Who are the liberal intellectuals of the early 21st century?

[Exilednight]

Who are the Isaiah Berlins, Arthur Koestlers, George Orwells and John Maynard Keynes of the 21st century.

Currently the only person that comes to the forefront of my mind is Krugman.

[justiceischeap]

1. I think Rachel Maddow is as well. nt

[Exilednight]

2. People like Rachel and Keith are good at recognizing the problems, but

they're not good at coming up with new ideas and solutions to problems. Olbermann's special comments border on it, but he cuts himself short before completing a thought or offering a fleshed out solution.

[justiceischeap]

3. Just because Rachel doesn't offer solutions to problems

doesn't mean she doesn't have them. I think she does, at times, offer ideas that are full of common sense and logic. That said, she seems to have this idea that she is to report the news, not make it. When she does her radio show, she's more likely to offers solutions.

[EFerrari]

9. There is a tension between commercial venues

and the role of the public intellectual which is one reason it's hard to put Rachel in that group because her appearances now are almost all in commercial venues, aren't they?

Melissa Harris Perry has talked about it a little, she's someone else that should be on the list, and Michael Eric Dyson.

[H2O Man]

28. Definitely Dyson.

[theoldman]

4. Intellectuals are not given very much publicity today.

Ignorance is the popular value. I am sure we have just as many intellectuals as in the last century. Paul Krugman is one of the few that I can think of. How about Richard Dawkins?

[Exilednight]

7. You're quite right. Dawkins is a good choice. n/t

[EFerrari]

5. Rushdi, Hitchens, Hedges, Chomsky, Žižek

John Pilger, Robert Fisk in media. Galeano in Latin America. We just lost Manning Marable which is a tragedy, he was so young.

[Exilednight]

8. Hitchens is too right - wing for my taste. I lump Chomsky in with the

20th century intellectuals. He's not produced anything of major debate in the past 20 years, although I do give him this much, he knows more about the Israel Palestine conflict better than most intellectuals. Zinn was another great one, but again, he was 20th century.

Pilger doesn't get much play here in the US.

Fisk is good choice.

Rushdi never came across to me as a liberal. He's certainly an intellectual, and we can learn a lot from him, but not sure how liberal he is.

[EFerrari]

12. You may be right about Hitch although, it's hard to tell

how many of his positions are part of his act, he can argue all sides well.

It's a mistake to relegate Chomsky to the last century, he's still working away and has just released a new edition of his 9/11 book with a new introduction. When you hear him talk, he's still steeped in current events and problems. Zinn fathered a new movement in history that will mature this century. Rushdi is more moderate but that still makes him much more liberal than anyone in our political establishment.

[readmoreoften]

29. Zizek, Pilger, and Galeano are not liberals. They are leftists.

Pilger is a socialist and Zizek is a communist. Zizek thinks "liberals" are phony.

[EFerrari]

30. That's true.

In fact, they probably all think that.

[white_wolf]

41. Chomsky and Zinn aren't liberals either. They are both anarchists.

[DrunkenBoat]

42. You can't be a liberal & a leftist at the same time? New one on me.

I thought liberal values were "leftist" values.

[Motown_Johnny]

6. It may just be that she has greater exposure but I think Dr. Maddow is head and shoulders above the

rest.

[Exilednight]

10. As I stated above, I have no doubt that Rachel is smart, or that she is liberal, but

I find it hard to classify her as an intellectual. She easily recognizes the problem, but fails to offer solutions that people take seriously. Rachel and Keith both shoot themselves in the foot by attempting to mix humor with serious discussion. That's not to say that pop-culture doesn't have a place in serious discussion, but what parts of pop-culture you discuss and how you approach them is part of being an intellectual.

[Motown_Johnny]

25. so her constantly saying we should invest in infrastructure isn't offering a solution?

Do you watch her show?

[Exilednight]

26. That's just parroting what people like Krugman say. She's certainly a

smart individual, but I don't find her be an intellectual.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. Of course, at this point in the 20th, 1911, Orwell was a kid

As late as 1927 he was an Imperial Police officer in occupied Burma. So, one could conjecture that this century's Orwell might right now be 'policing' Iraq or Afghanistan.

[Exilednight]

13. Fair point. It's still early in the 21st century, but I'm looking around and not

finding many voices that go against the right considers their intellectual force.

The other thing I notice about modern liberal intellectuals is that they can't find a consensus like they once did. Berlin, Orwell and Bradbury may not have agreed with every solution, but they agreed on many.

[cali]

14. Lakoff. I think he'd have to be on this list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

[Exilednight]

15. Nice choice. I'll have to pick up his books. n/t

[Tennessee Gal]

18. Yes, Lakoff is who I thought of also.

He understands the "framing" used by Republicans and how it influences Americans to vote against their own interests. That is a major problem in this country.

[Zorra]

27. Yep. My first choice. Thom Hartmann would be a close second. nt

[MH1]

16. Joseph Stiglitz

[MH1]

17. Bill McKibben.

[FarLeftFist]

19. Paul Krugman, Melissa Harris Perry, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Abby Zimet

[Exilednight]

20. I thought about Taibbi. He kind of reminds me of a watered down version of

Hunter S Thompson. Taibbi is certainly a smart guy, but I find it hard for many people to take him seriously. If he dropped the pseudo Gonzo writing style, I believe more people would take him seriously.

