
economics professors that we’re talking
about from what he refers to as wordsmith
intellectuals.
Trevor Burrus: I’m not sure he would but
continue. I think that economists as usual
are right on the edge – he has this thing
with wordsmiths which is – yes, includes
poets and journalists and playwrights.
Jason Kuznicki: But he singles out wordsmiths
versus people who work with numbers. People
who work with numbers are not a part of his
explanatory system. He thinks that he has
identified something in particular to people
who work with words.
Trevor Burrus: So are economists more like
physicists or are they more like …
[Crosstalk] [0:06:40]
Aaron Ross Powell: I mean it also will depend
on the economist but we can bracket that issue
for now and say that – so what he is talking
about when he says intellectuals is something
he calls “wordsmith intellectuals”. Jason,
can you tell us what he means specifically
by a wordsmith intellectual?
Jason Kuznicki: A wordsmith intellectual is
someone who shapes the flow of words that
other people will see and that can be in any
number of different disciplines. It could
be a historian. It could be an anthropologist.
It could be a philosopher. It could be any
number of different academic specialties and
also professions outside the academy who are
in some ways shaped by those disciplines.
So, people who are TV news commentators, people
who are journalists. You’re going to see
them – to some degree share the same characteristics.
Trevor Burrus: Now this is – the interesting
question here which he doesn’t really deal
with but Aaron and I have actually talked
about this in the past too. Excluding the
“numbers-smith” people. Why? It seems
like that’s an entire thing you can ask
too. Not just why do intellectuals oppose
capitalism but why only one sort of subset
of intellectuals. Why does someone who spends
their entire life studying the cell walls
of green algae that exist in the Indian Ocean
not terribly prone to one type of ideological
belief or another. There seems to be something
in that.
Aaron Ross Powell: Isn’t that partly explained
though by his ultimate explanation of why
intellectuals, wordsmith intellectuals, oppose
capitalism is the kind of students who do
well in school?
Trevor Burrus: But that would be true of the
physicists. That’s the one thing that really
– so we’re kind of going into the essay
and it’s a very short essay so you can read
it very quickly. But yeah, it’s basically
this – was summarized, sort of not seeing
their value in society and having experienced
their value in schooling and thinking that
they should be valuable like that, but that’s
true physicists.
Jason Kuznicki: Well, it is and it isn’t.
Nozick says that wordsmith intellectuals or
incipient wordsmith intellectuals are praised
by their teachers. The meritocracy happens
on a face to face basis and you are pulled
into a network in which perhaps the people
who are already there are to some degree socialists.
They are already highly critical of capitalism.
They praise you. They tell you that you deserve
a great deal of prestige. They tell you that
you deserve honor and whatever is the best
in society and that validates a particular
world view.
With the quantitative people, he doesn’t
really go into explaining how their professional
lives work. But I would say that things probably
worked differently there because your reputation
as a quantitative researcher depends on your
experimental results. They depend on having
results that are interesting, results that
are confirmed by other researchers, results
that can be objectively demonstrated. It’s
not about feeling. It’s not about personality.
It’s about whether or not you can deliver
results and results are things that can be
agreed upon in a more objective fashion.
Aaron Ross Powell: Nozick notes in the beginning
of the essay that they’re – when you ask
the question, “Why do intellectuals oppose
capitalism?” there are two approaches to
answering it and he’s really only concerned
with one and I think we should be clear about
that upfront.
So the first one is the – could be rephrased
as what reasons do intellectuals give for
being opposed to capitalism. So this one will
be answered along the lines of capitalism
hurts the poor or leads to inequality or isn’t
as good and wonderful and Utopian as socialism.
So if you were to ask an intellectual, “What
do you think is wrong with capitalism?”
you see the reasons they would give. That’s
not what Nozick is interested in here. He
is interested in the second way of looking
at this question which is, “How do intellectuals
come to hold those views?” and so it’s
– that’s how the schooling enters in is
because the forces at play that he thinks
are pushing them towards socialism and away
from capitalism are taking effect before we
even get to them holding views about socialism
and capitalism. This is stuff that’s happening
from when they’re elementary school kids
on up, that there’s certain things they’re
exposed to that then when they eventually
get to the question of what economic system
is best influenced how they think about it.
He’s concerned about this question also
that like – because it’s more than just
an interesting like here’s a group of people
who seem to disproportionately lean a certain
way. Why?
