One obvious role for a radical intellectual is to do precisely that: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts.
David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (available in full as a .pdf or in print from Prickly Paradigm Press)