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… is from page 115 of Eamonn Butler’s 2018 monograph, An Introduction to Capitalism [2]:
Perhaps the greatest threat to capitalism comes from intellectuals. Their motives may be public spirited, or not: perhaps they feel undervalued by the market, or fancy themselves running a new economic order, or do not trust others to make rational choices. Either way, the public and politicians still generally regard intellectuals as informed and wise, accept their criticisms of capitalism, and conclude that it needs serious repair.
But intellectuals rarely understand the nature and intricate workings of capitalism, and often have little personal experience of it. Too often, therefore, they imagine its problems, misdiagnose the causes and apply the wrong remedies.
DBx: Yes – except that intellectuals today do universally have much personal experience of capitalism as consumers. Yet the typical intellectual takes his or her capitalist-created riches for granted. He or she never stops to wonder, with any seriousness, why he or she has ready access to the likes of food, clothing, housing, schooling, books, travel, artistic productions, cappuccinos, and the wi-fied laptops on which he or she pounds out uninformed criticisms of, and arrogant complaints about, capitalism.
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Pictured above is one such uninformed and arrogant intellectual, Duke University “historian” Nancy MacLean.