get to know yourself, or better not

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Volume 2, Number 5

Get to Know Yourself or Better Not: TheMultidimensionality of Power and the Pseudoradi-

calism of Intellectuals and Teachers

Mariano Fernández Enguita

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES http://www.SocialSciences-Journal.com First published in 2008 in Melbourne, Australia by Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd www.CommonGroundPublishing.com. © 2008 (individual papers), the author(s) © 2008 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground Authors are responsible for the accuracy of citations, quotations, diagrams, tables and maps. All rights reserved. Apart from fair use for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act (Australia), no part of this work may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. For permissions and other inquiries, please contact <[email protected]>. ISSN: 1833-1882 Publisher Site: http://www.SocialSciences-Journal.com THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES is a peer refereed journal. Full papers submitted for publication are refereed by Associate Editors through anonymous referee processes. Typeset in Common Ground Markup Language using CGCreator multichannel typesetting system http://www.CommonGroundSoftware.com.

Get to Know Yourself or Better Not: The Multidimensionality ofPower and the Pseudoradi-calism of Intellectuals and TeachersMariano Fernández Enguita, University of Salamanca, Spain

Abstract: Power is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Even restricting our considerations to the economic public sphere,i.e. markets and organizations, we should recognize at least three main sources of power: property, authority and qualific-ation, that is, power on (or through, or on the basis of) means of production (the matter of the economic system), work (itsenergy) and knowledge (information); or let us say economic, social and cultural capital. No matter the justification (ornot) of any critique of economic and social power (of property and authority, of capital and state), intellectuals’ andteachers’ radicalism, as far as it is not matched by a parallel or even harsher critique of cultural power (qualification, di-vision of labor), should be considered more as a reflection of (not so much on) status incongruence than as a critical stand.This must be specially emphasized as we enter in an informational economy and a knowledge society in which the longwaited Platonic utopia, an aris-tocracy of knowledge, could come into effect but also reveal itself as more anti-egalitarianthan any past of stratification in the open society.

Keywords: Power, Professions, Radicalism, Knowledge Society

WEFIND IT natural that not only intellec-tuals, but also teachers as a whole, arenotablymore critical of society, in partic-ular as regards the economy, than other

citizens. Wherever there is a meeting of teachers, nomatter at what level, and especially if they meet assuch (for example, at a staff meeting, in a profession-al association, at a work meeting or in a union), weare more than likely to hear opposing opinions, ifnot heated discussions, against globalization, neolib-eralism, bureaucracy and hierarchical structuring, tomention but a few of the more hackneyed topics.These evils of our times are not only criticized as thecause of different social problems, particularly eco-nomic ones, but also and above all as major threatshovering over the education system as a public ser-vice, over the right to education as an egalitarian anddemocratic conquest, over autochthonous culturesand over the teaching profession as the bastion of allthese.At first glance, one might think that being critical,

even hypercritical, is inseparable from knowledge;hence, intellectuals, whether in the most limited orbroadest sense, and in the latter case particularlyteachers, are only doing what they can do better thananyone else, what they should do and what they areexpected to do. Nevertheless, this hypercriticismseems to combine badly with the inertia of the schoolsystem and the conservatism of the teaching profes-sion, which are evident from a simple visit to aclassroom or in the omnipresent and insistent longingfor a lost golden age. But it only seems so, since, asI shall try to argue in the following pages, this radic-

alism is limited to criticizing the unfair distributionof what the teacherintellectual does not have (owner-ship), as well as the consequences of such distribu-tion in terms of power; an ambiguous posture ismaintained concerning what they have and at thesame time do not have, what they benefit from andwhat they suffer from (authority), and they maintainan absolute silence about and feel comfortable withthat which forms the basis of their social standingand the advantages associated with it (skill).

