Transition and the case of highly educated small bourgeois intelligentsia (translation of

https://www.academia.edu/104728458/Tranzicija_i_slu%C4%8Daj_visokoobrazovane_inteligencije

Extract from: Vratuša, V. (2012). Tranzicija – odakle i kuda (Vol. 1). Beograd: Čigoja štampa.
https://www.academia.edu/7845869/Tranzicija_odakle_i_kuda_I_Tranzition_Where_From_and_
Where_To_I_

Added by Ivo Kovačević on 04/12/2017.

Saved under Društvene nauke, Istaknuto
Tags: Amilkar Kabral, Intelektualci, inteligencija, Klasno samoubistvo, Sitna
buržoazija, tranzicija, Vera Vratuša Žunjić
Prepares: Princip.info , https://princip.info/drustvene-nauke/

Here we test the heuristic fecundity of the starting hypothesis on social conditioning of the
thinking and acting of the affiliates of all social groupations, by their place in the class division
of labor, by applying it on the attempt at the explanation and understanding of the specific ideas
and actions of the affiliates of the groupation of highly educated intelligentsia, in fact of the
“new” small bourgeoisie. The place in class division of labor of the affiliates of this groupation
of the „subjects of research“, according to the terminology of Gian Antonio Gilly,1 is extremely
contradictory. To this groupation belongs also the author of this research. I explicitly affirm my
small bourgeois affiliation, so that nobody could reproach me that I offendingly disqualify the
affiliates of intelligentsia as potential “servant of the ruling class “, while excluding myself from
the permanent tendency of the affiliates of this groupation and recruiting basis of the ruling class,
that in the extent to which I do not call into question my own role in the reproduction of the class
division of labor, I in the last instance serve to the interests of the ruling class. This attempt of
explanation and understanding of the contradictory class position of the highly educated small
bourgeoisies presents therefore one form of self-reflection.2

The key element of self-reflection of social scientists is the reexamination of the social
conditioning of one’s own research activity: how does their (our) mediating role in the class
division of labor and with it connected interests of conservation or only reform of the existing
class relationships of exploitation and domination, influence their (our) choice of research
themes, gathering of data, interpretation and application of the findings? Are they (we) affiliates
of the “free hanging in the air” intelligentsia, subordinated fraction of the ruling class or the
privileged fraction of the exploited class?

Highly educated intelligentsia differences itself from the basic social classes, first of all on the
basis of the fact that its affiliates occupy inherently contradictory place and role in the class
division of labor, which find themselves in the relationship of mutual antagonistic contradiction,
even though they manifest themselves as such only in the tense situations of the systemic crisis.
On the one hand, they (we) are hired workers, the direct producers of ideas. On the other hand,
however, they (we) simultaneously own within some sort of private property, better to say,
personal property - “knowledge” and the skill acquired during the process of primary
socialization he most often within the framework of small bourgeoisie family, as well as during
the later process of secondary socialization within the framework of the system formal and
informal education, to discover and verbalize essential data, analyze and synthesize them,
manipulate with them and issue orders which should execute less qualified hired workers. Orders
which issue (we) affiliates of highly educated intelligentsia, as a rule are in accordance with the
class interest of their (our) employers, that is of the ruling class, with which they (we) are more
often in close social connections through marriage and friendship then with other hired workers.
Some of them (us) own also a classical capitalist private property in the form of shares of
capitalist enterprises. Ownership of mediocre capitalist private property strengthens even more
their (our) affiliation to the lower layers of the ruling class in the characteristic of direct
producers and executioners of the ruling ideology.3