He’s concerned. He thinks this – answering
this has weight because intellectuals and
especially wordsmith intellectuals are very
influential in society, that they shape the
opinions of non-intellectuals, of most other
people in society, in a way that other categories
of people don’t.
Trevor Burrus: Yeah, I think it’s worth
just bringing up as a point of reference,
as a footnote to your point that that’s
also in Hayek’s view the intellectuals in
society which was his essay where he explained
how he thinks you change the world. He was
interested in influencing what he called second
hand dealers and ideas which were the intelligent
people including lawyers and journalists and
things like this. Not necessarily the Nobel-Prize-winning
professor but the people who talk about the
Nobel-Prize-winning professor’s work who
influenced the people around them, their – when
they go to bars and when they have dinner
parties.
So we have to get those people to believe
in capitalism before we can really change
the world. So as a footnote, that’s a similar
type of thing that people that he’s focusing
on, I think in Nozick’s essay is similar
here.
Jason Kuznicki: Right, right. Because how
many people actually sit down and read academic
papers by Nobel Prize winners? Most people
don’t. They will read though popular accounts
of those papers and that’s where those second
hand dealers and ideas become very, very important.
Now to get back to Nozick just a little bit,
he says in this essay that the schools are
“the major non-familiar society that children
learn to operate in”. That’s I think very,
very important because if you learn in school
what society is like, then you will presumably
think that school is what society should be
like.
When society turns out to be different from
school, it will be evaluated as a failure.
Trevor Burrus: I want to go more into that
because the most interesting thing that I
find in this essay is the discussion of the
value that the intellectual holds for himself.
So you have this part in the value of intellectuals
where he says, “Intellectuals now expect
to be the most highly valued people in the
society, those with the most prestige and
power, those with the greatest rewards.”
Intellectuals feel entitled to this but by
and large, the capital society does not honor
its intellectuals, which becomes a sort of
weird type of projection in this to say, “Well,
there’s something wrong with the society
that doesn’t adequately value the things
that are valuable.”
Jason Kuznicki: And this is the first point
of the essay where I kind of wanted to push
back at Nozick because I don’t think our
society fails to value intellectuals. I think
they certainly got a very high level prestige.
Maybe it’s never enough. I know that Robin
Hanson has said that people are fundamentally
motivated by prestige and that more than money,
more than almost anything, what people want
is to be respected and loved by those around
them to be told that they’re really important,
to be told that society needs them.
We say this about our intellectuals. So for
example, even in my relatively conservative
family. If I were to say, “Hey, guess what.
I got a tenure track position at Harvard,”
that would command respect. Now they might
say, “Oh, well. Harvard.” But they would
still think, wow, he has really accomplished
something. That’s prestigious. That’s
important and maybe that’s not enough but
it’s something and it’s certainly something
on par with almost any other significant form
of prestige in our society.
Aaron Ross Powell: I’m thinking of a couple
of ways to maybe answer that from Nozick’s
perspective. The first would be that on the
broad level, for ever Cornel West or for every
Paul Krugman, there are countless intellectuals,
countless people who did very well in school
and went on to become professors or worse,
adjunct professors who are on a relative level
not getting much acknowledgement and especially
not getting – I mean they may get like – your
family might think it’s really neat that
you went to – that you get a tenure track
position at Harvard. But the broader society
is not paying attention to that kind of thing.
They don’t know who the Harvard faculty
are except for the handful of very, very famous
ones.
So, there isn’t a lot of prestige outside
of your small circle and then along similar
lines, the kinds of people who have very broad
level prestige. Again setting aside the handful,
the very small handful of super famous academics
are like the guys on Duck Dynasty or they’re
sport stars or they’re actors or they’re
occasionally …
Trevor Burrus: Kim Kardashian.
Aaron Ross Powell: Yeah. People who inexplicably
– and there’s – or they’re occasionally
like famous businessmen or Steve Jobs or Bill
Gates who to the intellectual are decidedly
not intellectuals and so perhaps not deserving
of the kind of prestige.
Trevor Burrus: Well, I want to dovetail off
that too because I think that Nozick’s point
is a little bit too inward-facing to the intellectual
himself, about whether or not he’s being
valued enough. I think that matters but I
think that the other thing is – was more
what Aaron said, the question of whether or
not an intellectual thinks. Regardless of
their specific place, but is more of a general
proposition, is the world valuing the right
things correctly?
