ABSTRACT
Earlier, in the youthful stage, the flowering stage, of British capitalism, the situation was quite different. The intellectuals made no attempt to think independently of their class, but rather were proud of belonging to it. In short, there were no intellectuals—no intelligentsia—as a special class. There were simply the “educated classes,” absolutely identical with the propertied classes, and they were the “liberal professions” or, as they are called in English, just plainly “the professions.” For these professions a tranquil little corner had from time immemorial been reserved in English bourgeois society. So long as freedom, initiative and competition ruled in the economic life of Britain, the liberal professions, such as the medical or the legal, basked in an atmosphere of privilege and monopoly, which assured them a share of the profits much in advance of what prevailed on the other side of the Channel. The learned intellectuals of the old universities were even still better off. They were in an especially privileged position, as they were recipients of immense revenues from properties which they had been busy accumulating since the middle ages. Up to the end of the nineteenth century their bonds with the church were very real ones.
