Mind vs. Money: The War Between Intellectuals and Capitalism

For the past 150 years, Western intellectuals have trumpetedcontempt for capitalism and capitalists. They havewritten novels, plays, and manifestos to demonstrate theevils of the economic system in which they live. Dislikeand contempt for the bourgeoisie, the middle classes,industry, and commerce have been a prominent trait ofleading Western writers and artists. Mind vs. Money is ananalytical history of how and why so many intellectualshave opposed capitalism. It is also an argument for howthis opposition can be tempered.Historically, intellectuals have expressed their rejectionof capitalism through many different movements,including nationalism, anti-Semitism, socialism, fascism,communism, and the 1960s counterculture. Hostility tocapitalism takes new forms today. The anti-globalization,Green, communitarian, and New Age movementsare all examples. Intellectuals give such movementsthe legitimacy and leadership they would otherwiselack. What unites radical intellectuals of the nineteenthcentury, communists and fascists of the twentieth, andanti-globalization protestors of the twenty-first, alongwith many other intellectuals not associated with thesemovements, is their rejection of capitalism. Kahan arguesthat intellectuals are a permanently alienated elite incapitalist societies.In myriad forms, and on many fronts, the battle betweenMind and Money continues today. Anti-Americanismis one of them. Americans like to see their country as abeacon of freedom and prosperity. But in the eyes of manyEuropean and American intellectuals, when America isidentified with capitalism, it is transformed from moralbeacon into the "Great Satan." This is just one of the issuesMind vs. Money explores. The conflict between Mind andMoney is the great, unresolved conflict of modern society.To end it, we must first understand it.