That question which is less, “Is the world
valuing me correctly?” I think that a humble,
realistic intellectual who is the world’s
foremost authority on Russo at Harvard doesn’t
probably think that that should be the most
important goal of society is to acknowledge
that Russo experts are on the preeminent top
rung.
But he thinks in general that the kind of
things that intellectuals like to do whether
it’s a contemplative life and not watching
Duck Dynasty and listening to the symphonies
or why do symphonies have to be supported
with public money, but these stupid, screaming
bands are supported with the market system.
So the general question is what – I think
this is a very, very important question in
free market thought, which is the dichotomy
between someone’s perception of what’s
valuable and how they perceive the world as
whether or not it is accurately valuing the
valuable things.
In many ways, one of the reasons that Marxism
is like a religion in many ways is because
the – many religions say essentially the
world is run by false values. Like the basic
core bottom thing is that the world is run
by false values. It should be piety and not
money. It should be these and not that.
Marxism says this too to some degree. You
can always feel this idea in a lot of speeches.
The point is that the world is being run by
false values and we need to figure out some
way to correct that.
Aaron Ross Powell: But to pull this back to
– so when Nozick, he says – there are
the two ways of answering the questions. So
what you’re describing is that first way
of answering the question. Like the intellectual
can say, look, capitalism means a world based
on false values. I think these are the correct
values, therefore not capitalism.
But to pull it back to that second version
of the question which is how did the intellectuals
come about having these ideas and attitudes,
that’s where we get to the school because
what he’s saying is that because the intellectuals
were in this non-familial community, that
the – the community they spend so much of
their time in, that all of us spend so much
of our time in, which is the school system
as we’re in our formative years. That that
is a society that rewards intellectual kind
of things, that you get praise from your teacher
when you write the really good paper or you
ask the smart question or you can articulate
the answers in a way beyond what your fellow
students can do.
If you’re the kind of person who does well
in that sort of stuff, you like it, and we
tend to think the society that we like is
the right kind of society. The society that
makes us happy is the right kind of society
and so you come to think that the values that
are important are the ones that happen to
be praised, happen to be rewarded within the
school system.
So then when you get out and you look at the
society outside of it, that’s when you start
to say, “Well, that doesn’t look like
the school system so there must be something
wrong.”
Jason Kuznicki: Yes, and one of the things
that I think key in understanding the market
process and sort of sociology of the market
is that if the market process is doing its
job, if it’s doing what it’s supposed
to do, a lot of its results are actually going
to look random to any particular observer.
They are going to look as if nothing of value
has been provided. They’re going to look
as if money has been distributed in an arbitrary
fashion because what the market process does
is to discover previously unknown knowledge.
When it does that, you didn’t have that
knowledge. By definition, you didn’t have
it. So your judgments about that are likely
to be or have a good chance of being false.
You’re going to think, “Aha! The market
does things that are crazy and I have knowledge
that enables me to make that judgment and
I can judge it.”
Now what Hayek’s insight into the market
was – is that look, this is what it’s
supposed to look like. This is what it’s
supposed to look like when it’s doing its
job and to some extent, those judgments are
going to look arbitrary, the judgments that
are bestowed by the market because what has
happened is someone who happened –perhaps
simply by randomness – to have that piece
of knowledge when other people did not was
able to monetize it.
Trevor Burrus: So I wanted to – I think
it’s a good point, incredibly good point
and we could bring in Schumpeter and all these
other things too. But on Aaron’s point about
the – my discussion of values was more of
the first question than the second question.
I think it sits on the edge because of what
it had said. I think that you could say this
is the – maybe the reason, the subset of
reasons why they think capitalism is wrong.
But I think it’s also a personality. I’m
not trying to pathologize here. I think it’s
the question of false values is sort of the
way that you can project from your head out
to the world about whether or not this is
– these are good things that are happening
in the world and good things that are produced
by this and the milieu that intellectuals
are raised in has them projecting out.
So it’s a combination of both a subset of
critique of capitalism, its false values,
but also the projection internally from the
intellectual of why they would be prone to
believe that specifically.
Jason Kuznicki: And when is it really necessarily
committed to thinking that either value system
is false? I found myself thinking in reading
this of Jane Jacobs’ really, really excellent,
short book Systems of Survival and she suggested
that there are two different sort of moral
paradigms. One of them is commercially-oriented.