The Paradoxes of CriticismGlobalization is frequently seen in the titles of books,articles, conferences, etc., especially in those relatedto education, and it appears as one of the evils of ourera, in part as the cause of great injustice and econom-ic problems which, supposedly, would not existwithout it and have arisen through it, and in part asa castrating wave that makes things uniform and putsan end to singularity, genuineness and cultural ori-ginality. Neoliberalism is usually presented as thebête noire, the villain in the story, ready to subordin-ate everything to private interest, to walk over thedead body of general interest, more specifically be-setting the state school in order to achieve its privat-ization, and the right to education in order to subor-dinate it to the market, etc. At the same time it iscontemplated with a mixture of admiration and terror(the so-called unique thought, theWashington Con-sensus, the Saint-Severin Club…) and with scorn

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(only the foolish co n fuse value and price, etc.).1Bureaucracy and authority are identified or comparedand insulted time and time again as the epitome ofignorance, blindness, arbitrariness (one might thinkthat authority may have behind it the support ofdemocratic legitimacy, but this is easily remediedby cancelling it out with the discredit of politics,even more if it is party politics … which is whatthere is). In all this criticism there is some or perhapsmore than some truth: economic and cultural global-ization not accompanied by moral and politicalglobalization, neoliberal doctrinarism and its functionof staunch supporter of the market and private own-ership, bureaucratic inertia and behaviour that putsthe interests of the party before general interests. Itis a part of the truth, and just like all half truths, alsoa half lie, but neither this, nor the correctness or un-suitability of these summary rejections, is what Iwant to speak of here, but rather of its partial andbiased nature, that is, of its purely ideological func-tion.2

To start with, it is striking that rejection of global-ization should take root so extensively and intenselyin an institution, the school, which is, itself, one ofits oldest, most extreme, and in some aspects, mostdamaging examples. Several studies and authors,especially those forming part of the neo-institution-alist trend in the field of sociology of organizations,have underlined the isomorphism of the school overand above political, geographical and culturalboundaries.3 Obviously, school institutions and sys-tems vary from one continent to another, from oneregion to another, from one country to another, butmuch less so than the societies that house them. Eacheducational system, through its authorities, and eachteaching body, through its representatives, looks tothose in other countries as a reference, deliberatelyor unconcernedly above the differences in cultureand wealth, rather than to the social needs, otherpublic services or other occupational groups in itsenvironment. Paradoxically, the school and theteaching profession, which are the major instrumentsfor building the nation, form part of purely globalrealities. Indeed, in few spheres have statistics andother comparative studies and international coopera-tion bodies developed so rapidly and so early, or thegovernments and institutions in the sector come toan agreement so easily to provide themwith inform-ation and follow their recommendations. The schoolcan be said to be the most global and transculturalinstitution we have ever known; more, for example,

than the armies, hospitals and, indeed, than thechurches. It is only an apparent inconsistency thatsuch different contents are instilled in one same way,since they have in common their arbitrariness, and,above all, their imposition.The second major target of the intellectual troop’s

criticism, both of the cavalry (the essayists) and ofthe infantry (the teachers), is neoliberalism, whichis presented as a Hydra with numerous heads: privateeducation, school choice, parents’ rights, accountab-ility, specialization of schools, educational vouchers,cooperation with firms, institutional evaluation,comparison of results, individual incentives, etc.However, opposition to the market and all that goeswith it is far from being so radical. In many coun-tries, apart from those that work in private schools,a considerable proportion of teachers combine theirwork in the public function with other salariedprivate activities, or send their children to privateschools. In Spain, where state employees can choose,through their benefit society, to have public or privatehealth care, over ninety percent of public schoolteachers choose the latter, thus opting to combinethe best of both worlds: produce in the public sectorand consume in the private one. But perhaps what ismost surprising is the paradox of an organizationalprofession, moreover one that is bureucratic, which,as a model of its aspirations and a reference pointfor arguing its comparative grievances, always looksto medicine, that is, the liberal profession par excel-lence –not so much for its alleged liberality, butrather because of its original and usual practice inthe market and its determined defence of the cashnexus.4Finally, the ambiguity of the teachers’ attitude to

authority is no less surprising. That intellectuals whoare more or less freelance (although often subsidizedwith public funds), such as writers, musicians, artists,etc., should cultivate antiauthoritarian ethics andwhat is more aesthetics, forms part of their role andof the display of their image; that teachers should doso, when they themselves are part of state authority(whether they work in state or private schools), andare exercising it all the time over the students andaim to do so to a certain extent over the families, ismuch more striking. But that is how it is: on the onehand they exercise authority, demand it should bestrengthened or re-established with students, and,before the parents, even claim the condition of publicauthority. On the other hand, however, they recoilfrom the action of the administrative authorities too

1 The most complete and sophisticated expression of this unvaried thought can be found in the popular work by C. Laval, L’École n’estpas une entreprise.2 In the meaning that Marx and Engels gave to this term, but which neither applied to intellectuals themselves, since both of them thoughtthat they were ready to ally with any class, but could never be a class. Undoubtedly the fact that they themselves were of the same conditionhelped.3 See, especially the works by Meyer, Ramírez, Rubinson and Boli (1977) and Ramírez and Boli (1987).4 For the difference and contraposition between bureaucratic and liberal professions, see Abbott, 1988.

