organic intellectual

Allman wrote in 1988:

Gramsci saw the role of the intellectual as a crucial one in the context of creating counter hegemony. He was clear that the transformation… required mass participation… All people are intellectuals, but not all people have in society the function of intellectuals… Each social group that comes into existence creates within itself one or more strata of intellectuals that gives it meaning… What he was really trying to convey is that people have the capability and capacity to think. The problem is how to harness those capabilities and capacities. Gramsci saw one of his roles as assisting in the creation of organic intellectuals from the working class and the winning over of as many traditional intellectuals to the revolutionary cause…

Gramsci’s insistance on the fundamental importance of the ideological struggle to social change meant that this struggle was not limited to consciousness rising but must aim at consciousness transformation…

The creation of working class intellectuals… helping to create a counter hegemony that would undermine existing social relations.

So......