I still do not think Adam gets it. The attack against the professional class doesn't come from some abstract disgust of the professional class. It comes from the fact that the professional class has been so wrong on so many things and yet believe they know what is right and what is wrong because they are credentialed and so they should be the ones everyone should listen to.
Certainly there is a mass anti-elitist feeling since around Trump 2016 & Brexit (often called as an insult, populism).
And certainly that is easy to explain. Bad decisions and particularly a staggering return to 1930s levels of inequality (hence the fascist/communist populism of the 30s).
So how do they PMC avoid maintain their warm liberal opinions of themselves without calling for 75% marginal tax rates - easy - be nice to the minorities - the smaller the minority group the better, transgender is perfect. Be ferociously nice to the tiniest minority.
But of course the other thing is that everyone knows that the media lies about so much. They may not be clear on what the specific lies are but they know they don't make sense. Ukraine reporting does not make sense to anyone who half listens and half remembers for a year. J6, Covid lockdowns, the economy, Gaza, immigration, pretty much nothing makes sense to an occasional thinking person. That triples the level of mistrust for the establishment and the core establishment workforce - the PMC.
One of the pernicious effects of Trumpism is the constant refrain that "everyone knows that the media lies about so much". This isn't right. Trump and Orban lie all the times. Fox lies much of the time, for strategic purposes. Parts of social media are built to lie. But the "mainstream media" are, whether ideologues buy it or not, trying very hard to get the truth out. Of course, they get it wrong some times and sometimes over-weight some stories and the sheer volume of so many stories, so many political lies to fact-check, so many issues (many of which are new and complex and difficult to analyze) makes it hard for anybody to grasp the whole. But denial and denigration of the mainstream media and the "core establishment workforce" compound the problem. If anything "triples the level of mistrust" it is this acceptance of the Trumpistani view of the media, rather than trying to work to sort out the issues to make them make sense to "an occasional thinking person." As indeed, Professor Tooze tries to do with this substack which, alas, probably only reaches card-carrying members of the PMC.
So what's an example of such a "lie"? The product is certainly not perfect, but that doesn't make the imperfections "lies". It's just Trumpist blather to keep saying "lies". At least the MSM undertakes painstaking fact checking. If you're going to claim "lies", a few examples would be in order. (Of course, Trump says the election was stolen and global warming is a hoax, now those are lies.)
You want to pretend that a consistent pattern of failure is somehow exists without a motive for that behavior.
There’s no objective, neutral body that can be counted on to produce objective, neutral data on any subject including the subjects of ‘global warming’ or ‘COVID’ or ‘election results’.
Furthermore, there are no objective, neutral bodies that can be counted on to provide objective, neutral interpretations of data on any subject whatsoever.
All the products of the professions are interested products. They exist to further the interests of the PMC itself or its patrons.
The ‘lie’ is that there any longer exists a body of objective, neutral knowledge outside very specific cases.
No. It's true that there is no fully neutral body that can be counted on infallibly to produce objective, neutral data. But there are lots of academic, media and government organizations that strive mightily to get the data correct, especially on such matters as global warming and COVID (where the facts are highly complex and the methodological problems challenging). As for election results, there there is an objective result, which anyone can see, and which has suffered no serious challenges. It is only Trump and his minions who keep denying the results, thereby undercutting the essential need for people like you and me to accept election results. Otherwise, elections have no meaning. What is the alternative to such efforts, imperfect though they be, to find good data and reasonably objective analysis? If the bottom line is "the medium is the lie", that is nihilism and Trump wins.
Just about everything written about Ukraine over the past three years has been (and mostly continues to be), to one degree or other, at best a half-truth if not outright lies.
Whatever the details, and, of course, in the fog of war, lots will be got wrong, the fundamental fact is that Ukraine did not fold in three days and the Ukrainians have shown steadfast, heroic, perhaps quixotic resistance to Putin's atavistic imperialism. That's what matters.
This is pretty much nonsense from someone who clearly makes no attempt to be objective. The big modern lies are; excessive wokeness as a way to hide wage inequalities, Ukraine (1 million military dead), Gaza (maybe 3-500k dead by now), China economic dominance, BRICS soft Power, the hatred of USA across 80% of world pop, Lawfare and related (Biden laptop for example, Russiagate, J6 nonsenses), Washington as a democrat rather than money driven process, Social media disruption (Twitter files, FB shadow bans etc, all kept a secret), the existence of hypersonics which make 75% of US defence spending useless.
Yes Fox is as guilty as the rest of the media.
The mainstream media are deeply complicit in these lies (and complicit in the deaths of 1m Ukrainian military because had they told the truth it would have been impossible for Biden to have funded Kiev to fight on after they agreed a peace deal in April 2022).
They participate directly in the lies, knowingly and with Gusto.
Well, I think we're on different planets. All of the things you mention have been reported and are, at the least highly controversial and highly complex. You seem to mix up analytical spin (e.g. on wokeness and wage inequalities (which are hardly hidden)). I don't see the points you mention as lies, but as complexities, and I find your conspiratorial spin (and acceptance of Putin's view on Ukraine) highly unconvincing. I wouldn't say you are lying, however, but there's a big difference between ideological spin and factual lies.
Biden laptop has been reported? Huge Ukraine deaths (I do mean 1m, not the 30k zelensky mentioned which "experts say might be understated)? Of course you find 1m deaths unconvincing - you take what you read as being true. But it is factual. So what happens when you find out the reality? Don't kid yourself there is a single journalist who has visited Ukraine and does not know the truth and has not seen the graveyards.
Take Lockdown fever. We all know Lockdowns were wrong because every politician in every country has since cliamed to have done their best to limit them (Lockdowns is a simple story, unlike vaccines). But most scientists knew that in advance and the officials were briefed so in advance. Why did no media challenge lockdowns as Jay Bhatcharya and other scientists did?
Of take Afghanistan withdrawal. There was no shortage of alternative commentators pointing out that US grip on Afghanistan had collapsed long before 2021 and that the exit would be a nightmare (many of these commentators had been regular mainstream media guests in 1990s but ditched after the Iraq/Afghanistan invasion - they rant about US in Ukraine and Gaza today). Why was that plain lie given so much time in the media .
And in both cases why has there been no subsequent investigation into the truth?
Or Russiagate which turned out to be wholly fake (but barely admitted to now).
Or the Biden laptop which was wholly genuine.
You don't see these as lies - all I can say is that the suspicion of ordinary voters serves them much better than your judgement serves you.
This is pretty accurate. Your average person may not know all the details about a given issue but the PMC class has either been so wrong or lied about so many things that now the default feeling among those not part of the PMC is distrust. Also, they trust Trump because he may not know the details of most issues but he has been directionally right about a number of things. Your avg. person does not sit around reading academic papers all day. They make decisions based on gut instinct. That is how Trump tends to make decisions and that is why they trust him more because they can relate to that.
