Intellectuals belong to the weak and entrepreneurs represent the well-off vested interests; in the former, “the principle is always greater than the interest”, while in the latter, “the interest is no more”。
Wu xiaobo (weibo)
What are the two social roles of intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and can they be combined? This is a topic that has not been discussed in china today。
In the near-modern history of western thinking, the term “intellectuals” has been the subject of different interpretations, and until the beginning of the last century, with the maturity of industrial civilization, there was finally a clearer discourse. Gracie, an italian thinker, was detained by mussolini for 11 years before and after the second world war, and in the book " in prison " he divided intellectuals into two categories: the first category consists of traditional intellectuals, such as teachers, missionaries, administrators, who “do the same work from generation to generation”; the second category consists of organic intellectuals, “capitalist entrepreneurs who create their own wealth while also creating industrial technicians, political economic experts, organizers of new cultures, organizers of the new legal system, etc.”。
The french philosopher fukko's point of view is relatively similar to that of grange, who distinguishes intellectuals from “ordinary intellectuals”, who are named as sartre, and “special intellectuals”, who are the american physicist oppenheimer, who chaired the atomic bomb project. Foco believes that oppenheimer intellectuals have replaced the role of sutter intellectuals in the real world, who are more directly involved in the movement to change the world with their own professions。
So, a question began to surface: is it possible for organic or special intellectuals to transform themselves into entrepreneurs at the same time in the business of changing the world? For example, edison, who invented the light bulb, ford, who invented the car line, should they be called intellectuals
At least in the literature of western thought, we have not read the definitive answer, and it is surprising that not even one thinker has had any hesitation in that regard. In 1965, the american sociologist lewis cosser published men of ideas, which was considered to have been the clearest way in which intellectual titles had been crafted over time. For a considerable period of time, cossé has examined “the contemporary intellectuals of the united states” and has divided them into five broad categories: “freelance intellectuals”, “college intellectuals”, “college intellectuals”, “scientific scientists”, “intellectualists” in washington and “intellectuals in the mass cultural industry”。
It is clear that in the kossé speech perspective, entrepreneurs are not considered as one of the subjects to be examined。
In 2001, the best american business history writer, richard tedro, published a best-selling book, the seven big businesses affecting history, which he vividly featured for seven of america's most outstanding entrepreneurs in the past 100 years, including lord andrew carnegie, the father of the automobile, henry ford, the founder of the ibm (webbo), thomas watson, and the founder of the world's highest market company, sam walton. As he described, these entrepreneurs, who have created incredible wealth: they are all adventurers, changers, doers, they all have extraordinary self-confidence, either from the sense of security in their hearts, or from the mistrust of the judgement of others, who have begun to think that they are infinite, and that sometimes they become arrogant in their future lives。
Tedro went on to write that entrepreneurs had to do tough things to achieve business success. Every great entrepreneur has broken certain rules in some ways, sometimes breaking them has led to accelerated progress in the world and, more often, to new social injustices。
In such a description, it is easy to find that for any entrepreneur, no other world is more important than the enterprise he created -- it is difficult for us to call an entrepreneur with a sense of social responsibility and justice, while a company is on the verge of bankruptcy, a “good businessman”。
And here, we have found a spiritual divide between the two social roles of entrepreneurs and intellectuals: intellectuals stress the spirit of opposition, and entrepreneurs are natural compromisers; intellectuals are weak, and entrepreneurs tend to represent well-off vested interests; intellectuals see “principles always outweigh interests”, while entrepreneurs are “interests without principles”
