Hayek sobre liberalismo clássico e o papel dos intelecutais

RECLAIMING CLASSICAL LIBERALISM THROUGH THE REALM OF IDEAS

June 25, 2015 | by Steve Horwitz

The way in which ideas influenced the broader culture, including politics, was at the forefront of Hayek’s concerns after the rout of classical liberalism in the Great Depression and World War II. His essay “The Intellectuals and Socialism” was his most focused attempt to understand that process. It was encountering Hayek, and presumably hearing a version of that argument, that led Fisher to see the importance of think tanks for changing the world, especially in comparison to partisan politics.
In that essay, Hayek stressed the ways in which the ideas of those who influence public opinion, who he termed the “intellectuals,” were derived from a fairly small number of original thinkers. The intellectuals include “journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction,” and others, as well as scientists and doctors, who, Hayek argued, encounter new ideas all the time and are listened to because of their expert knowledge on their own subjects. The intellectuals are not the creators of knowledge. They convey the knowledge of the true expert. They are “second-hand dealers in ideas,” and as such they have an enormous influence over public opinion. Hayek argued that every country that had adopted some version of socialism had seen socialist ideas adopted by the intellectuals in the decades prior.
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