That's right about the gut instincts. One of my favorite Trumpist quotations is, "he thinks like we do". But that only underscores the problem of somehow getting back to a fact-based, analytical approach to problem solving in a very complex society and economy that are facing "poly crisis".
He is a Property developer. Even bad property developers don't make instant decisions, they work on 7 year projects and think everything out in advance.
On the other hand they may be very good at understanding what the unspoken expectations of clients (or voters) are.
So when Trump calls out the Quad or says he wants good coal mining jobs for ordinary Americans, that may well sound exactly as "that is what I was thinking but didn't dare say". But be sure he is speaking from a very well rehearsed angle.
I'm tempted to say that it is very clever to understand the difference between teh way ordinary people think and say the PMC. Once upon a time that was probably true. But nowadays frankly it is easy.
The bottom 75% have 75% of the votes - the real question is how come Trump struggles so much to win.
Is it that the PMC has been "so wrong" or that the politicians have taken hold and distorted the response? A purely technocratic solution to the global financial crisis or COVID would have been much more coherent, palatable, and effective. But the political system was incapable of undertaking technocratic solutions and distorted both the necessary debate over such solutions as they were developed and the reaction thereto, resulting in politically convenient "disgust" that served various partisan needs but had little to do with the actual problems or their solutions or planning to avert the next such crisis.
That’s a fair point. It could be less about the PMC being “wrong” about things and instead the incentive structures we have in place leads them towards the wrong decision a lot. I wouldn’t limit it to just politicians. That incentive structure problem is prevalent across media, corporate America, higher learning institutions, etc. However, whether it’s just that they are wrong because they are clueless or because incentive structures are such that they inevitably make the wrong decision the end result is the same which is what your avg person cares about.
The incentive structures are indeed distorting, which is why we have energy companies denying the crushing evidence of global warming. But that indicts only the energy companies and their minions. There are lots of people in the media, in the universities, in the federal and state governments, and even in some corporations that have been doing hard work and pounding the drum for a very long time. They are pushing for the right decisions on those issues, but (a) the economic incentives of those who benefit from fossil fuels and (b) the ability of people like Trump to exploit the suspicions and resentments that arise because some of the solutions are inconvenient for some people thwart making as much progress as is required. The average person will care when he discovers that we have missed the Lampedusa moment (when everything changes so everything stays the same) and we are really headed down the drain of climate change, mass migration, etc., etc.
Adam, I follow your work on LRB as well. All this talk about elites and classes bothers me. Big dark money and Republicans have been working for 60 years to reverse civil rights, social insurance and environment gains by outright lying to a gullible public. After hard work and much spending, they have cornered the legislative, judicial and executive branches of power. Educated, inner-directed people who are not swayed by lies or advertising naturally have shifted toward the Democratic Party because it actually has public policy goals. Right now we're one step from dictatorship. It's an existential crisis for the country, and liberals have tried to prevent it. Big money and small scruples won. Don't get fancy.
I have to agree with you there, Kerry. It was obvious when the Citizens united ruling came down that oligarchs would eventually take total control. Unlimited money+social media= reality distortion = trump. The nation’s founders often pointed out that the American experiment could only survive if the electorate were guided by rationality and a sense of civic virtue.
This is the most intelligent thing I have read since the election. There has been much too much repetition of the "Harris lost the working class" trop and too little real analysis around it. This, on the other hand, offers a compelling analysis of the PMC and why a substantial part of the population resents it, but that resentment is in fact rebellion against the complexity of modern society, which professionals are there to try to manage.
One thing that might be added is that the PMC actually looks for technocratic solutions, whether in COVID or in remedying the Global Financial Crisis. (In both of which cases, technocratic solutions have done a lot of good, if not as much good as could have been done with less mindless opposition.)
The analysis is also useful for pointing out the conflict between the PMC and the "business class". In many cases, the lumpen PMC grundoon lawyers and investment bankers and regulators struggle to do the right thing and achieve technocratic solutions against the small cadre of ridiculously paid CEOs and billionaires who always want to dilute bank regulations, water down environmental regulations, or eliminate health and safety regulations for selfish reasons. And then expect the PMCs who populate the government to clean up the mess when crisis strikes (as with the global financial crisis), only to denigrate them when the fix starts working.
I would, however, dispute one analogy: it seems to me the PMC should be called the "gentry" and the "business class" (CEOs and owners of car dealerships alike) the "aristocracy". That would better align the facts to the implicit analogy to early modern England that such terms imply, where the gentry and aristocracy were often opposed, both ideologically and economically.
Health arises from balance. The rights of man arise from a growing middle class. There will always be wealth and poverty, but when a preponderant middle class provides a strong center of gravity, a society prospers. What is needed is a theory of the middle class.
It’s interesting to note that the PMC is the class most threatened by AI to have their jobs taken. It’s much easier to automate data input and processing than it is to build robots to do skilled manual labor.
That said, AI still can’t (and shouldn’t) make critical decisions for us. AIs still can’t (and probably shouldn’t) design themselves and determine which problems are the highest priority to solve. Highly skilled knowledge workers will always be needed to form and guide these systems, and in turn be informed by their superhuman ability to detect subtle or novel patterns.
So what happens to the PMC as their value erodes, both through market and political forces? There are only so many jobs to be filled by skilled manual workers (construction, maintenance, manufacturing). Upward mobility is highly limited by those already in privileged positions (ie the owning class). Oh, and who’s going to pay all those skilled manual workers in the first place, as their well-compensated clients evaporate? (The owning class is already a relatively small group and can only sustain a small portion of these skilled laborers.)
I can’t imagine any sustainable, humane future that doesn’t require some form of Universal Basic Income. The alternatives are too unpleasant to dwell on. I’d love to be convinced otherwise.
So is the real problem deeper? Are the challenges facing the world (polycrisis) too difficult for the PMC to manage, and too dangerous for the anti-PMC crowd to ignore? The near-term implication seems to be the global anti-incumbent wave that tosses out whomever may be in power. But what's the long-term outcome?
Every society needs some type of PMC, the one we have set up is failing: here are 3 supporting claims as to why.
1. The PMC is a product of modern liberal higher education. We have to rethink liberal education to prevent the failure of the modern democratic nation state.
2. The philosophical underpinnings of such education, the very core of these institutions, produces a class of people who are
A.uncritical of the markets of ideas they operate in,
B. who whose truth claims are purely contingent on currently accepted processes and
C. who are prohibited from generating theories that are exclusionary of other ideas/perspectives.
This type of institution by its very philosophical DNA remains dependent on its benefactors ( corporations(or their PMC managers) and the state—or, the current dem coalitions.
3. The ownership class which is by nature, more pragmatic but still ruthlessly self-interested represents some respite from the gridlock of the PMC to the average voter.
The emphasis on process, what is trending in the market of ideas, and not building theories that are exclusionary (like some forms of Marxism or religious ones) , can be found in the run up to election. The trending debate around polls resulted in a lot of debate around statistics, but no meaningful theories or action of how to address the results of polls effectively. By contrast no qualitative research on voter views seemed be circulating at all, in which the hard interpretive work could be done. On the economic front the PMC/academic class had no narrative for why economic sentiment was so poor despite good economic data. The interpretative work to be done is increasingly being removed from PMC/academic work as the benefactors of higher ed demand less emphasis on humanities and more on stem.