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES, VOLUME 284

easily, they insult those who leave the classroom forother administrative responsibilities (classroomdeserters), and an attempt is made to hold in low es-teem and even look down on school heads (at leastin the Iberian peninsula, which is undoubtedlysomewhat peculiar in this aspect) and any reformunder suspicion of introducing a hie r archical struc turing of the teaching body is resisted tooth andnail.

The Multidimensionality of PowerContemplated merely in itself, apart from the fleshand blood of those who sustain it, this critical dis-course could be considered as fully consistent andnothing new. It is the old anti-capitalist discourse onpower, with its old scale of values (or anti-values);pandemonium is private ownership, the source of allevil directly and through the market; authority (i.e.,direct power over people, since ownership is merelyan indirect power) is also bad, but less so, as indic-ated by the fact that it can be tolerated when it isopposed to ownership, for example, in the case ofleftist authoritarian regimes (and, if it were the case,also in totalitarian regimes). On the other hand, dif-ferences based on knowledge are no problem at all,provided that neither ownership nor authority inter-fere, i.e., provided that they depend only on personaleffort or ability, that they are meritocratic. Really,they are not only seen as not being a problem but arethe essence of Utopia: since Plato’s Republic,crowned by the government of philosophers, selectedfor their wisdom, and all its ancient and medievalsequels – from the enlightened and liberal revision,then the proletarian revolution and the revolutionaryregime, headed by the most illustrious vanguard, tothe emerging knowledge society, which bows toscientists and those cre a tives.However, and even without any need to complic-

ate our analysis with the vicissitudes of history, wecan see ownership, authority and skill as three formsof power based on the differential control of threetypes of resource: means of production, work andknowledge. Or, if you will, as three forms of capital:economic, social (organizational, relational) andcultural (human).5 Some neo-Marxists would preferto speak means of production, organizational andskill assets.6 Indeed, what marks the difference inthe comparative value of these forms of power is notso much their effectiveness in providing advantagesfor those who hold them (human and social capitalcan bemuchmore profitable, attractive and satisfyingthan economic capital) as their different degree ofsecurity and transmittability (in the family sphere,for instance, transmitting cultural capital is encour-

aged and considered a sacred duty, among otherthings because educational discourse declares this,although to do so may entail great practical diffi-culties; economic capital is allowed to be transmittedand should be transmitted, but not without a certainreluctance on the part of society, which demands aprice in the shape of inheritance tax, but here thereis no practical difficulty at all, except if one wishesto avoid taxes and not always; on the other hand, thetransmission of social capital is forbidden and con-demned, at least in its strongest sense –inheritingposts, nepotism- although it is often attempted, ran-ging from family political sagas to the mere pullingof strings for jobs).In more general terms we could consider these

three forms of power as being merely those peculiarto the differential control of the resources or elementsof any system, the economic one being just a variant.Every system is composed of three elements: matter,energy and information. In the economic system,matter is the means of production, including energyin the physical sense of the term (combustibles, workanimals, etc.), non-human; energy here is anotherthing, it is whatmoves that matter or sets it in motion(non-human energy included), that is, work; and in-formation is simply information (i.e., the part of in-formation that comes to form part of the productivesystem, of the process andmechanisms of productionand distribution in the broadest sense).In general, in all societies these three forms of in-

equality have coexisted, but in very different propor-tions. Ownership, as a differential form of access toresources, is spreading, coming to control more andmore social spheres (by privatization, commercializ-ation, deregulation, etc.), but it has also becomemoreopen, i.e., less conditioned (the possibility of accessto it) by birth or social standing. Authority, as person-al, diffuse and undifferentiated authority in the territ-orial community (the lord’s country estate, servitude)has long since been proscribed, and is now beingeroded, in a second stage, in the family community;but, at the same time, it has reappeared and isspreading, as functional, limited and specific author-ity, but authority all the same, within organizations.Finally, skill has been strengthening its role, moreor less steadily, throughout history, but it is doingso and will do so much more intensely with accessto the society of information and knowledge.This is the economic and social revolution we are

living today. We will understand its scope andmeaning better if we compare it with the previousindustrial revolutions of modernity. But history takesin more than just modern times, and although it hadbefore bequeathed us great works that were the

