In the pop u lar war time tract Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter had famously complained about a tendency for capitalist economies to generate intellectuals who were hostile to the social system that produced them. In previous eras, Schumpeter wrote, intellectuals served at the plea sure of a ruling class that was quick to punish them for heretical ideas. Capitalism provided them with the printing press, the radio, an increasingly leisured and literate public, and a system of cultural and legal restraints that protected expressions of dissent. As a result, he concluded, "unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest."

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 272