Exactly on the basis of contradictorily socially structured class position and class privilege of
higher education, the affiliates of intelligentsia, including the sub-group of society researchers,
they (we) have greater maneuvering space and possibility than other social groupations to make
conscious choice that concerns research problem and theoretical, methodological and practical-
political directing of their (our) research of social transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist mode
of production, as well as from capitalist to post-capitalist production modes. These choices
depend on the decision concerning the question to which of the two basic social classes and to
which of their fractions, they (we) will, within the given constellation of class fight relations,
give at their disposal their (our) “knowledge”, skills and research capabilities. Having in mind
that it is the question of contradictory choice possibilities structured by contradictory class
position in the case of the highly educated small bourgeoisie, insistence on the bringing to one's
consciousness of this choice should not be criticized as the expression of unscientific
voluntarism. The best confirmation of the thesis that intellectual small bourgeoisie indeed
chooses to which social class it (we) will offer its (our) “knowledge” and skills presents the fact
that the opposite theoretical-methodological research paradigms and opposed practical political
strategies have articulated exactly affiliates of the same class status, highly educated small
bourgeoisie.
The most famous positivist -functionalist and conservative-reformist answer to the question on
the role of scientific comprehension, formulated the founder of the sociology as a positive
science August Comte, around the middle of the nineteenth century, in the circumstances of the
protracted “transition crisis” after the 1789 revolution in France.4 Abandoning his oath from the
time of his youth that he would through his science attempt to contribute to the improvement of
the life conditions of the class of people whom their superiors „dishonestly exploit “.5 Comte
concludes that the „mass of our species obviously is destined, on the basis of unchangeable
fatality, to remain endlessly composed of people who live in the way more or less uncertain,
from the successive fruits of their daily labor”.6 In harmony with this conclusion Comte resumes
his answer to the question on aims and role of sociology in the slogan «Savoir pour prevoir afin
de pourvoir et prevenir» („to know in order to predict with the aim of providing and
prevention“). In the lessons from positive philosophy and positive politics as an introduction into
the positive religion of humanity, Comte elaborates of this lapidary formulation advocating that
the rational scientific cognition of positive natural laws of social order and progress of human
spirit, serves as theoretical instrument of the efficacious orientation and prediction of the effects
of political action directed towards provision of administration of the peaceful reorganization of
society. Comte believes that the accommodation of political action to the scientifically
comprehended laws of the existence and development of society, provides allegedly inexorable
transition from the old into the new social system and progress, not disturbing social order.
Comte hoped that the positive politics and positive religion will finally stop the revolution in the
West and prevent its reproduction among other people, since revolution according to him in large
part rests upon the ignorance and disobedience of social laws.7

By his positivist-functionalist and conservative-reformist answer to the question on the functions

of science in the society, Comte became tacit or explicit model to all later theoreticians like
Parsons, which, especially in the periods of the stabilization of the capitalist mode of production
order, have put their “knowledge” and skills at the disposal of the ruling class, stressing two
contributions of the science of society to the maintenance of the positive order. Firstly,
contribution to social integration, through elimination of the metaphysically rooted critical
thinking and propagandizing of the positively scientifically rooted common system of dominant
social values. Secondly, practical-technical contribution to social planning аand sporadic
carrying out of necessary social reforms of the given social system, for the sake of improvement
of the status of the lowest social strata in the supposedly from ever and forever hierarchically
ordered social order, for the sake of controlling their discontent and adaptation to the imperatives
to the scientifically comprehended stage of the lawful development of human spirit and
civilization. Such Comte’s interpretation of the social significance of the science and of the
scientists, paradoxically presents anti-theocratic – theocratic state interventionist idea on the rule
of the elite of enlightened administrators who have the monopoly to positive “knowledge”.
Affiliates of the highly educated intelligentsia employed in “ideological apparatuses of the
state”,8 especially in the sphere of education, science and culture, are contributing support to the
institutionalization of the “positive” science of society. „Positive“ science is necessary to each
Gramscian historically concrete block of the ruling classes that keep the monopoly to the
managing and supervising work functions in the class division of labor, as the theoretical means
in the fight for the establishment and maintenance of its own ideological political and cultural
hegemony in the global society regardless what is the nature of dominant social relations of life
reproduction which are by this only fortified.