5 We have not forgotten that the concepts of social capital, e.g., from sources as different as those of R. Inglehart or the World Bank, andcultural capital, according to P. Bourdieu, can have a different, and to begin with more lax meaning.6 This is the case of Eric O. Wright (1985).

85MARIANO FERNÁNDEZ ENGUITA

product of great enterprises (in the original sense ofthe word, unde r taking, but also in the modernmeaning of organization and, hence, of artificial so-cial system), really these were exceptional in boththe diachronic linearity of history itself and in thesynchronic horizontality of the life experience of ourancestors. Only with the first Industrial Revolutiondid we pass from the exceptional nature of the pyr-amids, the cathedrals, etc. to the systematic accumu-lation of great means of production for the massproduction of goods or consumer services and ser-vices of everyday use (textile in Europe, plantationsin America, the railway, etc.). Suddenly in the per-spective of history, there was a radical leap in thescale on which the means of production were used,which stopped being the scale of the individual, aswas the case of small-scale country workers, artisans,traders…, to reach large scale concentrations ofwhich the other facet is the relative devaluation oftypical or average individual ownership, the dispos-session of the means of production, as Marx wouldexplain. Although on paper other formulas wereimagined, and some even attained an anecdotic orepisodic existence, history really only brought forthtwo possible ways of handling these new large con-centrations of the means of production: by a few in-dividuals (capitalism, or, to be more precise, thecapitalist way of production) or by the state (com-munism, or what we could more broadly call thestate way of production). On the other hand, ofcourse, there are always the dispossessed; in the firstcase the huge majority and in the second case almostthe whole. This systemic revolution in distribution,organization and means of production allowed anoverwhelming display of a new form of power,ownership (new in its dimensions, its liberation, withrespect to other social relations and many of its othercharacteristics) and generated amajor social dividingline, between capital and labour, the consequencesof which would strongly mark the second half of the19th century and the first third of the 20th.The second Industrial Revolution in modernity

(by now it must be obvious that here I am not goingto deal with other typologies based, for example, onthe successive technological waves: coal, steel,electricity, petroleum, etc., but rather I will confinemyself to social relations and, particularly, to thecontrol of productive resources) arrived at the begin-ning of the 20th century with Taylorism, Fordismand Stakhanovism, organizational technologieswhose target was not to gather and manage greaterconcentrations of themeans of production (materials,machines, driving force) but greater concentrationsof labour (parallel to these, the corporation arrived,i.e., the firm with social capital, a legal technologythat makes it possible to gather and manage greaterconcentrations of capital). This new systemic revolu-

tion, now focused on the energy of the productiveprocess, entailed, in turn, the display of another formof power until then of very limited scope, authority(organizational, not personal) and generated anothernew social dividing line, between managers andsubordinates. Indeed, although the inertia of the dis-course that had arisen from the previous revolutionhas often made it difficult for us to understand it (inparticular because of its insistence on reducing theorganizational categories to the old dichotomy ofcapital and labour), the distribution of (access to)positions in the organizational hierarchy became thecore of social stratification for the rest of the 20th

century.Today we are experiencing a third industrial re-

volution, this time focused on the scale in the use ofthe third element of the economic system, informa-tion and knowledge. We are no longer exploitingnatural processes secondarily modified by humanintervention, such as traditional agricultural andmining activities, neither do we transform theproducts of the latter in large scale processes in-debted to old artisan procedures, but rather we con-sciously and deeply alter natural processes (geneticengineering), we create materials that nature neverproduced (new materials), we replace human labourwith machinery (robotics and artificial intelligence)and handle huge amounts of information with a highdegree of sophistication and effectiveness (computerscience and communications). At the centre of allthis is a new capability and, hence, a new scale inthe use of information and knowledge, when theyare applied directly to the means and processes ofproduction and when this is done indirectly, actingrecursively on themselves. The consequence is thetriumphant deployment of a new source of power:differential control of knowledge itself or, to give itanother name, skill, and the development of a newsocial dividing line, now between the skilled and theunskilled, professionals and laymen, manipulatorsof symbols andmanual workers, self-programmablelabour and generic labour, info-rich and info-poor.The fact that theoretically and conceptually this isnot exactly clear to us should not prevent us fromgrasping the novelty, the strength and the specificityof this new major transformation (as happened withthe previous one), which is what will occur if weremain prisoners of the old schemes.

