So there could be reasons for the decline of the public intellectual, and not all of them self-inflicted. Those who think the problem is that today’s academics write too much “jargon” should look at the business press. Was ever there a language more filled with spurious, made-up words of indeterminate meaning? But rather than engage with the standard stories of the public intellectual, let’s think instead about general intellects. By general intellects, I mean something a bit different to Marx’s formula of the general intellect, although they might be connected. By general intellects, I mean people who are mostly employed as academics, and mostly pretty successful at that, but who try through their work to address more general problems about the state of the world today.

They are, on the one hand, part of the general intellect, in that they are workers who think and speak and write, whose work is commodified and sold. But they are, on the other hand, general intellects, in that they try to find ways to write and think and even act in and against this very system of commodification that has now found ways to incorporate even them. They try to address a general situation, one that many people find themselves in today. And they try to do so intelligently, by applying their training and competence and originality.