On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures

by Noam Chomsky

In the last century in particular, a period in which the intelligentsia have developed as a more or less identifiable category in modern societies, they have tended to see themselves as managers, either managers of industry, managers of the state or ideological managers. That has been the general tendency among the intelligentsia, that is the interest that they hope to satisfy. And that, incidentally, is true in Western capitalist societies, in the so-called “socialist” societies (which are not socialist, in my opinion), and in the Third World. We have to ask what kind of an image of the world these intellectuals have created and why. Well, they have created an image of a stupid mass who must be led by clever intellectuals. In fact, what we often find is that the intellectuals, the educated classes, are the most indoctrinated, most ignorant, most stupid part of the population, and there are very good reasons for that. Basically two reasons. First of all, as the literate part of the population, they are subjected to the mass of propaganda. There is a second, more important and more subtle reason. Namely, they are the ideological managers. Therefore, they must internalize the propaganda and believe it. And part of the propaganda they have developed is that they are the natural leaders of the masses.