What makes us, a couple of professors at modern British universities, ‘experts’ on anything? What makes anyone an acknowledged expert on anything, and why does it matter? Why does the political right hate ‘experts’, and are they correct to do so? And what should radicals, socialists and democrats think about the role of ‘intellectuals’ in our movements?

In the third of a three-part series,  Alan Finlayson and Jeremy Gilbert continue to explore the question of what counts as ‘knowledge’ or ‘expertise’ in our society, where the idea of ‘the intellectual’ came from, whether it has any relevance today, and what the point is of ‘theory’, ‘analysis’ or any other kind of knowledge of expertise.

Yes, the discussion does start off very self-referential, but over the course of three episodes we put forward a decent history of ideas of truth in modern societies, and finally land on an analysis of why everyone is so frustrated by the inability of the professional political class to envisage a new way of living.

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