The antidote is a reformed philosophy of liberalism touted by someone like Richard Rorty. Someone who understands pragmatism, emphasis on freedom of association and expression. Someone who is alive now who I think embodies this is John Mearscheimer. His emphasis on the focus on developing theories is encouraging people to spend less time- and he certainly is a heterodox thinker against state and corporate interests.
"On the economic front the PMC/academic class had no narrative for why economic sentiment was so poor despite good economic data." - eggs are expensive and the price of housing is skyrocketing. Healthcare is more absurd than ever. The economic data isn't good. The notion of good economic data was liberal copium to pat themselves on the back that we had at least avoided descending into Mad Max anarchy. There are no roving gangs of leather clad street thugs, abducting us to fight in the Chrome Dome, but that doesn't mean I am having a good time!
Our owner class feels safe to abuse us, they need to feel the heat before we are treated properly. The Trump scam is to take the anger and unrest and blame it on immigrants. They will watch us turn on our neighbors and then rob us blind. Same as it has always been!
The antitode is to take this anger, dissapointment, and disillusionment, and ensure it is held to an unswerving, uncompromising, authentic, honest, and militant standard - which can (1) put itself on the front lines against the coming assaults on our worker class under Trump and (2) maximally oppose how liberalism will try to reconstitute itself in the aftermath of this current catastrophe.
The republicans and democrats are bourgeois parties, they use carrot and stick, one most important thing keeping our abuses alive is the ability for liberalism to absorb change-wind energy, and then strangle it, dismantle it, and put us all back to sleep. A change wind is stirring. They killed it with FDR, they killed it with Obama, and they will try to kill it again!
Tooze smartly channeling Tim Barker and Gabe Winant in calling it the anti-professional manager class election. What this is missing is that it’s not so much anti-elite as counter-elite. Trump represents a counter-revolutionary cadre of counter-elites (https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/the-counter-revolutionaries-in-charge)
The American oligarchy have been seeking to reverse the New Deal and Great Society programs since their inception. They tried to use the arguments of austerity anti-government ideology that both political parties have adopted since Jimmy Carter, Reagan, Bill Clinton and Obama. The PMC was hugely supportive of the austerity program. They couldn't succeed in trying to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, etc because people were unwilling to give up programs they saw they actually paid separate identifiable taxes towards. But in Trump the far right oligarchs have finally found a demagogue in Trump who has convinced people with his magnificent ability to take racism, sexism, hatred of immigrants and distrust of institutions into entertainment that allows people to sacrifice their interests for the benefit of the oligarchs.
The classic explanation for the failure of the Democrats is contain in Thomas Frank's masterly analysis in "Listen Liberal" ...in which he bitingly squewers the Clinton era giving up on the NewDeal politics of Roosevelt for an incoherent lauding of inovation and education. A process emulated in UK by Blair. The result we can see. With Globalism the working class, which are in fact still the majority of people, were effectively thrown under a bus. The disinterest in the real welfare of the working classes, by the professional liberals has just been returned in full. Obama came in and let off wall street to the the righteous anger of ordinary people. Yes We Can...became But We wont! The mass of people could see that wealth was all that mattered. Wall Street escaped richer than ever. A society that shows its every man for himself breeds a respect for a man like Trump. He will fail of course but its going to to be interesting...
How Thomas Frank was treated by the corporate Dems and their fellow travelers in the corporate media organs after he published "Listen, Liberal" is most instructive.
Of course, he was right and they were wrong, so now we are all stuck with the consequences.
Living in the UK and coming upon tbat book only after I read a recommendation from Seymour Hersh I am afraid I missed the backlash and all the media response to it. To me its the best bit of modern era first draft history I have read. Explaiuned so much about how Blair went about the almost same process here ( with rahter less success on the inovation front as he didnt have silicon valley and was followed by truely inept Tories.
Classic diversionary tactic from AT; make a big fuss about an amorphous group/class to avoid having to talk about the big question: how to build a progressive coalition that actually wins elections rather than just protests.
This is such a well written, readable and thought provoking piece. As a Canadian in Canada, I appreciate the prompts to a wider, historically informed context in my learning about your form of government and your electoral processes.
"The besetting error of the Trump camp, by contrast, is to imagine that the modern world can actually function without the expertise, discipline and labor provided by the PMC."
So, I see the error here. You have adopted the idea that the PMC is somehow different and even a new "class" and that they are consumate Dems, Labor or whatever. Reality: the PMC is merely the old petty bourgeois with delusions of grandeur. Trump has his own petty bourgeois adherents which feels they should run the modern world on behalf of the bourgeois. The idea that the modern world can't work without a petty bourgeois is something only the petty bourgeois believe. It is a delusion.
"Being neither manual workers, nor owners of the means of production, these groups do not occupy clear-cut positions within a Marxist class schema."
That's not entirely true. Although they are not considered fundamental to the core class antagonism between workers and the bourgeois, Marx and the Marxist movement refer to this middling class as the "petite bourgeois". The PB is considered a historically doomed class destined to be crushed between the two larger class forces and the economic centralization inherent to capitalism. There is also some analysis of the PB's class psychology which is said to be characterized by quiet panic, opportunistic ossilation between the two larger classes and particularly thin skin. This class might be described more loosely as the classic fair weather freind. They are with you when you're doing well and they turn on you when you're down. When the working class was strong after WW2, a small army of PB intellectuals would extoll their power and great destiny. Today, when the American worker has been reduced to conditions of life consistent with the term wage slavery, the PB scold and humiliate him. However, at this crisis stage, the tea party and then Trump have reoriented the approach. The Trump PB looks down on but carefully panders to the working class and calls it to take revenge. Some historical precedents to this, but you already know. I'm not rooting for Capitalism or the Dems, but if they learn anything it should be at least: stop insulting the working class.
I think the categorization of “class” used in this article was not very useful. Income, in particular, is not a very useful defying factor differentiating classes.
I don’t have the data to make a proper analysis of the 2024 Presidential election, but using this method might have yielded interesting results.
The way I understand it, "class" describes one's relationship to the means of production.
I know an electrical contractor who, year and and year out, makes the kind of money that a Goldman Managing Director makes. I can also tell you that this contractor is treated very differently than the guy from Goldman would be treated.
The problem with using “ one's relationship to the means of production” is that everyone who has a job is producing. That is one of the many reasons why the Marxist view of class is not useful.
If you read the linked article, and particularly the first graphic, you will see a more useful definition.
