1
        Analysis is important. We must look at our lives and the world, see what is there, dissect it, comprehend it, reassemble it and finally arrive at some kind of totalistic vision.
 

        But the end result of analysis, for the revolutionary at least, is not the analysis itself, but the product of the analysis: action. Being able to describe in detail the particular quality of our existence and the nature of the social world in which this existence occurs ‑‑ this is nothing without a response.
 

        To know we are oppressed and de‑powered, to know something or someone has robbed our lives of a certain vitality, a certain freedom, this is of course important. But (in Jean‑Paul Sartre's words) "the essential is not what has been done to man, but what man does with what has been done to him".
 

        In the end, analysis only gains actual muscle, only becomes real, by transforming itself into a force that consciously intervenes in the world.
 

        In the absence of such intervention, analysis is not actually analysis but only fantasy ‑‑ a pretty blue toy for certain intellectuals to play with while pretending that it's a meaningful credential. 
        

         

        2
        Inevitably revolutionary and progressive movements produce information‑gatherers and statisticians. But also inevitably, these statisticians, these "managers of facts", frequently substitute memorization of data for the art of deeper analysis. They substitute statistics for the humanity behind the statistics. They substitute their own professionalism, their desire to be heralded as experts, for the pressing need to de‑professionalize and de‑mystify both knowledge and analysis. In the hands of such people (who are actually dissident technocrats as opposed to revolutionaries), facts become, not tools for simplifying complexity and making the world more available to the public, but rather, compiled in long and often confusing lists or speeches, they are used as a way of bolstering up the notion that only specialized technicians can be our leaders. This is supposedly "pragmatic" politics.

         

        3 
        The revolutionary intellectual is not a technocrat. He/she doesn't view the process of organizing information as a skill that bestows upon its possessors the right of leadership. The process of organizing information is a useful but mechanical skill ‑‑ a learned skill that has nothing to do with any kind of innate intellectual superiority. It is a skill that must be shared, spread out, demystified.

        
        Accepting such a view is no minor affair. It's part of a process of redefining intellectuality in such a way that we end up assaulting one of capitalism's main conceptions: that only trained cadres of information‑organizers, with access to highly specialized types of information, are capable of running society.

        
        In the present historical period, the corporate elite, which doesn't like dissident movements of any type (i.e., anti‑nuclear, anti‑overseas intervention, anti‑capitalist, etc.), is nonetheless willing to tolerate dissident movements to the extent those movements draw their leadership from the very ranks of those technocrats who presently serve as a managerial‑type buffer‑class between society's ruling elite and the rest of the population. Just as long as the dissident movements remain in the hands of such leadership, the powers that be know that although they might finally have to make some compromises, the essential structure of society (upon which their power hinges) won't change. 


        4
        The revolutionary intellectual, far from being managerial‑like or aloof from reality, is instead swamped by it. Rather than viewing or trying to control reality from the standpoint of an administrative transcendence (I am a "thinker", I am an "organizer of information", I am a "student" of society), the revolutionary intellectual is involved in an endless exploration of all the world's sidestreets, out‑of‑the‑way corners and subsurface shadows. The revolutionary intellectual is like a scavenger or bag‑lady rummaging through trashcans and delighting in small discoveries: broken combs, scraps of history, used soda cans, folklore fragments, hunks of edible bread, and so on. Out of this supposed crud of the world, this apparent mess at the base of society, the revolutionary intellectual gradually puts together a vast picture of existence that reflects the world from the bottom up as opposed to from the top down. 
        
        The revolutionary intellectual has no desire to be "above" the so‑called "chaos of life." This is because the revolutionary intellectual knows it is only at the base of society ‑‑ in the street, the workplace, the neighborhood ‑‑ that the true pulse of the teemingness of existence can be felt. It's only here, in the midst of others and feeling the tug of the endless economic, social and cultural undertows that are the definitive forces in our lives, that can be built a philosophy that speaks the clear language of freedom, democracy, revolution, change.         

        

        

         5 
        Precisely where the revolutionary intellectual is most comfortable ‑‑ i.e., among people in the rush of daily history ‑‑ is where the technocrat feels most uncomfortable. 
        
        It is, after all, one thing to speak "for people" or "in their interests" as the technocrat does ‑‑ and it's an entirely different matter to be "of" the people because that's where one comes from and still is. 
        
        At the base of society among the majority, this is where the action's at ‑‑ it is here, in a contradiction‑riddled environment, that new kinds of creativity and analysis and vision struggle to emerge. 
 
        It is these new but still not fully formed approaches that provide the basis for a potentially different future. 
        
        Knowing what a revolutionary intellectual is and is not is necessary because such knowledge is essentially a method of deepening our understanding of democracy. The question is: Who does the revolutionary intellectual represent and what is her/his relationship to those she/he represents? After all, the intellectual isn't merely an intellectual in the abstract, isn't merely a "person of ideas" standing above history, but is rather the advocate of particular ideas that have a specific relationship to history and people. 
 
        To define a revolutionary intellectual, then, is to define a stance in relationship to human development and struggle. It is also a way of exploring the question: Is the revolutionary intellectual a force "outside" the general population who "leads" them by transmitting "instructions" to them concerning what to do next, or is the revolutionary intellectual a voice from "within" the exploited population, an organic outgrowth (like a plant in a garden, as opposed to the sun that shines down on the garden) of that population's cumulative experiences and culture? 
        
        Obviously we are dealing here with aspects of democracy, of political relations. 
 
        No matter how much they may rhetorically attempt to hide their motives, technocrats, when (and if) they advocate radical social change, advocate placing the administration of such changes in the hands of technocrats or managerial types. Their conception of social transformation pivots on the assumption that the revolutionary or progressive intellectual represents a realm of enlightenment and knowledge outside and beyond the general population. From this perspective (to vary a metaphor used above), the general population is a garden including a wide variety of plants, whereas the intellectual is the sun shining down on, and bringing life to, those plants. 
 
        This is the Apollo or God-in the sky conception of the intellectual as above everyone else. On the other hand, the socialist intellectual -- or any other radical, imagination-pushing, anti-conditioned-thinking truth-hunter, proclaims her/his rightful place to be not outside the garden but in it; she/he refuses to acknowledge the sun's supremacy; she/he is committed to developing an alternative form of light originating not above the garden but in the midst of it. 
 
        Within the U.S. left, there is a collision between these two conceptions of what a revolutionary leader or intellectual is. And without exception, every non‑revolutionary progressive movement in the U.S. (the Nuclear Freeze Movement, as an example) is dominated by leaders who either consciously or unconsciously accept the technocratic conception of how to instigate social change. 
 
        This is why such movements are frequently experienced by broad sections of the population as consisting of people "not like us," which is often a code phrase for technocratic or professional‑managerial elites who say many of the right things but are not viewed as allies because they seem to look down upon those to whom they are speaking. No wonder that large numbers of blacks, latinos, workers, women and other disenfranchised sections of the population intuit that the social/political movements that are led by such people want their bodies and enthusiasm, but not their input or leadership. 
 
        Heaven forbid that any unpredictable emotionalism should "contaminate" the "purity" of the single‑issue approach with its handsome graphs, professional speeches and generally "decorous" and "reasonable" outreach programs.