The Limitations of Theory and SocialCriticismNo social power in modernity, that is consubstan-tially and increasingly reflexive, has failed to arousemore or less comprehensive or radical criticism, butnot all critiques have been equally incisive, accurateor effective, and sometimes they have cancelled each


other out or counteracted each other. Liberalism be-queathed us criticism of authority; Marxism, ofownership; skill, however, is still awaiting an author,a school, a sociological trend that will be capable ofsubjecting it to extensive, in-depth deconstruction,analysis and criticism. Perhaps this is because noone shoots themselves in the foot.First it was liberalism, with its criticism of the re-

lations of subjugation belonging to the ancien regimeand its declaration of individual autonomy, whicharmed us against authority. But it did so by identify-ing authority with the old relations of personal de-pendence, which made it easy to extend it to otherrelations of dependence not contemplated at first(beginning with the servitude of the colonial peoples,on which the enlightened were divided, and continu-ing, of course, with male domination, to culminatein parental authority) but hard to extend to relationsof subjugation freely contracted, in particular, rela-tions of authority and subjugation in the firm, arisingfrom an act of free will but also from the need dic-tated by the dispossession of the means of produc-tion.Then came Marxism, with its critique of owner-

ship relations. It knew how to reveal their nature ofpower relations, behind the innocuous appearanceof free agreement of wills in the contract and equalityof status of the contracting parties in the market. Itlaid bare the dark side of ownership, specifically ofcapitalist ownership of the means of production, butit lumped it together with small ownership, minim-ized or trivialized freedom (despised as the veil ofthe dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in society, of thedespotism of capital in the firm, etc.) and in its questfor antidotes, ended up devoted to praising authority(the revolution itself, the dictatorship of the proletar iat). Indeed, its scorn for the value of freedom andthe problem of authority was such that it left us as alegacy the most systematic and lasting form of total-itarianism, and as brutal as could be, despite claiminguniversalist values.What is interesting, however, is that neither of

these two trends tackled the critique of skill, of thedifferential possession of knowledge. Both theFrench philosophes and the British econ o mistsproclaimed the liberating nature of knowledge, butwere more often hostile to than in favour of populareducation, no matter how much the pedagogical ha-giography in fashion would like to think the contrary.Marxism, for its part, carried its disdain and confid-ence in them simultaneously and schizophrenicallyto the limit: the former, expressed in the rejection ofpetit bourgeois intellectuals (of their weakness byMarx, their errors by Lenin, and their vices by Stalinand Mao); the latter, in the Marxian statement of therevolutionary nature of philosophy (the Theses on

Feuerbach and similar) or Lenin’s self-proclamationof his party as revolutionary vanguard, taken to thegrotesque by his imitators. This self-celebration ofintellectuals would continue unstoppable, throughepicycles such as the Gramscian organic intellectualor Althusser’s conquest of State ideological apparat-us, up until the new wor k ing class or the forces ofculture, etc., of Euro-communism. Common to allof them is that intellectuals, at the service of thebourgeoisie or the proletariat, and more so in thevanguard of the latter, do not have their own classinterests. Remember, by the way, that not evenMannheim, who was able to apply Marxist analysisto Marxism and proclaim it as an ideology, knewhow to escape the seduction of the freischwebendeIntelligenz, i.e., the intellectual with no class constric-tions.7

