The Cultural Intelligentsia: The Writers

Abstract

As has been pointed out in Chapter 1, in the ‘official’ Marxist-Leninist view of social stratification the ‘intelligentsia’ is a separate stratum in socialist society performing the leading creative, executive and administrative roles, and it works in full harmony with the manual working class. In this theory the political leadership of society (in practice, the Communist Party) is the expression of the unitary will of the socialist intelligentsia and the manual working class. In practice, however, the intelligentsia is not a unitary social group. There are people in it who are creatively engaged in scholarly or artistic work (such as writers, film directors, poets and sculptors) and others in more technical activities such as executives, organisers of production and other experts with some sort of theoretical training (factory managers, economists, chemists, engineers).¹ Also, the political activists, such as party secretaries and parliamentary leaders, though ‘officially’ forming part of the intelligentsia, have their basis of authority to some extent in their control of ideology and over political institutions. Such differences in professions stemming from the division of labour influences the views such men have of the world.