It says things like, “Be honest in trade.
Be open to new experiences. Welcome strangers
and treat them fairly as you would treat your
friends. Be enterprising. Be efficient,”
and she calls this the commercial paradigm.
Then she also says there’s another one,
a guardian paradigm in which you are supposed
to do things like respect honor and hierarchy
and to know your place within a system and
to value tradition and continuity.
I found myself thinking, well, of course the
market is in the – the commercial system
and the academy is much more like the guardian
system and Jacobs actually does not want to
say that either of these are necessarily wrong
or evil. But they have particular roles to
play in society.
So commerce is great at providing stuff but
it’s actually not necessarily so great at
providing public goods or providing say the
defense of stuff. We have governments for
a reason and governments operate on the guardian
morality. To a great extent, I think the academy
does also.
Aaron Ross Powell: I wonder if what’s going
on here somewhat, when we talk about these
conflicting views of how society ought to
be organized, the conflicting value systems
and then couple it with your good point about
the randomness of the market. Because I’m
struck by – I should preface this by saying
one of the things that we remark on here at
Cato a lot is that when it comes down to it,
what’s really frustrating is how few people
are actually in favor of free markets, that
anti truly free markets is not limited to
leftist intellectuals.
We get mad at the Republican Party for saying,
oh, we support markets. But it’s like, no,
you don’t. Like at every opportunity, you
want to make interventions to stack the deck
in favor of different groups.
Trevor Burrus: Just prohibiting drugs is anti-market
…
Aaron Ross Powell: But that everyone – people
tend to dislike all sorts of aspects of markets,
when those markets don’t line up, when the
results of those markets don’t line up with
what they want.
So what my – my question is, is the – is
what Nozick explaining here not something
unique to intellectuals but is instead simply
that we want a system – we think an economic
system ought to align with our tastes and
our values, because we think our case and
our values are correct. Otherwise, we wouldn’t
hold them.
So we reject markets whenever they don’t
align with our values and think that some
other system would be better. We support markets
when they seem to align with our values and
by “we” I mean people who are not genuinely
in favor of free markets.
That might explain a bit of the economist
being more in favor of free markets because
the economist has studied – has more of
a big picture view. They see the overall positive
effects of markets whereas if you don’t
have that big picture view, all you really
have is your own life and those people around.
So you’re like wow, the market has rewarded
something that’s awesome, therefore markets
are good.
Wow, the market is not rewarding something
that’s awesome or it’s undermining something
that’s awesome. Therefore a market is bad.
So is this theory, is Nozick’s theory basically
too limited? Is the problem that markets look
random and so they – randomness is ultimately
going to conflict with everyone’s values
at some point.
Trevor Burrus: Well, I think that’s a Schumpeterian
element which is related …
Jason Kuznicki: Can you explain what you mean
by Schumpeterian?
Trevor Burrus: Well, yeah, the idea that – Schumpeter
was very interested in whether or not a free
market society would be perceived as just
by those who were in it and whether or not
because of the randomness of the order. An
individual person could look at the world
and be like, “Oh, yeah, that guy is probably
making the money he should be making as a
hedge fund manager.” It’s something that
they don’t have any idea about and whether
or not a fully instantiated market society
would be fundamentally unstable because everyone
would start looking at it with a kind of skepticism
or maybe everyone already does on Aaron’s
point. Then it’s not just limited intellectuals.
Maybe intellectuals have done it because they
write and speak more often. So maybe just
have like a sampling bias and they systematize
it more often and use words like “neoliberal”
and things like this.
So maybe they’re just out there more. I
suspect that there’s still a much higher
percentage of certain things in intellectuals
than there would be in random sampling of
other people let’s say.
The question that I was talking about which
maybe goes back to intellectuals themselves
– this is something that again could be
either type one explanation you’re saying
or type two, but there’s something that’s
pretty common amongst the conservatives is
that the intellectuals really believe in expertise
and so they believe the society should be
run according to expertise.
Aaron Ross Powell: Well, this gets to – so
Nozick, after setting up why intellectuals
might be frustrated with capitalism, we have
to move into the question. The next part of
the essay is, “OK. But why socialism, right?”
because there’s no on its face reason why
a – like just because capitalism doesn’t
reward intellectual virtues. Like we will
stipulate that because I think the intellectuals
are largely wrong about that.