The most famous answer to the question on the aims of scientific cognition from the research
paradigm of the new-materialistically inverted idealistic dialectical approach to the critique of
the positive science,9 formulated its founder Karl Marx, in the similar historical conditions of the
„tardy“ crises of the transition from feudalism into capitalism both in France and Germany, in
comparison to the pioneering Great Britain’s capitalist industrial development. Even though
Marx transferred the accent from the activistically understood dialectics of the class fight at the
time of 1848 revolution, to the objectivistically understood dialectics of the production forces
and relations of production at the time of counterrevolutionary reaction which followed, Marx
has in the so called «mature, scientific» works, remained faithful to the conviction from the
“early, philosophical“ works written in youth, which he resumed in the eleventh thesis on
Feuerbach that, the main aim of scientific cognition is not mare interpretation of the world, but
the change of the world. New/materialistically inverted idealist dialectical research paradigm,
therefore, unites in itself subjective-objective, structural-genetic, analytical-synthetic,
deductive/inductive, description-explanation, prediction/orientation of the contradictory process
of transformation of social relationships which had become too narrow for the grown material
and spiritual production forces Starting from such theoretical-methodological and practical
political viewpoint, Marx was able to resume in his major work, the results of his decades’ long
attempts to discover and explicate the historical laws of emerging, functioning and disappearance
of the class formations torn up by internal contradictions. His answer to the question on the role
of dialectical cognition he summarized in the «Epilogue” for the second edition of the first
volume of Capital; “in the positive understanding of the existing situation it introduces
simultaneously also the understanding of its negation“.10

Marx attempted to the end of his life to put his cognition into the service of the exploited and
oppressed classes, reduced to the executing work functions in the class division of labor. At the
same time he was uncompromisingly sharp in the polemics with concrete members of these
classes, especially when he recognized in their attitudes the takeover of the small bourgeois
position of the maintenance of the small private property,11 forgetting on his own small
bourgeois roots as well as his place and role in the class division of labor of direct producer of
worldviews, utopias and ideologies.