Production should be understood in terms of producing a surplus. Society produces a surplus and then uses that surplus, investing it in developments and luxuries and so on. For example, this is how we know that Roman peasants were exploited. The empire just took their grain. The grain surplus then fed the city. Was this a mutually beneficial relationship? Sometimes, but the ball got rolling because, a few thousand years ago, a bunch of assholes started figuring out that you could steal people's food, and then use that stolen food to feed an army. Then, your big dumb army can go out and steal even more food. This onset of class rule and the state was hardly a charitable act. The abuses of it continue to this day.
It is about your proximity to capital. Capital investment and capital return is not the same thing as productive labor. Like a landlord doesn't have to work hard to have tenants pay their bills, in fact this the entire draw of being a landlord - convert your property into capital and accrue a passive income. Unsurprisingly, we find society divided into two dominating poles, those with a lot of capital, who are in the commanding heights of our economy, and those who can only give their labor, who must take orders. The PMC is a middling layer, like a gentry.
Profits go to the top and then they pay off the government. That's class rule. Denying it is akin to asserting a flat earth! Not good!
Did you read the linked article? It does not appear so.
I never denied class. That is why I have written multiple articles on the topic... which you apparently did not bother to read before you told me that I was wrong.
I think that my articles give a much more sophisticated view of class than yours.
The problem with your analysis is that it neglects individuals and how much youths made life decisions that affect their life outcomes. You also neglect the critical importance of age. Twenty-something’s are all “poor,” but the vast majority move up into the Top 20% later in life.
Very few people are born with "capital investment" and they still have a very high standard of living compared to virtually every person in world history.
The vast majority earn their money by work, savings and investment. Today, over 10% of the American population is a millionaire, and among retirees, it is far higher.
You also neglect who similar those with lots of capital are with PMC and college-educated people. It is all one class. Their similarities in attitudes are far bigger than their differences.
I never denied class. I am just arguing that the classic Marxist understanding of class is near useless (and yours sounds an awful lot like his). There is a reason why Marx's predication were completely wrong. It was that his assumption were incorrect. Do not make the same mistake.
Marx was not wrong. He predicted that commodity production based on exchange value would break down, and it did, we have been on a fiat economy for the last few decades - which is a political dollar and not a value dollar - which, seemingly, is the only way through which profits can still be extracted. Modern economies are more akin to a demented socialism-for-the-rich compared to what Marx understood as capitalism. This is the rise of national capitalists, also predicted in Marxist theory. The collapse of exchange value was predicted (or hoped) to lead to an immediate political struggle to seize power, and sure, this was in error. In America, the capitalist class outflanked this, with the New Deal. Ultimately, I believe the balance of forces played out in this manner owing to imperialism - which is when nations enter into a class relation. You are probably sitting on 500 little trinkets in your room that were all made in Mexico India Pakistan China, and you go to the grocery store in winter and buy avocados but you know the guy who plucked them sure as shit doesn't have his own avocados to buy for himself in the winter. America did not having nothing left to lose but their chains, but saw a world which we could rope into chains, and over the next few decades, this was successfully accomplished. I believe we are in a declining or decaying period and this is reflected in near-universal public sentiment that our nation is on the wrong track (something like 80% when polled).
Appealing to age does not sway me much. Money makes money, and this results in an extreme explosion of concentrated wealth, which is the capitalist class. They have excessive power that is used to secure personal interests that are choking us as a social whole, and yes, this extends not only at the tippy top but radiates outward as decreasingly less power as you go down the totem pole. Cars are an example of this, first, a toy for the rich, imposed on all of us, now, all of us have to live this way, with our personal tanks, it is an enormous drain on our production, horrible for the planet, horrible for developing authentic and vibrant communities, but we atomized, and trapped, stuck in traffic, hating traffic. Land ownership is another example of this, we need massive infrastructure revolutions - high speed rail, and massive constructions of housing, we are being left in the dust technologically and crushed under eyewatering prices, but a million petty fiefdoms are all out here to scream "Me! Me! Me!" and we all suffer for it. I don't see how we get out of this, there is a mass construction of housing we would need would to decrease prices, but the economy of housing treats it as an investment which can only ever appreciate in value, which is insane, but if you want a roof over your head, you have to play the game, or shell out big rent money to those who got in before you. And, obviously, this is resulting in an increasing share of people who don't have a stake of land, and are paying more money out of their pocket to get by as a punishment for daring to breath.
Anyone who starts with “ Marx was not wrong” cannot be taken seriously. You obviously do not know the basics of Marxist theory. You are only stringing together words that you think make you sound like it.
Even doctrinaire Marxists realized that he was wrong in his predictions over a century ago. Just read critiques of Marx during that time period.
I read the article. Everyone with a job may be producing, but how they produce can be very different, as can their expected outcomes from such production.
Your model has some compelling arguments, but has one glaring flaw. It assumes a far higher degree of permeability and mobility than actually exists. It assumes that one’s life choices, especially during schooling years, is practically the sole determinant of one’s eventual “class” placement.
Thousands of studies over time have borne out how much influence your family and community have over one’s financial outlook. If you’re born working class or lower class, chances are you’ll always be there, sheerly by dint of circumstances.
Upward mobility exists, surely. Some manage to claw their way up or simply get lucky. But if you’re lucky enough to be born into an affluent family, you’re far LESS likely to loose your status. You have layers upon layers of privilege and protection lower classes can’t even imagine.
You and those “thousands of studies” are missing the powerful effect that genetics has on individuals' abilities and preferences. And those genetic traits are highly heritable. It is not privilege and protection that accounts for lower than "ideal levels of social mobility", it is genetics.
I argue that we need to acknowledge those inherent differences and try to leverage them into material progress and upward mobility.
And don’t forget that two of the three critical life choices are full-time work and marriage. Those are two choices where the vast majority of humanity have been able to make the right choice. Even medieval peasants, who were clearly not privileged.
I forced myself to read your link because you have written so many comments in this thread. Your diagram is useful as far as it goes, but putting the offspring of all three classes in one box probably doesn't map onto any reality I have encountered where either the opportunities afforded nor the constraints upon subsequent "life choices" are concerned.
For all their supposed utopianism, the PMC also have appropriated an outsized share of any economic gains for themselves.
If the poor are poor, it's because they aren't like us, we who are smarter, more educated, more virtuous, with refined taste and a nuanced (boy howdy do liberals ever have a most unseemly boner for that word!) understanding of critical matters such as pronouns. If we live better, it is because we deserve it!
I still do not think Adam gets it. The attack against the professional class doesn't come from some abstract disgust of the professional class. It comes from the fact that the professional class has been so wrong on so many things and yet believe they know what is right and what is wrong because they are credentialed and so they should be the ones everyone should listen to.
Certainly there is a mass anti-elitist feeling since around Trump 2016 & Brexit (often called as an insult, populism).
And certainly that is easy to explain. Bad decisions and particularly a staggering return to 1930s levels of inequality (hence the fascist/communist populism of the 30s).
So how do they PMC avoid maintain their warm liberal opinions of themselves without calling for 75% marginal tax rates - easy - be nice to the minorities - the smaller the minority group the better, transgender is perfect. Be ferociously nice to the tiniest minority.
