The intellectual and the market

Abstract

The intellectual has never felt sympathy for the market: for him, it has always been a place of vulgar men and low motives. Whether this intellectual was an ancient Greek Philosopher - who saw economic life as an insurable necessity that should never be allowed to become hindering or dominant - that is, a modern man who focuses his disdain on artifacts or Madison Avenue - the basic similarity of opinions has been pronounced.
Now, you and I are intellectuals, as this word is used I am automatically, because I am a teacher and because I buy more books than golf clubs. You are intellectual because you are generally well-educated, and because you would rather be United States senators or Nobel Prize winners than directors of mobil Corporation. The question I want to raise is not whether intellectuals should love the market - even a professor of economics of outrageous conservative tendencies, cannot be encouraged to say that the cries of five auctioneers rival a Mozart quintet.