Public intellectuals could resist state withdrawal from essential social services.

Evidence

What is significant about this turn to black public intellectuals is that it seemed at odds with the much broader assault on political culture in which cynicism seems to reign supreme and appeared to open up a space in which to challenge the prevailing notion that the American public lives in a period of collapsed dreams, in which alternatives to the status quo don’t exist. … Given this ongoing assault on public life, the notion of the public intellectual becoming an everyday figure of speech appears puzzling, especially since the one crucial role that public intellectuals might play at the present time is to resist the withdrawal of the state from those sectors of social life that are indispensable to maintaining important social services such as education, health care, public housing, public service broadcasting, and health insurance. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2614