But of course the other thing is that everyone knows that the media lies about so much. They may not be clear on what the specific lies are but they know they don't make sense. Ukraine reporting does not make sense to anyone who half listens and half remembers for a year. J6, Covid lockdowns, the economy, Gaza, immigration, pretty much nothing makes sense to an occasional thinking person. That triples the level of mistrust for the establishment and the core establishment workforce - the PMC.
One of the pernicious effects of Trumpism is the constant refrain that "everyone knows that the media lies about so much". This isn't right. Trump and Orban lie all the times. Fox lies much of the time, for strategic purposes. Parts of social media are built to lie. But the "mainstream media" are, whether ideologues buy it or not, trying very hard to get the truth out. Of course, they get it wrong some times and sometimes over-weight some stories and the sheer volume of so many stories, so many political lies to fact-check, so many issues (many of which are new and complex and difficult to analyze) makes it hard for anybody to grasp the whole. But denial and denigration of the mainstream media and the "core establishment workforce" compound the problem. If anything "triples the level of mistrust" it is this acceptance of the Trumpistani view of the media, rather than trying to work to sort out the issues to make them make sense to "an occasional thinking person." As indeed, Professor Tooze tries to do with this substack which, alas, probably only reaches card-carrying members of the PMC.
The mainstream media lies. You just prefer their lies to whatever else is out there. The mainstream media is a crappy product.
So what's an example of such a "lie"? The product is certainly not perfect, but that doesn't make the imperfections "lies". It's just Trumpist blather to keep saying "lies". At least the MSM undertakes painstaking fact checking. If you're going to claim "lies", a few examples would be in order. (Of course, Trump says the election was stolen and global warming is a hoax, now those are lies.)
You want to pretend that a consistent pattern of failure is somehow exists without a motive for that behavior.
There’s no objective, neutral body that can be counted on to produce objective, neutral data on any subject including the subjects of ‘global warming’ or ‘COVID’ or ‘election results’.
Furthermore, there are no objective, neutral bodies that can be counted on to provide objective, neutral interpretations of data on any subject whatsoever.
All the products of the professions are interested products. They exist to further the interests of the PMC itself or its patrons.
The ‘lie’ is that there any longer exists a body of objective, neutral knowledge outside very specific cases.
And none of those cases involves ‘the new’.
The medium is the lie.
No. It's true that there is no fully neutral body that can be counted on infallibly to produce objective, neutral data. But there are lots of academic, media and government organizations that strive mightily to get the data correct, especially on such matters as global warming and COVID (where the facts are highly complex and the methodological problems challenging). As for election results, there there is an objective result, which anyone can see, and which has suffered no serious challenges. It is only Trump and his minions who keep denying the results, thereby undercutting the essential need for people like you and me to accept election results. Otherwise, elections have no meaning. What is the alternative to such efforts, imperfect though they be, to find good data and reasonably objective analysis? If the bottom line is "the medium is the lie", that is nihilism and Trump wins.
Just about everything written about Ukraine over the past three years has been (and mostly continues to be), to one degree or other, at best a half-truth if not outright lies.
Do you require specific examples of such?
Whatever the details, and, of course, in the fog of war, lots will be got wrong, the fundamental fact is that Ukraine did not fold in three days and the Ukrainians have shown steadfast, heroic, perhaps quixotic resistance to Putin's atavistic imperialism. That's what matters.
This is pretty much nonsense from someone who clearly makes no attempt to be objective. The big modern lies are; excessive wokeness as a way to hide wage inequalities, Ukraine (1 million military dead), Gaza (maybe 3-500k dead by now), China economic dominance, BRICS soft Power, the hatred of USA across 80% of world pop, Lawfare and related (Biden laptop for example, Russiagate, J6 nonsenses), Washington as a democrat rather than money driven process, Social media disruption (Twitter files, FB shadow bans etc, all kept a secret), the existence of hypersonics which make 75% of US defence spending useless.
Yes Fox is as guilty as the rest of the media.
The mainstream media are deeply complicit in these lies (and complicit in the deaths of 1m Ukrainian military because had they told the truth it would have been impossible for Biden to have funded Kiev to fight on after they agreed a peace deal in April 2022).
They participate directly in the lies, knowingly and with Gusto.
Well, I think we're on different planets. All of the things you mention have been reported and are, at the least highly controversial and highly complex. You seem to mix up analytical spin (e.g. on wokeness and wage inequalities (which are hardly hidden)). I don't see the points you mention as lies, but as complexities, and I find your conspiratorial spin (and acceptance of Putin's view on Ukraine) highly unconvincing. I wouldn't say you are lying, however, but there's a big difference between ideological spin and factual lies.
Biden laptop has been reported? Huge Ukraine deaths (I do mean 1m, not the 30k zelensky mentioned which "experts say might be understated)? Of course you find 1m deaths unconvincing - you take what you read as being true. But it is factual. So what happens when you find out the reality? Don't kid yourself there is a single journalist who has visited Ukraine and does not know the truth and has not seen the graveyards.
Take Lockdown fever. We all know Lockdowns were wrong because every politician in every country has since cliamed to have done their best to limit them (Lockdowns is a simple story, unlike vaccines). But most scientists knew that in advance and the officials were briefed so in advance. Why did no media challenge lockdowns as Jay Bhatcharya and other scientists did?
Of take Afghanistan withdrawal. There was no shortage of alternative commentators pointing out that US grip on Afghanistan had collapsed long before 2021 and that the exit would be a nightmare (many of these commentators had been regular mainstream media guests in 1990s but ditched after the Iraq/Afghanistan invasion - they rant about US in Ukraine and Gaza today). Why was that plain lie given so much time in the media .
And in both cases why has there been no subsequent investigation into the truth?
Or Russiagate which turned out to be wholly fake (but barely admitted to now).
Or the Biden laptop which was wholly genuine.
You don't see these as lies - all I can say is that the suspicion of ordinary voters serves them much better than your judgement serves you.
There's no point in going on with this, but almost all of what you say is spin of dubious origins.
This is pretty accurate. Your average person may not know all the details about a given issue but the PMC class has either been so wrong or lied about so many things that now the default feeling among those not part of the PMC is distrust. Also, they trust Trump because he may not know the details of most issues but he has been directionally right about a number of things. Your avg. person does not sit around reading academic papers all day. They make decisions based on gut instinct. That is how Trump tends to make decisions and that is why they trust him more because they can relate to that.
That's right about the gut instincts. One of my favorite Trumpist quotations is, "he thinks like we do". But that only underscores the problem of somehow getting back to a fact-based, analytical approach to problem solving in a very complex society and economy that are facing "poly crisis".
He is a Property developer. Even bad property developers don't make instant decisions, they work on 7 year projects and think everything out in advance.
On the other hand they may be very good at understanding what the unspoken expectations of clients (or voters) are.
So when Trump calls out the Quad or says he wants good coal mining jobs for ordinary Americans, that may well sound exactly as "that is what I was thinking but didn't dare say". But be sure he is speaking from a very well rehearsed angle.