But let’s say they’re right. That doesn’t
necessarily mean therefore socialism will.
We need to have an argument for why and so
what Nozick is saying – this gets to the
expertise is if we look at the characteristics
of the classroom, what you have is a – a
single – usually a single authority figure
who stands at the front of the classroom and
hands out rewards based on what to the intellectual
looks like merit. So what you have is a miniature-planned
economy. Their stuff comes in. We got school
supplies. We got prestige. We got …
[Crosstalk] [0:28:47]
Jason Kuznicki: But that’s not necessarily
left or right wing. I mean Nozick actually
does mention some intellectuals who were right
wing. Yeats, Eliot, Pound he says and I could
easily add many more. You could talk about
Carl Schmitt or Martin Heidegger. It does
not necessarily have to skew left wing. It
could skew right wing authoritarian. So yes,
why socialism?
Aaron Ross Powell: Well, I think that – I
mean one way I can think to answer that question
about why socialism – because why aren’t
they – why aren’t there as many right
wing intellectuals supporting authoritarianism
is if we contextualize it, if we say – like
let’s just look at say the United States
or let’s look at the Western world.
That there’s this central planning angle
that they like in Nozick’s story because
the teacher is the central planner and distributor
of fairness. But at the same time, there’s
an element of what really matters is intellectual
discourse, which has an element of freedom,
right?
We want a society where people can engage
in this freely and openly and we aren’t
restricted. So that would seem to cut against
authoritarianism and the mistake obviously
that – I mean we would argue this is a mistake
is that they see socialism as central planning
plus freedom in a way that strict authoritarianism
would be central planning plus no freedom.
Jason Kuznicki: Well, it’s central planning
for stuff they would say and stuff is not
really right. What’s important is ideas.
Ideas are what matter and we will have free
ideas under socialism while technocratically
managing stuff. Now this is a false picture
of socialism. This is not accurate at all.
In fact, command economies have to have censorship.
They can’t get by without it and when you
control stuff, you also control people. You
control individual lives. It can’t be escape.
There’s no getting around that.
Trevor Burrus: But the question I’m asking
is – so you have intellectuals that – if
we take as a general category, one way to
get ahead as an intellectual is to tell people
that things are not as you perceive them to
be, that something counterintuitive is actually
true and then it – that’s a basic very
abstract thing intellectuals do.
Well that makes it very relational. If you’re
an intellectual society where – let’s
imagine and this is a big “if” for the
reasons you just said. But the Soviet Union
where intellectuals were free and that’s
a big “if”. If you had a Soviet Union
where the university was a thriving system,
it had an intellectual class, they could say
…
Jason Kuznicki: Well, they tried that for
a while and they had to crush it.
[Crosstalk] [0:31:24]
Trevor Burrus: … intellectuals in the Soviet
Union in that hypothetical situation be capitalists?
Because the way to push back on – produce
the counterintuitive idea is to say, hey,
maybe the socialist system doesn’t work.
Jason Kuznicki: Well, when they tried that
in China, that is exactly what happened. They
got ideological deviationism all over the
place and not necessarily that they all became
little miniature Mises or whatever but they
had some odd ideas out there and ones that
the regime couldn’t put up with. So yeah,
there was a period in China that – the Hundred
Flowers period and they had to crush it. They
had no way of dealing with that kind of descent.
Trevor Burrus: Yeah, the idea here is essentially
that the – intellectuals as contextuals
rage against the machine and the machine is
an abstract of concept. Rage against the machine
is anti-capitalist and socialist but if they
were allowed to be – and that’s – again,
that’s maybe the best, most important point.
But they’re allowed to be in the Soviet
Union. The machine would be the socialist
because just like intellectual – juvenile
delinquency is contingent upon what the established
standard is. Perhaps intellectual and maybe
called intellectual delinquency is also contingent
upon what the standard is.
So they’re always going to just basically
resist what they perceive to be the predominant
functioning social order.
Aaron Ross Powell: And could that – I mean
we’re – we maybe drifting a bit into the
psychologizing that we said we were going
to try to avoid, but that part of – so you’ve
gone through the school system where you’ve
been praised and you’ve been told that you’re
super smart and that you are – you know
what you’re talking about and then the problems
is that when you get out into the world, people
aren’t listening to you. They’re not – that
the world is organized. The people are doing
things that you don’t think they should
be doing. They have tastes that they’re
listening to that rock and roll instead of
the opera.