With his critical-dialectical answer to the question on the function of science in social
relationships, Marx became a model to all later “radical” theoreticians like, Rosa, Luxemburg,
Lenin, Lukacs, Fanon, Cabral…., who had in revolutionary periods of sharpening of class
conflicts put their “knowledge” and skills at the service of emancipation of exploited and
oppressed classes, modern hired slaves. Marx has together with his life fellow revolutionary
companion Friedrich Engels seen the main contribution of the dialectical scientific cognition in
the bringing to conscience of the interest of exploited and oppressed class of its own interest in
revolutionary transformation of the existing positive form of the organization of the social
reproduction which had come in the conflict with the imperatives of the corresponding level of
the lawful development of production forces of social work. The conviction of the founders of
the new materialistically inverted idealistic dialectical society research paradigm that it is the
question here of the instrument of revolutionary bringing to conscience and social emancipation,
leans on the conviction that only the specific standpoint of the modern hired slaves contains
universal emancipatory potential. The particular interest of the proletariat, namely, cannot be
realized without simultaneous (self) emancipation of all society members from the class limited
division of labor – the condition for emancipation of each individual is the emancipation of all
from the separation of the managerial and executing work functions. Marx and Engels explain
and interpret gross capitalist property as the legal and political expression of class division of
labor. Partisans of the critical theory, methodology and worldview therefore see the real
opportunity for the “withering away” and “abolition” of the state and private property see in the
self-determining self-managing self-organization of the direct producers which beside executing
work functions themselves take over also creative planning, managing and decision making work
functions.
Concrete analysis of concrete situation in the light of dialectical laws of the emergence,
functioning and change of economic formations of society, may contribute according to the
opinion of the class division of labor critics, to speeding up of the process of elimination of the
old production relations which have become too narrow for the new production forces, with the
use of revolutionary violence of the greatest majority of the affiliates of exploited and oppressed
classes everywhere where it is necessary, as a means of resistance to the violence of minority
affiliates of ruling classes. Such critical conception of the role of social science overcomes to the
given frames of state legitimated academic discipline. Its partisans therefore as a rule come into
conflict with the ruling classes which do not have an interest that the mechanisms of the
establishment, but also of possible abolishment of their social power be exposed. In this place it
is important to underline that the transition from the “class pre-history” of the humanity into
history of “socialized humanity” does not guarantee any kind of the development automatism of
the internal contradictions of the capitalist production mode, nor the decision of the critically
oriented highly educated small bourgeois intelligentsia to put its “knowledge” into the service of
the emancipation of the exploited and oppressed. The necessary condition of this transition is
that the emancipation of the hired modern slaves be the action of the hired slaves themselves,
which I the process of resistance to the existing form of the societal relations organization and
establishment of the new ones, transforms itself into simultaneous planners and executors,
producers and consumers.
If in the preceding exposition was in the valid way tested the hypotheses that contradictory place
and role in the class division of labor enables exactly small bourgeois intelligentsia to become
the main social bearer of the articulation of the main types of simultaneously existing and
contradictory theoretical-methodological paradigms of social structural transition research and
practical-political strategies of its direction on the example of the idea’s production of Comte and
Marx and other “classics” of sociology, it should be possible as well to recognize in any
particular contemporary research paradigm and social transition strategy, no matter how they
might look new, we can recognize as only one variant already produced main types of ideas’
products of the direct producers of ideologies or worldviews. Let us try to achieve this kind of
recognition on the example of the system of ideas which produced and offered as a new research
paradigm Peter Drucker.
Peter Drucker is the member or the groupation of highly educated small bourgeoisie who became
famous in the second part of the twentieth century as the professor of government, called in
Anglo-Saxon languages and in the “new-speech”: management. Management which Drucker
determines as the „defining organ of each modern institution which transforms the mass of
people into an organization and human effort into effect”, became one of the most popular new
specializations in the realm of social sciences. Drucker has renewed interest of the public for the
groupation of highly educated professionals, naming its members as “knowledge
workers”.12 Drucker, however, did not contribute enough to the self-inspecting analysis of the
specificity of class position and interests of this ever more numerous groupation. He limited
himself to the examination of professional characteristics of the people who primarily work with
their head and not with hands in the so called informatics society. The knowledge worker
according to Drucker “attains an access to work, employment and to social position, through
formal education“.13 Drucker points out primarily the capability of the knowledge workers, far
more autonomous with respect to the employer from the manual and service workers to learn fast
and productively coordinate their necessarily specialized and concretely applicable cognition,
that is the skill to find, exchange and innovatively combine information, again necessarily in a
team with other experts.

Drucker emphasizes the characteristic of knowledge workers to produce non-material product

through their thinking before acting – social relationships (even though it would be more
adequate that the immaterial product of the knowledge workers be named „mediation in the
interpretation and reproduction/reorganization of social relationships“). In the limited amount to
which Drucker at all got into in the analysis of the character of social relationships which
produce and reproduce the knowledge workers, Drucker points out that 99% of knowledge
workers, at the same time are dependent on their superiors and are superiors to others. All
knowledge worker, however, are becoming managers according to Drucker, no matter on which
level of organizational hierarchy they find themselves, as soon as they make decisions in what
way and with what means they can contribute to the prioritary aims of the organization. Even
thigh by this definition Drucker widens the groupation of managers, he simultaneously suggests
by this definition that management is a profession and that because of this all cannot take part in
decision-making whom these decisions concern and whose effects they will have to endure, if
these people (left out from decision-making) have not through the system of formal education
received the acknowledgment that they are trained to make decisions. Formally educated expert
work force by this remains merchandise, only with the higher wage on the merchandise market
than the work force with now qualifications or semi-qualification at the work place itself.
Drucker advocates for decentralization of the management of big organizations in economy,
politics and nongovernmental sector. he teaches top managers of decentralized organizations to
conduct them as work communities, taking in consideration that all employed are the key
resource of each organization, and not only the cost and that therefore managers should attempt
to mobilize creativity of each individual, but without going over to anarchy. Drucker urges
managers as well not to strive for short-term profit but to realize long-term profit satisfying the
demands of customers and responsibly taking care about general interest of the social community
in which companies which produce merchandises and services.14