I'm tempted to say that it is very clever to understand the difference between teh way ordinary people think and say the PMC. Once upon a time that was probably true. But nowadays frankly it is easy.
The bottom 75% have 75% of the votes - the real question is how come Trump struggles so much to win.
Is it that the PMC has been "so wrong" or that the politicians have taken hold and distorted the response? A purely technocratic solution to the global financial crisis or COVID would have been much more coherent, palatable, and effective. But the political system was incapable of undertaking technocratic solutions and distorted both the necessary debate over such solutions as they were developed and the reaction thereto, resulting in politically convenient "disgust" that served various partisan needs but had little to do with the actual problems or their solutions or planning to avert the next such crisis.
That’s a fair point. It could be less about the PMC being “wrong” about things and instead the incentive structures we have in place leads them towards the wrong decision a lot. I wouldn’t limit it to just politicians. That incentive structure problem is prevalent across media, corporate America, higher learning institutions, etc. However, whether it’s just that they are wrong because they are clueless or because incentive structures are such that they inevitably make the wrong decision the end result is the same which is what your avg person cares about.
The incentive structures are indeed distorting, which is why we have energy companies denying the crushing evidence of global warming. But that indicts only the energy companies and their minions. There are lots of people in the media, in the universities, in the federal and state governments, and even in some corporations that have been doing hard work and pounding the drum for a very long time. They are pushing for the right decisions on those issues, but (a) the economic incentives of those who benefit from fossil fuels and (b) the ability of people like Trump to exploit the suspicions and resentments that arise because some of the solutions are inconvenient for some people thwart making as much progress as is required. The average person will care when he discovers that we have missed the Lampedusa moment (when everything changes so everything stays the same) and we are really headed down the drain of climate change, mass migration, etc., etc.
You were right the first time. The 'professions' have become as corrupt and self-serving as the Catholic priesthood in the era of indulges.
Not obvious what you are referring to with: "...has been wrong on so many..." - Examples please!
Adam, I follow your work on LRB as well. All this talk about elites and classes bothers me. Big dark money and Republicans have been working for 60 years to reverse civil rights, social insurance and environment gains by outright lying to a gullible public. After hard work and much spending, they have cornered the legislative, judicial and executive branches of power. Educated, inner-directed people who are not swayed by lies or advertising naturally have shifted toward the Democratic Party because it actually has public policy goals. Right now we're one step from dictatorship. It's an existential crisis for the country, and liberals have tried to prevent it. Big money and small scruples won. Don't get fancy.
I have to agree with you there, Kerry. It was obvious when the Citizens united ruling came down that oligarchs would eventually take total control. Unlimited money+social media= reality distortion = trump. The nation’s founders often pointed out that the American experiment could only survive if the electorate were guided by rationality and a sense of civic virtue.
How do you square that with Harris' spending $2B+ on her campaign vs. Trump spending $315M?
This is the most intelligent thing I have read since the election. There has been much too much repetition of the "Harris lost the working class" trop and too little real analysis around it. This, on the other hand, offers a compelling analysis of the PMC and why a substantial part of the population resents it, but that resentment is in fact rebellion against the complexity of modern society, which professionals are there to try to manage.
One thing that might be added is that the PMC actually looks for technocratic solutions, whether in COVID or in remedying the Global Financial Crisis. (In both of which cases, technocratic solutions have done a lot of good, if not as much good as could have been done with less mindless opposition.)
The analysis is also useful for pointing out the conflict between the PMC and the "business class". In many cases, the lumpen PMC grundoon lawyers and investment bankers and regulators struggle to do the right thing and achieve technocratic solutions against the small cadre of ridiculously paid CEOs and billionaires who always want to dilute bank regulations, water down environmental regulations, or eliminate health and safety regulations for selfish reasons. And then expect the PMCs who populate the government to clean up the mess when crisis strikes (as with the global financial crisis), only to denigrate them when the fix starts working.
I would, however, dispute one analogy: it seems to me the PMC should be called the "gentry" and the "business class" (CEOs and owners of car dealerships alike) the "aristocracy". That would better align the facts to the implicit analogy to early modern England that such terms imply, where the gentry and aristocracy were often opposed, both ideologically and economically.
Health arises from balance. The rights of man arise from a growing middle class. There will always be wealth and poverty, but when a preponderant middle class provides a strong center of gravity, a society prospers. What is needed is a theory of the middle class.
It’s interesting to note that the PMC is the class most threatened by AI to have their jobs taken. It’s much easier to automate data input and processing than it is to build robots to do skilled manual labor.
That said, AI still can’t (and shouldn’t) make critical decisions for us. AIs still can’t (and probably shouldn’t) design themselves and determine which problems are the highest priority to solve. Highly skilled knowledge workers will always be needed to form and guide these systems, and in turn be informed by their superhuman ability to detect subtle or novel patterns.
So what happens to the PMC as their value erodes, both through market and political forces? There are only so many jobs to be filled by skilled manual workers (construction, maintenance, manufacturing). Upward mobility is highly limited by those already in privileged positions (ie the owning class). Oh, and who’s going to pay all those skilled manual workers in the first place, as their well-compensated clients evaporate? (The owning class is already a relatively small group and can only sustain a small portion of these skilled laborers.)
I can’t imagine any sustainable, humane future that doesn’t require some form of Universal Basic Income. The alternatives are too unpleasant to dwell on. I’d love to be convinced otherwise.
So is the real problem deeper? Are the challenges facing the world (polycrisis) too difficult for the PMC to manage, and too dangerous for the anti-PMC crowd to ignore? The near-term implication seems to be the global anti-incumbent wave that tosses out whomever may be in power. But what's the long-term outcome?
Every society needs some type of PMC, the one we have set up is failing: here are 3 supporting claims as to why.
1. The PMC is a product of modern liberal higher education. We have to rethink liberal education to prevent the failure of the modern democratic nation state.
2. The philosophical underpinnings of such education, the very core of these institutions, produces a class of people who are
A.uncritical of the markets of ideas they operate in,
B. who whose truth claims are purely contingent on currently accepted processes and
C. who are prohibited from generating theories that are exclusionary of other ideas/perspectives.
This type of institution by its very philosophical DNA remains dependent on its benefactors ( corporations(or their PMC managers) and the state—or, the current dem coalitions.
3. The ownership class which is by nature, more pragmatic but still ruthlessly self-interested represents some respite from the gridlock of the PMC to the average voter.
The emphasis on process, what is trending in the market of ideas, and not building theories that are exclusionary (like some forms of Marxism or religious ones) , can be found in the run up to election. The trending debate around polls resulted in a lot of debate around statistics, but no meaningful theories or action of how to address the results of polls effectively. By contrast no qualitative research on voter views seemed be circulating at all, in which the hard interpretive work could be done. On the economic front the PMC/academic class had no narrative for why economic sentiment was so poor despite good economic data. The interpretative work to be done is increasingly being removed from PMC/academic work as the benefactors of higher ed demand less emphasis on humanities and more on stem.
