ABSTRACT
Literature on the role of the "intellectual" consists of a vast body of descriptive "linguistics" which is not integrated into any coherent theoretical framework. The analysis centered on the political role of the intellectual, attempts a limited contribution to that objective, a "paradigm" based on independent, but crosscutting, dichotomies: intellect-intelligence and innovative-integrative. The disposition of intellectuals to find the dominant culture and institutions of their society in distress need not take a political or activist form. During the 1960s, the heavy participation of students and intellectuals in the New Left movements clearly necessitated some analysis of the sources of this "bourgeois-based" radical movement. Marx and Engels, though denying any dominant thrust to the politics of intellectuals, found it necessary to discuss the factors related to varying forms of political involvements. Inherent in the structural changes which have been described as leading to a "postindustrial society" since World War II has been a growing interdependence between political authority and intellectualdom.