Drucker and other owners of “knowledge” as a sort of personal private property, who choose to
put this personal private ownership at the service preservation of existing institutions of the class
division of labor, without any dilemma contribute to reproduction of capitalist social
relationships. Drucker himself approached himself the most to the criticism of capitalist social
relationships, when he warned in the well noticed essay from the 1980s hat it is not possible
either socially nor morally can excuse the difference in income between top managers and simple
employees if it is greater than twenty times, as well as that the high price would be payed if
these differences continue to grow several hundreds of times while simultaneously grow
fireings.15 It is indicative that Drucker these enormous inequalities in incomes did not link with
the capitalist character of the dominant social relationships in all spheres of social activity.
Drucker on the contrary, claimed that capitalist mode of production in the most industrially
developed contemporary societies like USA, already evolved into post-capitalism. According to
Drucker, the main owners of corporations’ capital have become retirement and mutual trust
funds first of all of knowledge workers, as the leading groupation in societies based on
knowledge.16

In our milieu, Silvano Bolčić proposes the similar thesis on the equalization of importance of
“knowledge workers” with owners of capital for the forming of social order and direction of
social happenings in societies of the late twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty
first century.17 If Drucker was right concerning the change in ownership structure in the so
called knowledge societies, during the systemic crisis of the capital which had begun in the first
quarter of year 2007 on the real estate market in USA and spread like a wild fire onto banking
sector and capital markets also in Europe from the third quarter of 2008, hundreds of thousands
of people, including here the “knowledge workers”, would not have had lost their life savings,
and from the crises would not profit the biggest private banks, that is “bankster” families like
Rockefellers and Rothshields, as well as the executive directors who possess the control
packages of shares in the biggest corporations and financial institutions in them. Drucker also
disregards the fact that knowledge workers are attaining skills of manipulation with information
within the framework of capitalist system of both formal and lifelong education, in the form of
individual property to the professional “knowledge” as merchandise which bring the through the
advantageous leasing on the labor market assures privileged position of conductors in the class
division of labor. Subordinating themselves to the imperatives of specialization and team work in
knowledge society, Drucker's knowledge workers primarily occupy themselves with the
operationalization of the strategic aims of the organization which are setting the top executives
and owners of controlling packages of shares, as well with the finding the most efficacious
means for their attainment that is “transformation into effect”.
Critical intellectuals who ask themselves about the sense of the aims themselves, in the new
Drucker’s jargon’, are reduced to unspecialized dilettantes. Drucker’s moralizing call to
diminishment of inequalities in incomes between top managers and service workers as well as to
responsible management in general interest, cannot eliminate inequality and selfishness as the
necessary effects of capitalist mode of production for private profit. Moralizing, however,
presents the reliable indicator that Drucker does not offer any new paradigm for the exploration
of the transition tendencies of the contemporary society, but only the new name for the reformist
variant of positivist – (neo)functionalist research paradigm and conservationing– reformist
practical-political strategy of establishment of “capitalism with a human face”. „Capitalism with
a human face“ infect implies more intensive exploitation of creative potentials of the hired work
force and customers transformed into a free of cost advertisers of the products and services of
“socially responsible” capitalist corporations.
Conclusion
Actual transition of a hidden socio-economic, political, cultural and moral crisis into an open
one, due to the sharpening of the internal structural-systemic contradictions of the existing
capitalist class way of reproduction at the beginning of the 21st century, and not only of its actual
still predominating variant - neo-liberalism 1, imposes again self-examination of one’s own
suppositions and (im)possibility of the application of the research findings of the transition
research primarily by professional society researchers, personal owners of the specialist power.
In these periods the question imposes itself to the society researchers of the theoretical-
methodological research framework choice which is according to their opinion offers the
greatest possibilities of explanation and understanding of the crisis origins, of its present
situation which the crisis created and the basic tendencies of the future stream of events, with the
aim of intervention in it and attempt at its direction in the wished for direction. In the crisis
situations become more visible than in the periods of the stabilization of social relations of
exploitation and oppression, mutual conditioning of the (sub)conscious choice of the mass of
members of mutually opposed social groupations having contradictory social interests, including
1
NB this text was written in 2011 and published in 2012. As of writing of this translation of the relevant excerpt
from the book
https://www.academia.edu/104728458/Tranzicija_i_slu%C4%8Daj_visokoobrazovane_inteligencije in the 2024,
there are ever more visible traits of emergence of state druggist even fascist variant of capitalism in the countries
militarily organized into NATO in the “collective West” and its “partners” in Asia and Pacific, but ever less in Latin
America and Africa.
members of the small bourgeois intelligentsia, of one’s own theoretical-methodological research
paradigms of transition period, and of practical political references of acting in crisis situation,
on the one hand, as well as of resulting stream of examined social transition reality of (re)
distribution of social wealth, power and esteem, on the other hand.
Thorough (self)questioning in the service of which class or class fraction the mediating small
bourgeois producers of ideologies put (we put) their (our) “knowledge” and skills, t the least
brings to consciousness , even it is not able to eliminate, their (our) class, ethnic, gender
generation and other biases. Since they (we), as occupiers of given places in class division of
labor, we (they) are not able to be “neutral”, bringing to conscience and attempt at controlling
their (our) biases, present the main modus of at the least attempt to contribute to realization of
the transition conception for which they (we) think that it is in the true interests of the greatest
number of people, and not only of the members of small bourgeoisie which remained in the
service of the big bourgeoisie.
Two questions remain open in the connection with self-reflexive self-reexamination of the
members of highly educated small bourgeoisie from the viewpoint of the sociology of
knowledge. The first question pertains to the factors which influence the fact that one part of
intellectual small bourgeoisies resists to the first impulse to place itself in the stable and well
paid service of the legitimating and realization of the aims of ruling, often undemocratic social
orders, exposing themselves by this choice to great material difficulties even imprisoning.
Second question concerns the realism of the hypothesis that the radicalized members of
intellectual small bourgeoisie would, after the coming over to the side of the revolutionary
movement of the masses, perform “class suicide”,18 and entirely ignore their particular interests
of the improvement of their relative position in otherwise not changed relationships of class
division of labor and that they would entirely put themselves in the selfless service to the
emancipation of the direct producers which the class division of labor reduces to modern hired
slaves, denied the opportunity to substantially, and not only formally, take part in decision
making in the matters which concern the quality of their lives.

