The role of intellectuals in an evolving world

I've written previously of local struggles as the specific site of confrontation with power, outside and beyond all such global, general instances as parties or classes. What I wonder is, what does this imply about the role of intellectuals? If one isn't an 'organic' intellectual acting as the spokesperson for a global organisation, if one doesn't purport to function as the bringer, the master of truth, what position is the intellectual to assume?

For a long period, the 'left' intellectual spoke and was acknowledged the right of speaking in the capacity of master of truth and justice. He was heard, or purported to make himself heard, as the spokesman of the universal. To be an intellectual meant something like being the consciousness/conscience of us all. I think we have here an idea transposed from Marxism, from a faded Marxism indeed. Just as the bearer of the universal (but its immediate, unreflected bearer, barely conscious of itself as such), so the intellectual, through his mo...