Organic intellectuals must advance theory and transmit it simultaneously.

Evidence

I think it is very important that Gramsci’s thinking around these questions certainly captures part of what we were about. Because a second aspect of Gramsci’s definition of intellectual work, which I think has always been lodged somewhere close to the notion of Cultural Studies as a project, has been his requirement that the “organic intellectual” must work on two fronts at one and the same time. On the one hand, we had to be at the very forefront of intellectual theoretical work because, as Gramsci says, it is the job of the organic intellectual to know more than the traditional intellectuals do: really know, not just pretend to know, not just to have the facility of knowledge, but to know deeply and profoundly. So often knowledge for Marxism is pure recognition—the production again of what we have always known! If you are in the game of hegemony you have to be smarter than “them.” Hence, there are no theoretical limits from which Cultural Studies can turn back. But the second aspect is just as crucial: that the organic intellectual cannot absolve himself or herself from the responsibility of transmitting those ideas, that knowledge, through the intellectual function, to those who do not belong, professionally, in the intellectual class. And unless those two fronts are operating at the same time, or at least unless those two ambitions are part of the project of Cultural Studies, you can get enormous theoretical advance without any engagement at the level of the political project. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 245

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise two-front definition of the organic intellectual - theoretical advance plus transmission to non-intellectuals.
• SEED: Angle: ‘cultural studies and the division of intellectual labor’ - the asymmetry of reward between the two fronts.