So what you want is you want a system where
people listen to you and so which is necessarily
going to be somewhat different than a system
you’ve got, which would explain why – and
again, we would say that the Chinese intellectuals
who were objecting to communism in favor of
capitalism are in fact correct. But if we
set aside the notion of the truth value of
their views, there is some level of rebellion
in the – you need to listen to me and so
by listening to me, you should be doing something
different from whatever it is you happen to
be doing.
Jason Kuznicki: I think Nozick would say though
that open and closed societies are asymmetric
that way because in a closed society, everybody
does know their place and that’s actually
one thing that is relatively comfortable about
the academy. There’s a progression of your
academic career. You know how it’s supposed
to go. It’s incredibly structured. It’s
incredibly closed in that way.
In an open society, nobody really does know
their place. You could be very wealthy tomorrow.
You could go broke, depending on choices that
you make. There would be more mobility and
mobility not just in money but in prestige,
in location, in tastes and values. Those things
change in an open society and when you’re
not acculturated to that, it does tend to
seem weird. I thought a lot of Karl Popper
in his talk about how open societies are unstable
as regards to individual positions and that
necessarily seems threatening to somebody
who has lived their life in a system that
is much more orderly, that is much more – there’s
a course that you follow.
Aaron Ross Powell: I’m reminded of – I
had – I mean I had several professors say
something along these lines. But one in particular
who – she would – we’ve talked about
the move from status to contract and her …
Trevor Burrus: I remember this.
Jason Kuznicki: This is Henry Summer Maine?
Aaron Ross Powell: Yeah. But – so the notion
that at one time, people’s position was
defined by their – the status that they
were born into. You were born into the nobility
and you had that level of status or you were
born into serfdom. You had that level of status
and then your role in society was very clearly
defined. You knew what it was and you knew
what responsibilities you had to other people,
what responsibilities other people had to
you. As we shifted to a society based on contract,
a society where you could move around, it
upset this very strict status-based society,
which is what you’re describing the academy
as. It’s basically …
Jason Kuznicki: It’s a status-based society.
Exactly.
Aaron Ross Powell: Your status can change
over time as you age into the different levels
of being a professor and getting tenure and
all of that. But it looks like a status-based
society and I had a professor in law school
who her – much of her intellectual career
was based on arguing that we would be better
off returning to a society of status where
people knew what they owed to each other,
that it was a good thing that we had – I’m
being …
[Crosstalk] [0:36:35]
Jason Kuznicki: … liberal or a conservative?
Aaron Ross Powell: She was very far left.
Jason Kuznicki: Really?
Aaron Ross Powell: But the argument was that
it was better because there were going to
be people that were going to be poor people
and that in – this is a mischaracterization
of the Middle Ages to say the least. That
the kings knew that they owed things to the
serfs and that they had to give things to
the serfs and it wasn’t just like, well,
if the serfs can afford it, I will give it
to them and if they can’t, they can’t.
I won’t. It was …
Trevor Burrus: An obligation.
Aaron Ross Powell: It was an obligation baked
into the nature of society.
[Crosstalk] [0:37:06]
Aaron Ross Powell: So that makes me think.
Like you’re talking about is it possible
then that the – if what we want is that
structured society, socialism is a version
of that but a return to – I mean this is
the neo reactionaries that we’ve run into
on Twitter. A return to a society of status.
Jason Kuznicki: Well, Ezra Pound exactly made
this point in a lot of his poetry, that now
we are without clear markers of status. We
don’t know where to make a home. We don’t
know where to – how to build straight angles
any longer. We are beset by – what do you
call it? Usura, the goddess of usery and that
upsets everything. That upsets the society
of status and nobody knows their place anymore.
Aaron Ross Powell: I’m struck as you talk
about this, of how common this notion of wanting
to return to society where you knew – I
mean you knew your place I guess it seems
to be because it shows up in – so there
are the conservatives. There’s conservative
– the Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre
talks about this a lot of this need – they
communitarians of this notion that you should
be deeply embedded in society and know your
position in that society, that that’s formative
of who you are. But I recall reading like
an argument for – the question was, “Why
do nerds wear fedoras?” which is an interesting
like – why is it that …
[Crosstalk] [0:38:36]
Aaron Ross Powell: … Trevor has worn fedoras
but he claims it was – either he started
the trend or it was …
Jason Kuznicki: It was ironic.
