Antonio Gramsci’s ‘organic intellectuals’..

Gramsci notes that the development of capitalism was accompanied by the growth of new types of intellectual – entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, business lawyers, economists, engineers and industrial technicians. It is within the latter categories that he sees some potential for the development of an intelligentsia that is organic to the labour movement. In the modern world, he notes, ‘technical education, closely bound to industrial labour . . . must form the basis of the new type of intellectual’ (Selections from the Prison Notebooks). Only through understanding how industry works technically and administratively can the working class hope to wrest control from the bourgeoisie. [Quoted from: Antonio Gramsci (Routledge Critical Thinker Series) by Steve Jones]