[SharonAnn]

24. I'll never forget his lines about Goldman Sachs. "A vampire squid wrapped

around the face of humanity relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

That sentence is one of the best I have ever seen about the predatory nature of Wall Street investment banking and how it deals with humanity.

[Exilednight]

21. Max Berry might be deserving. n/t

[Exilednight]

22. Michael Sandel is another that comes to mind. n/t

[jwirr]

23. Kunstler, Robert Reich, Krugman, Maddow, Chalmers Johnson,

KO, Naomi Klein, Chris Hayes, Paul Hawkens. Many of the scientists who are being ignored today. We have a world of brilliant people standing up and getting shoved to the back of the room because they are saying things the world does not want to hear.

[girl gone mad]

31. Not Krugman.

Krugman is stuck in 20th Century economic thought.

Look to the Minskyians.

[Exilednight]

32. Minsky is dead. A qualifier for 21st century intellectuals is that they be alive. Not to mention

that Minsky was against running deficits and didn't believe in accumulating debt.

Everything I've read from Krugman proves to me that he really understands the situation we are in and provides the answers to get out of it.

[girl gone mad]

34. Keynes is dead, too.

Not sure what that has to do with anything.

Krugman is a deficit dove who doesn't grok modern money. Galbraith has pinned him to the mat on this numerous times now. It's unfortunate, but Krugman doesn't seem to want to learn.

You're totally wrong about Minsky on deficits. See http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2009/07/sector-financial-balances-model-of_26.html">this:

Those of us employing the framework of J. M. Keynes, Hyman Minsky, Wynne Godley, and others mentioned by Rob and Eric, instead use the above equation to understand changes in the financial status of the various sectors of the economy. That is, instead of saving to finance capital investment (which is not actually what happens), we have “private sector net saving,” which is the addition/subtraction to net financial wealth for the private sector in a given period. If the private sector is net borrowing, then its balance will be negative; if it is net saving, then its balance will be positive.

Most importantly, the economy’s financial flows are a closed system, so one sector’s deficit is another’s surplus, and vice versa. There is no way around it, just as it is impossible for every country in the world to have a trade surplus—at least one country must have a trade deficit for the others to have surpluses. Thus, “national saving” as defined in the textbooks (private saving + government surplus + foreign saving) is a misleading concept in our monetary system, since if the government is "saving" some other sector (or combination of them) must not be, by definition. This is represented graphically in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Financial Flows between Sectors of the Economy

or http://seekingalpha.com/article/290879-why-the-market-is-declining-deficit-reduction-and-profits">this:

Currently, government actions across the developed world are concentrating on government deficit reduction. In reaction to slowing growth, France announced an austerity plan so that it could achieve its targets for deficit reduction. The United States has formed a deficit reduction committee tasked with reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion. If Minsky's right, this deficit reduction may not only be bad for economic growth, it will first crush corporate profits.

(snip)

There are equations showing how everything works. Minsky developed a simple equation for corporate profits in his FIH:

After Tax Profits = Aggregate (Private + Government) Investment + Government Deficit

Minsky conducted an elaborate examination and visual proof of this in his book, "Stabilizing an Unstable Economy," using the years 1965 to 1984. For those in need of sleep, there is a nice build of the formula and specifics on why current European policy should be towards higher deficits in, "Profits, Confidence, and Public Deficits: Modeling Minsky's Institutional Dynamics," by Eric Nasica and Alain Raybaut.

You can graphically prove that the profit recovery in 2009 is attributable solely to the increase in deficits. In normal times profits go up as deficits go down because rapidly growing GDP results in increasing investment which drives profits higher and allows slow deficit reduction (the downward move in profits during the high growth period from 1997 to 2000 is an example of what happens when deficits are reduced too fast.)

There's only one economic school that has been consistently right over the past two decades. Check out the link in my signature for more information.

[Exilednight]

36. I never called Keynes a 21st century intellectual. n/t

[girl gone mad]

37. Who did?

Still don't understand why it matters when these men died.

Post-Keynesians have developed a modern framework of economics based on the theories Minsky developed after we abandoned the gold standard. Much of the neoclassical economics Keynesians such as Krugman employ is grounded in outmoded monetary models that don't work. I'm fairly certain Keynes himself would have recognized the shortcomings of modern Keynesianism since he was extremely bright and adaptable, and he would probably be a Minskyian now, if you ask me.

[Exilednight]

38. No one i've seen in this thread. Krugman is my choice. BTW, thanks for the link. I will print it

and read when I get a chance over the next couple days.

[ZombieHorde]

33. There are thousands of liberal intellectuals.

Liberal college professors, some lawyers in the ACLU, movie directors, ...

[Exilednight]

35. But which ones are forming policy and shaping public opinion. And I would never call a

movie director an intellectual. I do agree about professors, that's why I mentioned Sandel and Krugman. But like I said, I don't see many of them putting themselves out there. Krugman is the rare exception. I wish Sandel would be more active in US policy discussion.

As far as lawyers go, I don't really know of any that out there writing op-eds, appearing on the weekly talk shows or doing much of anything else to shape public opinion.

Republicans celebrate what they consider their intellectuals. They even take up places in government.

[Exilednight]

39. Thank you, everyone, for your input. I think people have put together a pretty good list worth

checking out. I know I will be reading some of these people.

[Warren DeMontague]

40. Me.

Well, you asked.