Sociologists who want to “professionalize”, again find themselves (ourselves) in front of the
choice to which social groupation they (we) will offer our intellectual services. Marginalized
classes that live on or below the border of existential minimum, have at the least the same small
amount of chance as it has been the case so far, to form their own “organic intellectuals»,19 as
the shield from the transformation of the “professional revolutionaries” into the new ruling class
of order-givers in the future social revolution. Exploited, oppressed and having their life the most
imperiled, the most often remain the intellectual small bourgeoisie’s research object. Intellectual
small bourgeoisie is mostly employed in agencies financed by state budget or through the
market, performing primarily the function of preserving the control of the ruling class, the
financier of this research, over the exploited and oppressed.

Especially in the realm of social sciences, theoretical-methodological research framework that

chooses particular researcher, necessarily includes the researcher’s value determined relationship
towards the researched world and his or her own place within it. Conserving, reforming or
critical relationship towards existing social relationships in the world expresses itself in the
function which the researcher consciously or unconsciously attributes to her or his research
praxis. The attributed function of research practice rules the chosen research strategies and ways
in which the research findings will be used. Conviction of particular researchers that they can
take the neutral theoretical-methodological stand strictly separated from ideology and politics,
which does not have its source and delta in the respective practical-political standpoint, present
the great self-delusion
If we, therefore, attempt to explore where from and where to we are transitioning in the sense of
class position and role, we cannot avoid but to choose between the opposed theoretical-
methodological paradigms of explanation and understanding of transition and practical-political
strategy of its orientation in the wished direction. With the very act of choosing, we pose
ourselves on the side of completely determined social classes interested in the particular
direction of transition and the respective forms of the social life reproduction in the world in
general and in Serbia in particular.