In this book, Sowell describes how intellectuals throughout history have misled the masses on important issues and never paid the price for it.
Thomas Sowell is a professor of economics at Cornell, UCLA, and other universities and collaborates on his studies at other relevant institutions, such as Stanford University.
He is also the author of several other books on economics and politics.
This book is divided into 9 chapters, where Sowell shows the vision that intellectuals have about different areas of society: economy, justice, war, etc.
But who are the "intellectuals"? Sowell defines the terms he uses early in the book :)
For Sowell, "intellectuals are an occupational category composed of people whose professional occupations operate fundamentally in function of ideas."
Example: writers, academics, journalists, etc. This does not include engineers or neurosurgeons, for example.
For Sowell, the work of an intellectual begins and ends with ideas.
But what is intellect, after all?
Intellect is the ability to grasp and manipulate complex concepts and ideas, which can lead to erroneous conclusions and, worse than that, senseless actions.
Marx's Capital is an example of an exquisite intellectual construction, but it is based on a conceptual error:
If it is true that "labor" (manipulation of materials) is the real source of wealth, why are countries with more labor not more prosperous?
Having defined intellect, Sowell defines what intelligence is: "it is the combination of intellect with the capacity for judgment and acuity in selecting relevant explanatory factors"
Intellect + judgment = intelligence.
But there is also the rarest quality of all: wisdom.
Wisdom is the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment to produce a coherent assessment.
The opposite of wisdom is stupidity, whose manifestation is much more dangerous.
"George Orwell once said that some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual can believe them, since the common man does not make himself so foolish."
Have you noticed that there are groups of people who disseminate and support the ideas of figures like Mao, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin...?
These people think they are superior to society and think they are doing good.
Sowell calls these groups of people the Intelligentsia.
Like intellectuals, the Intelligentsia exists on both the right and the left. And their main characteristic: they defend, without question, the ideas of all the intellectuals who are admired by their respective groups.
Does this remind you of anything?
Sowell gives the example of Bertrand Russell, an Englishman who was important to philosophy and mathematics and lived in the 1930s.
Russell eloquently argued that the only way to peace for his country would be to give up all military power.
The Intelligentsia of the time listened to and defended Russell's ideas, but the government, fortunately, did not.
At the end of the decade, Germany would trigger the Second World War.
Imagine what would have happened to Europe if the British parliament had listened to Russell, a mathematician?