Tony Curzon Price (London oD): Martin Wolf's scathing post against having an intelligentsias argues "Technocrats Good. Thinkers Bad," with an undertone of "Technocrats Liberal. Thinkers Left". This is oddly self-defeating, coming from a strong thinker and good writer with a world-wide audience. I never think of Martin as (merely) a technician of the word.
I don't want to come up with the most obvious recent counter-examples of the politically powerful intelligentsia --- the Hayekian right, from its first self-conscious formation as a group on the Mont Pelerin in 1947 through its historical moment under Thatcher and Reagan, led a revolution from the idea to its reality. Instead, I think it is useful to remind the liberal right of the "intelligentsia" of the business world. You might think that business is the essence of the technocratic. Yet any number of business books emphasise the importance of "vision", "value", "core" in corporate success. The people who deliver those in a business are the company's intelligentsia. Often not the Chief Executive; quite often founders, or in marketing, these are the people who are constantly trying to make sense of the place of their common entreprise in the larger scheme. A business with a vision and an understanding of its values has a compass by which to give coherence to its actions.
Saint Simon is the real hero of technocracy, who wanted to turn "the government of men into the administration of things". But what the twentieth century should have taught us is that this is accomplished only by the short cut of turning men and women into things.