Aaron Ross Powell: But the argument which
– I mean has at least has – is interesting
in light of what you said. It’s that if
you are a low status male, in the sense that
like you’re not – girls aren’t flocking
to you, right?
Trevor Burrus: You’re not the quarterback.
Aaron Ross Powell: You’re not the quarterback.
You’re not – you’re the nerdy computer
guy before – you haven’t gotten to the
age where you can found a start-up and become
the high status person. Then to some extent,
like you long for a time when men were men
and women were women and you knew what the
roles were and that for the fedora-wearing
set, the fedora represents this – I mean
it’s the …
[Crosstalk] [0:39:31]
Aaron Ross Powell: … Los Angeles of the
1940s when there were tough guys and dames
and the tough guys got the girl and there
was this – and similarly, there was this
level of like chivalry that we see with Philip
Marlowe, but it’s also that the popularity
of Medieval England among this low status
or perceived by them to be low status set
of – again, when there were knights and
damsels and society was structured and you
knew your place and you didn’t have to compete
for status. It was very clear and very defined.
Jason Kuznicki: I don’t say I agree with
that. I can’t because I was that nerdy guy
and I just wanted to burn the whole rotten
system down. I mean I didn’t want to take
a place in it. I wanted to escape it.
Trevor Burrus: I think the longing for predictability
though is an interesting point and whether
or not it’s better to have – I think it’s
an existential – the unpredictability of
a market and the ability for it to destroy
things including things that you love whether
it’s ma and pa down the street who was going
to go out of business because Walmart came
in and all this stuff.
It seems chaotic and it doesn’t preserve
the things you love, not all the time depending
on what you love. So yes, a desire for predictability.
If you want predictability and stability,
you really shouldn’t be for market economies
more or less. That could be …
Aaron Ross Powell: Right. So again, this plays
out – so the intellectuals who had the stability
of school and then in the academy that – the
very clear stability including I mean tenure.
But then you see this in the longing for the
good old days, for the 1950s as an ideal amongst
social conservatives and you listed like the
lyrics of country music which are about things
should stay the same and we should stay close
to home and we should do things the way that
we’ve always done them.
It seems to be this real need among people
to have things always be the way they’ve
always been and always be predictable.
Trevor Burrus: Yes. I want to change the topic
slightly too. One of the questions – this
is my last question I was pondering, which
goes back to the expertise point and this
may cut against my point about the relational
or conditional attitudes of intellectuals
compared to the Soviet Union here.
This may also push back again Nozick’s desire
to not – my desire not to pathologize them
which we’ve been getting close to anyway.
But the question, if you’re – consider
yourself incredibly smart, which was to say
intellectuals, which [0:42:13] [Indiscernible]
almost tautologically do, then – and that
is comparatively smarter than most other people.
Wouldn’t that contribute to you thinking
that most people can’t be trusted to do
a lot of things on their own? I mean just
a very simple extrapolation. If you don’t
believe in people, it’s very hard to be
for free markets.
Jason Kuznicki: It might correlate. I mean
I could see that but it could – I mean I
could see it cutting in the other direction
as well. You could say I have a PhD in economics
and I still can’t figure out how toothpaste
manages to wind up in the bathrooms of every
single person in this country and that’s
astounding.
The people who make toothpaste are not geniuses.
They are somehow probably pretty close to
average. They’re certainly not as smart
as I am with my Econ PhD and yet it happens.
How does that happen?
That – it could cut the other direction.
It could – you could say in fact that society
considered as a collective for a moment is
actually smart in ways that I can’t be.
Trevor Burrus: I could see that but I could
also see the attitude coming into place where
– when I’ve talked to people, intellectuals
about something like school choice. Well,
the parents go out and make choices for their
kids about what kind of school they want for
them. This isn’t a crazy idea and the response
is often, “We do really think that most
parents are equipped to know what’s best
for their kids,” like in so many situation.
Is that really something you want to leave
to parents? Most parents are idiots and if
most parents are idiots, then we don’t want
them out there choosing.
So again, your perception of other people’s
relative intelligence I think goes a lot to
whether or not you believe in …
Jason Kuznicki: Yeah, but I think if people
are on average incompetent to run their own
lives, then probably a narrow elite at the
top is not going to be able to help them …
Trevor Burrus: But that’s a doctrinal position
we have. The intellectuals, they think, well
– maybe we have stupid people making choices
or we have smart people making choices. Which
one is better?
