 If democracy were to founder, the intellectuals would be the first to go down in the wreckage.Either Communism or Fascism would give them short shrift, and social and civil liberties... would be swept down the drains of the Corporate or the Communist State as the discarded refuse of an outworn social structure.Joad identified "vanity, the lack of discipline, the overdeveloped individualities of progressives" as obstacles to organisation, but "danger may effect union where common sense has failed."