The antidote is a reformed philosophy of liberalism touted by someone like Richard Rorty. Someone who understands pragmatism, emphasis on freedom of association and expression. Someone who is alive now who I think embodies this is John Mearscheimer. His emphasis on the focus on developing theories is encouraging people to spend less time- and he certainly is a heterodox thinker against state and corporate interests.
"On the economic front the PMC/academic class had no narrative for why economic sentiment was so poor despite good economic data." - eggs are expensive and the price of housing is skyrocketing. Healthcare is more absurd than ever. The economic data isn't good. The notion of good economic data was liberal copium to pat themselves on the back that we had at least avoided descending into Mad Max anarchy. There are no roving gangs of leather clad street thugs, abducting us to fight in the Chrome Dome, but that doesn't mean I am having a good time!
Our owner class feels safe to abuse us, they need to feel the heat before we are treated properly. The Trump scam is to take the anger and unrest and blame it on immigrants. They will watch us turn on our neighbors and then rob us blind. Same as it has always been!
The antitode is to take this anger, dissapointment, and disillusionment, and ensure it is held to an unswerving, uncompromising, authentic, honest, and militant standard - which can (1) put itself on the front lines against the coming assaults on our worker class under Trump and (2) maximally oppose how liberalism will try to reconstitute itself in the aftermath of this current catastrophe.
The republicans and democrats are bourgeois parties, they use carrot and stick, one most important thing keeping our abuses alive is the ability for liberalism to absorb change-wind energy, and then strangle it, dismantle it, and put us all back to sleep. A change wind is stirring. They killed it with FDR, they killed it with Obama, and they will try to kill it again!
I do like Mearscheimer, he is an honest man. However, i think he is also a bit of a court jester for imperialism, and we should strive for more.
Tooze smartly channeling Tim Barker and Gabe Winant in calling it the anti-professional manager class election. What this is missing is that it’s not so much anti-elite as counter-elite. Trump represents a counter-revolutionary cadre of counter-elites (https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/the-counter-revolutionaries-in-charge)
The American oligarchy have been seeking to reverse the New Deal and Great Society programs since their inception. They tried to use the arguments of austerity anti-government ideology that both political parties have adopted since Jimmy Carter, Reagan, Bill Clinton and Obama. The PMC was hugely supportive of the austerity program. They couldn't succeed in trying to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, etc because people were unwilling to give up programs they saw they actually paid separate identifiable taxes towards. But in Trump the far right oligarchs have finally found a demagogue in Trump who has convinced people with his magnificent ability to take racism, sexism, hatred of immigrants and distrust of institutions into entertainment that allows people to sacrifice their interests for the benefit of the oligarchs.
The classic explanation for the failure of the Democrats is contain in Thomas Frank's masterly analysis in "Listen Liberal" ...in which he bitingly squewers the Clinton era giving up on the NewDeal politics of Roosevelt for an incoherent lauding of inovation and education. A process emulated in UK by Blair. The result we can see. With Globalism the working class, which are in fact still the majority of people, were effectively thrown under a bus. The disinterest in the real welfare of the working classes, by the professional liberals has just been returned in full. Obama came in and let off wall street to the the righteous anger of ordinary people. Yes We Can...became But We wont! The mass of people could see that wealth was all that mattered. Wall Street escaped richer than ever. A society that shows its every man for himself breeds a respect for a man like Trump. He will fail of course but its going to to be interesting...
How Thomas Frank was treated by the corporate Dems and their fellow travelers in the corporate media organs after he published "Listen, Liberal" is most instructive.
Of course, he was right and they were wrong, so now we are all stuck with the consequences.
Living in the UK and coming upon tbat book only after I read a recommendation from Seymour Hersh I am afraid I missed the backlash and all the media response to it. To me its the best bit of modern era first draft history I have read. Explaiuned so much about how Blair went about the almost same process here ( with rahter less success on the inovation front as he didnt have silicon valley and was followed by truely inept Tories.
Classic diversionary tactic from AT; make a big fuss about an amorphous group/class to avoid having to talk about the big question: how to build a progressive coalition that actually wins elections rather than just protests.
This is such a well written, readable and thought provoking piece. As a Canadian in Canada, I appreciate the prompts to a wider, historically informed context in my learning about your form of government and your electoral processes.
"The besetting error of the Trump camp, by contrast, is to imagine that the modern world can actually function without the expertise, discipline and labor provided by the PMC."
So, I see the error here. You have adopted the idea that the PMC is somehow different and even a new "class" and that they are consumate Dems, Labor or whatever. Reality: the PMC is merely the old petty bourgeois with delusions of grandeur. Trump has his own petty bourgeois adherents which feels they should run the modern world on behalf of the bourgeois. The idea that the modern world can't work without a petty bourgeois is something only the petty bourgeois believe. It is a delusion.
"Being neither manual workers, nor owners of the means of production, these groups do not occupy clear-cut positions within a Marxist class schema."
That's not entirely true. Although they are not considered fundamental to the core class antagonism between workers and the bourgeois, Marx and the Marxist movement refer to this middling class as the "petite bourgeois". The PB is considered a historically doomed class destined to be crushed between the two larger class forces and the economic centralization inherent to capitalism. There is also some analysis of the PB's class psychology which is said to be characterized by quiet panic, opportunistic ossilation between the two larger classes and particularly thin skin. This class might be described more loosely as the classic fair weather freind. They are with you when you're doing well and they turn on you when you're down. When the working class was strong after WW2, a small army of PB intellectuals would extoll their power and great destiny. Today, when the American worker has been reduced to conditions of life consistent with the term wage slavery, the PB scold and humiliate him. However, at this crisis stage, the tea party and then Trump have reoriented the approach. The Trump PB looks down on but carefully panders to the working class and calls it to take revenge. Some historical precedents to this, but you already know. I'm not rooting for Capitalism or the Dems, but if they learn anything it should be at least: stop insulting the working class.
I think the categorization of “class” used in this article was not very useful. Income, in particular, is not a very useful defying factor differentiating classes.
I don’t have the data to make a proper analysis of the 2024 Presidential election, but using this method might have yielded interesting results.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-class-in-american-society
The way I understand it, "class" describes one's relationship to the means of production.
I know an electrical contractor who, year and and year out, makes the kind of money that a Goldman Managing Director makes. I can also tell you that this contractor is treated very differently than the guy from Goldman would be treated.
The problem with using “ one's relationship to the means of production” is that everyone who has a job is producing. That is one of the many reasons why the Marxist view of class is not useful.
If you read the linked article, and particularly the first graphic, you will see a more useful definition.
Production should be understood in terms of producing a surplus. Society produces a surplus and then uses that surplus, investing it in developments and luxuries and so on. For example, this is how we know that Roman peasants were exploited. The empire just took their grain. The grain surplus then fed the city. Was this a mutually beneficial relationship? Sometimes, but the ball got rolling because, a few thousand years ago, a bunch of assholes started figuring out that you could steal people's food, and then use that stolen food to feed an army. Then, your big dumb army can go out and steal even more food. This onset of class rule and the state was hardly a charitable act. The abuses of it continue to this day.
It is about your proximity to capital. Capital investment and capital return is not the same thing as productive labor. Like a landlord doesn't have to work hard to have tenants pay their bills, in fact this the entire draw of being a landlord - convert your property into capital and accrue a passive income. Unsurprisingly, we find society divided into two dominating poles, those with a lot of capital, who are in the commanding heights of our economy, and those who can only give their labor, who must take orders. The PMC is a middling layer, like a gentry.
Profits go to the top and then they pay off the government. That's class rule. Denying it is akin to asserting a flat earth! Not good!
Did you read the linked article? It does not appear so.
I never denied class. That is why I have written multiple articles on the topic... which you apparently did not bother to read before you told me that I was wrong.
I think that my articles give a much more sophisticated view of class than yours.
The problem with your analysis is that it neglects individuals and how much youths made life decisions that affect their life outcomes. You also neglect the critical importance of age. Twenty-something’s are all “poor,” but the vast majority move up into the Top 20% later in life.
Very few people are born with "capital investment" and they still have a very high standard of living compared to virtually every person in world history.
The vast majority earn their money by work, savings and investment. Today, over 10% of the American population is a millionaire, and among retirees, it is far higher.
You also neglect who similar those with lots of capital are with PMC and college-educated people. It is all one class. Their similarities in attitudes are far bigger than their differences.
I never denied class. I am just arguing that the classic Marxist understanding of class is near useless (and yours sounds an awful lot like his). There is a reason why Marx's predication were completely wrong. It was that his assumption were incorrect. Do not make the same mistake.
Marx was not wrong. He predicted that commodity production based on exchange value would break down, and it did, we have been on a fiat economy for the last few decades - which is a political dollar and not a value dollar - which, seemingly, is the only way through which profits can still be extracted. Modern economies are more akin to a demented socialism-for-the-rich compared to what Marx understood as capitalism. This is the rise of national capitalists, also predicted in Marxist theory. The collapse of exchange value was predicted (or hoped) to lead to an immediate political struggle to seize power, and sure, this was in error. In America, the capitalist class outflanked this, with the New Deal. Ultimately, I believe the balance of forces played out in this manner owing to imperialism - which is when nations enter into a class relation. You are probably sitting on 500 little trinkets in your room that were all made in Mexico India Pakistan China, and you go to the grocery store in winter and buy avocados but you know the guy who plucked them sure as shit doesn't have his own avocados to buy for himself in the winter. America did not having nothing left to lose but their chains, but saw a world which we could rope into chains, and over the next few decades, this was successfully accomplished. I believe we are in a declining or decaying period and this is reflected in near-universal public sentiment that our nation is on the wrong track (something like 80% when polled).
Appealing to age does not sway me much. Money makes money, and this results in an extreme explosion of concentrated wealth, which is the capitalist class. They have excessive power that is used to secure personal interests that are choking us as a social whole, and yes, this extends not only at the tippy top but radiates outward as decreasingly less power as you go down the totem pole. Cars are an example of this, first, a toy for the rich, imposed on all of us, now, all of us have to live this way, with our personal tanks, it is an enormous drain on our production, horrible for the planet, horrible for developing authentic and vibrant communities, but we atomized, and trapped, stuck in traffic, hating traffic. Land ownership is another example of this, we need massive infrastructure revolutions - high speed rail, and massive constructions of housing, we are being left in the dust technologically and crushed under eyewatering prices, but a million petty fiefdoms are all out here to scream "Me! Me! Me!" and we all suffer for it. I don't see how we get out of this, there is a mass construction of housing we would need would to decrease prices, but the economy of housing treats it as an investment which can only ever appreciate in value, which is insane, but if you want a roof over your head, you have to play the game, or shell out big rent money to those who got in before you. And, obviously, this is resulting in an increasing share of people who don't have a stake of land, and are paying more money out of their pocket to get by as a punishment for daring to breath.
LOL
Anyone who starts with “ Marx was not wrong” cannot be taken seriously. You obviously do not know the basics of Marxist theory. You are only stringing together words that you think make you sound like it.
Even doctrinaire Marxists realized that he was wrong in his predictions over a century ago. Just read critiques of Marx during that time period.
I read the article. Everyone with a job may be producing, but how they produce can be very different, as can their expected outcomes from such production.
Thanks for taking the time...
Yes, and my class categories are based on "how they produce" and "their expected outcomes” plus other factors like marriage.
Your model has some compelling arguments, but has one glaring flaw. It assumes a far higher degree of permeability and mobility than actually exists. It assumes that one’s life choices, especially during schooling years, is practically the sole determinant of one’s eventual “class” placement.
Thousands of studies over time have borne out how much influence your family and community have over one’s financial outlook. If you’re born working class or lower class, chances are you’ll always be there, sheerly by dint of circumstances.
Upward mobility exists, surely. Some manage to claw their way up or simply get lucky. But if you’re lucky enough to be born into an affluent family, you’re far LESS likely to loose your status. You have layers upon layers of privilege and protection lower classes can’t even imagine.
Thanks for taking the time to read my article, and I appreciate the reply.
No, my model makes no assumptions on the "degree of permeability and mobility that actually exist.”
I go into more detail here about why social mobility is often an illusion.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/social-mobility-vs-upward-mobility
You and those “thousands of studies” are missing the powerful effect that genetics has on individuals' abilities and preferences. And those genetic traits are highly heritable. It is not privilege and protection that accounts for lower than "ideal levels of social mobility", it is genetics.
I argue that we need to acknowledge those inherent differences and try to leverage them into material progress and upward mobility.
And don’t forget that two of the three critical life choices are full-time work and marriage. Those are two choices where the vast majority of humanity have been able to make the right choice. Even medieval peasants, who were clearly not privileged.
You have an interesting take in this Note - almost like we read two different Notes.
I forced myself to read your link because you have written so many comments in this thread. Your diagram is useful as far as it goes, but putting the offspring of all three classes in one box probably doesn't map onto any reality I have encountered where either the opportunities afforded nor the constraints upon subsequent "life choices" are concerned.
Thanks for taking the time to read. I am not sure what you mean by:
"putting the offspring of all three classes in one box"
In the diagram one class corresponds to one class.
I don't understand the rest of your comment either. If you are referring to social mobility, I deal with that in this article.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/social-mobility-vs-upward-mobility
For all their supposed utopianism, the PMC also have appropriated an outsized share of any economic gains for themselves.
If the poor are poor, it's because they aren't like us, we who are smarter, more educated, more virtuous, with refined taste and a nuanced (boy howdy do liberals ever have a most unseemly boner for that word!) understanding of critical matters such as pronouns. If we live better, it is because we deserve it!
Funny how that works in a rigged system.