Aaron Ross Powell: I think we can – to bring
that back to Nozick’s theory, I mean it
– so in the classroom, it’s not just that
the classroom is run by an authority figure.
It’s that the classroom is run by the teacher,
right? And the teacher is the person who knows
a lot more than everyone else. I mean occasionally
you have the experience of realizing that
your teacher doesn’t or you get a really
dumb teacher and you’re cognizant of it.
But most of the time, the teacher does in
fact know more than you do and the teacher
seems to run the classroom relatively well
and so you – I mean in Nozick’s story,
it would stand to reason then that you would
come to think that having a smart person,
someone who knows more than everyone else,
run things is the most effective, the more
fair way to go about it.
Trevor Burrus: Yeah. I mean I think all these
things become consolation of factors and we
have been mentioning the long march again.
All these things together between Nozick’s
points or somewhat – I think they’re good
but there needs to be more – the long march
is good and even more I think the relational
aspects.
Then of course you just sort of have like
a tipping point type of thing. I mean if for
some reason the intellectual class – the
people who hire and fire at universities and
the people who hire and fire in newspapers,
just for some random reason, whether it was
the baby boom of the 60s and the leftism of
the 60s. So all of a sudden, they just get
swayed to one side. Well then your career
prospects and other things like this start
determining whether or not you’re going
to advance in – you have to have the right
beliefs to advance in the sociology department
or it’s going to be very difficult or the
journalism department.
So then you just have a critical mass that
becomes a self-perpetuating thing because
you have to be – that was a comment often
made about think tanks is that it was – people
who wanted to be professors but were conservative,
were libertarian, who fled the universities
because they couldn’t really say what they
wanted to say and expect to get good job prospects
and so that’s why conservatives and libertarians
were the first movers on the think tank front.
So you have all this mix mashed together and
I think you start to get a general picture
of why this class is. I think future episodes,
we would have to deal with like Hollywood
and public school teachers and other classes,
predominantly any capitalist people.
Aaron Ross Powell: Then to close out this
discussion, if Nozick is correct, if the story
that he tells either explains all of intellectual
anti-capitalism or at least a decent chunk
of it, if the – the environment of the school
plays a large role. What can we do about that?
What are our prospects for shifting things
in a more free market direction?
Trevor Burrus: I’m not terribly optimistic
about that, but I don’t think it means that
we’re doomed to lose. I think that the universities
are very large and at this point path-dependent
institutions to a large degree unless we can
start building up other intellectual classes
and other ideas.
That stuff I’m optimistic about. The interesting
story of Baldy Harper, F.A. Harper who started
IHS, Institute for Humane Studies, which is
a quite old free market – 1961 and it’s
pretty old by these standards, who wasn’t
allowed to teach Hayek in his economics class
at Cornell. So he said, “Well, screw this.
I’m going to go start a non-profit that
teaches Hayek’s students anyway.”
So I’m optimistic about things like that,
but I think that the institution – the universities
and the other institutions are pretty set
in their ways and a lot of what Nozick said
are some of the reasons and some of the things
we’ve discussed today are other reasons.
I don’t see it changing much. What do you
think Jason?
Jason Kuznicki: I would say that if Nozick
is right, we ought to consider the currency
that academics accept, which is respect and
perhaps consider giving them less of it. The
idea that one absolutely must go to a four-year
college in order to get a good job afterward
is one that people have been criticizing lately
and while I still find great value in the
academy and I think that at times it’s possible
to overplay that criticism, I would also say
that things like that should put them on notice
and alternate institutions, the rise of things
like think tanks and of alternate educational
opportunities ought to make them wonder. Is
this something that is going to eat into our
prestige?
Aaron Ross Powell: Free Thoughts is produced
by Evan Banks and Mark McDaniel. To learn
more about libertarianism and the ideas that
influence it, visit us on the web at HYPERLINK
"http://www.Libertarianism.org" www.Libertarianism.org
and I should note if you haven’t already,
you should check out our new Cato Audio app
available in the Apple App Store for iPad
and iPhone. It’s a super easy and free way
to listen to not just Free Thoughts but the
other podcast from Libertarianism.org and
the Cato Institute.