Only marginally and occasionally did Marxismrecognize a certain specificity in the interests of aspecific stratum, singled out by skill: skilled manuallabour. Marx did so in the figure of the master artis-an, whose archaic interests he saw behind Proudhon’sph i losophie des manufactures, and to which he af-forded very little future, condemned to disappear inthe proletariat as the effect of the general deskillingof labour through the logic of capital. Lenin did soin the labour aristocracy, which he saw as unworthyand also transitorily delighted to eat the crumbs ofimperialism;Mao, in the call of the Cultural Revolu-tion to the uprising against the intellectuals, com-bined, however, with the proclamation of his ownbanalities as the ultimate truth (Mao Zedongthought). More recently, in the age of Neo-Marxism,we must mention the somewhat bizarre concept ofskill goods or assets of Eric O. Wright, perhaps thelast Marxist sociologist worthy of being read. Forhim, under a hypothetically democratized commun-ism to which history gave no option at all, these as-sets could have become the basis of the ultimate formof economic exploitation in the long course of hu-manity.The object of this brief hagiographic review is

merely to point out that Marxism, and its critique ofcapitalism, on which both the political left wing andsocial theory still largely feed today (although theyno longer subscribe to the supposed solutions), didnot leave us any basis for a critique of social inequal-ities based on skill. Naturally, it did not declare itselfin favour of them, neither did liberalism proclaimitself the upholder of inequalities based on owner-ship. The latter simply supposes that a more compet-itive market would give everyone sufficient oppor-tunities and would recompense their contribution inits fair value; the former is content to await the daywhen the educational system, after a few reformsand free at last from the interference of ownership

7 Mannheim, 1929.


and authority (the true social inequalities), will re-ward all in accordance with their merits (or will giveeveryone what they deserve).

Get to Know Yourself or Better NotIntellectual and teaching pseudoradicalism is incon-sistent in strictly logical or moral terms, but perfectlyconsistent in practical terms, since it legitimatesparticular interests by presenting them as general,universalist interests or even outside, altruistic in-terests, watching over their nature as such not onlyin the face of society, whose support it claims, butalso in the conscience of its leading figures, whomit reconciles with themselves by allowing them tobe universalist, egalitarian and moral in what doesnot affect themwhile being egoistic, anti-egalitarianand immoral in what does affect them - with a littlebit of luck, without even realizing it. It is like the oldjoke in which a communist asks a peasant in succes-sion whether he would be in agreement with sharingthe money from the banks, the businessmen’sfactories, the churches’ jewels, the landowners’ es-tates, etc. among everyone, to which he repeatedlyanswers yes, to the joy of his questioner, who addseach time: “You see? You too are a communist!”until in the end he asks him about sharing the cattle,when the peasant angrily interrupts him: “No, notthat, definitely not!” “But, why? It’s the same”, hismentor asks in surprise. “Because I’ve got twocows!”, the other answers.A good part of the radical rhetoric of intellectuality

and the teaching staff can and should be explainedas a phenomenon of inconsistency of status. Theybecome more radical because they sincerely believethat society places too high a value on what they donot have (ownership, which they lack, or authority,of which they have little) and too little value on whatthey do have or think they have (knowledge, skills).Hence the eternal complaints about lack of recogni-tion, the need to dignify the profession, society’s lackof i n terest in culture or education and other similartales, which apart from being euphemisms to avoidexpressly asking for increases in salary and a reduc-tion in working hours (which the unions take careof) are expressions which suit the nature of what isadduced, the possession of knowledge.Radicalism in the criticism of the advantages of

other groups, or of the material bases of their advant-ages, can be easily combined with the demand foradvantages for oneself by the obvious, although notsimple, procedure of identifying one’s own interestswith general interests. I think it was actually Marxwho pointed out, when referring to the (bourgeois)French Revolution, that in the conflict of classes theclass that wins is the one that succeeds in presentingits particular interests as universal interests. Nothingis easier, certainly, than passing off the needs of the

educational system as those of society in general andthe interests of the teachers as those of the education-al system (or the interests of artists and intellectualsas the needs of culture and these as social needs),although to do so it may be necessary to openly viol-ate the counsel of the SevenWise Men of the façadeof Apollo’s temple in Delphos.Perhaps what has been most useful in this distor-

tion is the adoption of union rhetoric in a contextthat was not proper to it. Another apparent paradoxof our times, at least in Mediterranean countries, isthat the unions, which arose in private industry, sur-vive today above all in public services. At the sametime, the idea that everything that is done to improvethe situation of manual labourers is justified has notbeen of much use to the latter, who have been pushedaround by the market, but has been of use to stateemployees, who, by adopting union rhetoric (theworker, despite their advantageous conditions, versusthe employer, despite his remoteness and impotence),have seen themselves exempt from having to justifythe timeliness or the justice of their claims.So far, this is only a particular realization of a

