Depends what you mean, really. Most people living in the Imperial core are liberals (I can’t speak for the periphery), whether they identify with the label or not.
This includes engineers who design planes to stay in the air, neurosurgeons, logistics people who ensure that the people who collect the bins do so to a schedule, etc. These are obviously intelligent people.
But the liberal world outlook is also severely limiting. This leads to several problems. Examples:
Inability to make sense of the world as a whole.
Unable to understand the root of many problems (i.e. political economy / mode of production).
Susceptibility to pro-capitalist propaganda and bourgeois idealism.
These are clearly problems in terms of realising ones full intellectual potential. These issues won’t necessarily stop someone from understanding medicine, law, logistics, whatever. But they will make some problems, thus their solutions, obscure or invisible.
For example all the hundreds of thousands of people who try to combat poverty in the West without acknowledging that it is relational are more or less incoherent to those who see capitalism as the cause. Are they unintelligent? I wouldn’t say so. I’d say, instead, they’re working with the wrong tools.
I can sum it up by paraphrasing Parenti: they can only make a liberal complaint; they need a radical critique.
Also, I want to be clear, the above are just ‘obvious’ examples… Are the above listed professions any more intelligent than chefs, decorators, cashiers, or (because I just watched Daddy Day Care) childminders? I wouldn’t say so. Not necessarily. Although some jobs have a very high level of skill and take a long time to train for, the people who end up doing them aren’t special, they just had certain advantages (I’m of the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate).
Depends what you mean, really. Most people living in the Imperial core are liberals (I can’t speak for the periphery), whether they identify with the label or not.
This includes engineers who design planes to stay in the air, neurosurgeons, logistics people who ensure that the people who collect the bins do so to a schedule, etc. These are obviously intelligent people.
But the liberal world outlook is also severely limiting. This leads to several problems. Examples:
These are clearly problems in terms of realising ones full intellectual potential. These issues won’t necessarily stop someone from understanding medicine, law, logistics, whatever. But they will make some problems, thus their solutions, obscure or invisible.
For example all the hundreds of thousands of people who try to combat poverty in the West without acknowledging that it is relational are more or less incoherent to those who see capitalism as the cause. Are they unintelligent? I wouldn’t say so. I’d say, instead, they’re working with the wrong tools.
I can sum it up by paraphrasing Parenti: they can only make a liberal complaint; they need a radical critique.
Also, I want to be clear, the above are just ‘obvious’ examples… Are the above listed professions any more intelligent than chefs, decorators, cashiers, or (because I just watched Daddy Day Care) childminders? I wouldn’t say so. Not necessarily. Although some jobs have a very high level of skill and take a long time to train for, the people who end up doing them aren’t special, they just had certain advantages (I’m of the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate).