The Presumptuousness of Academia

Watching the movie Oppenheimer the other day I was struck by the scene of all the academics at the University of California at Berkeley where Oppenheimer was teaching partying at a meeting in support of communism. But academia has always been a hotbed of socialism and communism. Karl Marx got his start at the University of Berlin although he got his PhD from the more liberal University of Jena. In the 1920s, when it became apparent that communism in the Soviet Union wasn’t working according to plan, academics at Goethe University in Frankfurt came up with Critical Theory which converted the class theory of Marxism (the proletariat vs. the capitalists) into the relationship of power between oppressors and the oppressed (known as the “Frankfurt School”). Critical Race Theory was developed by a group of academics from various law schools including Derrick Bell from Harvard law. In the 21st century, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) became code words for a system of ideological control of academia as well as other US institutions such as the American Psychological Association to the extent that academics seeking to be hired by such universities and institutions had to prove their adherence to the “woke” philosophy in order to get a position.  But why? Why do academics seems so drawn to socialists ideas and their offspring?

I have an idea about why academics are so attracted to this flawed philosophy. I think that academics, believing that they are the smartest and best educated people in any country, presume that that they are the natural choice to be in charge of a planned society and a planned economy. This is the same logic that President Woodrow Wilson used to create the deep state of unaccountable “experts” drawn from the world of academia and activist NGOs to run our society. The problem is that planned societies and planned economies require that the power to manage such a complex society be concentrated in the hands of government. And while academics believe that they should be anointed to manage all that power, there are other people whose desire to control that power far outstrips the academics’ presumptuousness. This is the fatal flaw of socialism. It is not the best and brightest that run socialist societies. It is not the most public spirited people that run socialist societies. It is the most power hungry that run socialist societies. People like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez …. the list goes on and on. This is not a minor anomaly in the many variations of socialist theories that can be corrected by a little modification here or a small adjustment there. The concentration of power in the hands of a small elite is the basis of all theories about socialism and it is that concentration of power that drives these societies to tyranny and oppression.