much more general phenomenon: we all tend to be-lieve that the virtues we have are appreciated littleand those we do not have are valued too highly.Moreover, the scale of values, or at least the officialscale, is usually determined by the intellectuals,which explains, for example, why intelligencewithout beauty can be proclaimed as great and beautywithout intelligence as a misfortune, despite the factthat the common mortal seems to seek the oppositeevery day. But the problem does not lie in yet anothersocial group seeing society from its own point ofview, but rather in the fact that this distorted viewseems to reign precisely when we are entering theage, economy and society of information and know-ledge, and the group most inclined to let itself be ledby it is its main beneficiary and, in turn, the one withmost influence in the view of the others.The problem of power best solved in history until

now is, undoubtedly, that of authority, and the solu-tion found, with all its faults, is democracy or, to bemore exact, the combination of individual freedomand collective democracy (of civil rights and politicalrights). The problem of ownership has been lesssatisfactorily solved, since the market, while openingformal opportunities for all, deploys in a highly un-equal distribution of the real results. Hence, it hasbeen democracy that has had to come and correct itseffects by ensuring minimummeans of living for all(social rights). Indeed, a large part of the 20th centurycould be seen as a permanent tension between capit-alism and democracy, not just as mutually exclusiveoptions (capitalism and communism) but also orrather as alternative but coexisting and often comple-mentary scenarios (market and state, or private sector


and public sector, in the western nations). What isnot so clear, as opposed to inherited knowledge, isthat the main problem of democracy is ownershipand not skill, economic capital and not cultural cap-ital, the bourgeoisie and not the professions, capital-ism and not the division of labour. Think, for ex-ample, of the United States of America, the countrywhere democracy has developed most and whereeconomic capital and the main professional groupshave gained most strength. We may be impressedabove all by the great fortunes, but, looking at thingswithout preconceived ideas, could we affirm that theordinary life of ordinary people is more affected bythese than by the immense power of the medical andlegal professions, both of which have made thelikelihood of conserving life and health or freedomand property, in the face of any setback, vary not inan arithmetical but in a geometrical or logarithmicratio to their capability of paying the bill?

Far from being its salvation, the professions arebecoming one of the main problems of democracy.Not, of course, because of their capacity for develop-ing and applying more or less complex knowledge,but rather because of their understandable inclinationto make it result in privileges. Among all the profes-sions, the intellectuals and the teachers are certainlynot the most dangerous, but their ability to mystifytheir own situation can be especially costly to society,since it is based on the broadest mystification of theemerging form of power peculiar to the age ofknowledge. In any case, the intellectuals, whetherthe most high-flying, the creator of knowledge, orthe most modest, those in charge of reproducing iton a universal scale, should be more aware that theyare also made of flesh and blood and that they notonly have values, but also interests, and above allshould not confuse the former with the latter. Theyshould, as the Seven Wise Men advised, knowthemselves individually and collectively.

ReferencesABBOTT, A.D. (1988): The system of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor, Chicago, UChP.MANNHEIM, K. (1929): Ideología y utopía, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987.MEYER, J.W., F.O. RAMIREZ, R. RUBINSON and J. BOLI-BENNETT (1977): “The World Educational Revolution,

1950-1970.” Sociology of Education L: 242-258.RAMIREZ, F.O. and BOLI, J. (1987): “The political construction of mass schooling: European origins and worldwide in-

stitutionalization”, Sociology of Education LX, 2-17, 1.987.WRIGHT, E.O (1985): Classes, London, Spanish Version 1994.

About the AuthorProf. Mariano Fernández EnguitaUniversity of Salamanca, Spain. http://www.enguita.info


THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY

SOCIAL SCIENCES

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Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Bill Cope, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

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Patrick Baert, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.

Norma Burgess, Syracuse University, Syracuse NY, USA.

Vangelis Intzidis, University of the Aegean, Rhodes.

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José Luis Ortega Martín, University of Granada, Spain.

Francisco Fernandez Palomares, University of Granada, Spain.

Miguel A. Pereyra, University of Granada, Spain.

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