Potential future development: the AI revolution arguably will reduce the numbers and clout of the professional class bourgeoisie as their jobs become obsolete.
Thomas Piketty makes the same point, memorably so, when distinguishing between the “Brahmin Left" and the "Merchant Right" in Capital and Ideology (2020)
Perhaps Yascha could have been more precise, but I still accept his basic contention that a huge segment of the elite has realigned its political priorities (note to self: if there isn’t already a law asserting that no level of nuance can be sufficient to avoid accusation of insufficient nuance, then invent one).
To my mind, the most thorough and contemporary explanation of the sides in the Battling Bourgeoisie is “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite” by Musa al-Gharbi. He introduces the term “Symbolic Capitalists”, explaining that “Professional Managerial Class” and “Creative Class” are only partially explicative. Whether or not al-Gharbi’s new category name is going to gain traction is an open question for me, but the detailed explanation of who those people are is solid and well-reasoned.
To grossly simplify, he describes the Symbolic Capitalists as being people who are oriented around making a living through the manipulation of ideas and abstractions. This encompasses much of the corporate and government bureaucracies, lawyers, teachers, authors, artists, the media, entertainment, and much of the medical profession. In opposition to them, essentially the Merchant Right, are people who make things for a living, like factory owners and factory workers, small business people, farmers, and people involved with mining.
While it is the case that one of those two groups has more education than the other, higher education turns out not to be as strong a correlation as the form of work that they do. al-Gharbi points out that people who have university degrees in fields such as mining, and engineering fields related to manufacturing, are much more likely to be on the political right.
Large corporations and other mega organizations hire large numbers of what you refer to as Symbolic Capitalists and the Merchant Right. However, my experience is that the two groups, unfortunately, tend to be siloed with the Symbolic Capitalists in corporate locations and the Merchant Right providing goods and services in decentralized locations. Many Symbolic Capitalists are unfamiliar with the products and services that their organizations deliver while many of the Merchant Right do not understand the outside forces that influence their products and services.
That is a helpful distinction. The term "bourgeoisie" has always been a confusing one to me.
But you say "both of the two bourgeoisies tend to ignore working-class majorities in the West."
To me, the Bildungsbürgertum, which includes lawyers, doctors, academics, clerics, and civil servants, actually does care about the well-being of working-class majorities, and that's why they tend to vote for Democrats who favor a progressive income tax to help them out. This is especially true of academics who think a lot about how to empower people at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
And it seems to me that the Besitzbürgertum, which includes business owners and independent bankers (large and small), works hard to fool the working class into voting against their own interests by lowering taxes, ending regulations (which are designed to protect workers), and ending government aid for people who struggle.
Mr Mounk - I have a question for you . Would you consider changing your paid substack subscription pricing structure to permit "discounts" for those of us on low income and low wealth? In effect this is, or could be, "just" an application Econ 101 price discrimination with potentially desirable equity and mutual benefit impacts - but it might take some collective action organizing and governance changes to implement.
Let me explain: I used to have sufficient income be a paying subscriber for your substack and others, eg Timothy Snyder, Paul Krugman , but for affordability reasons I've had to stop many of my favourite annual subscriptions . Taken individually each of these substacks is terrific - but in aggregate they are eating up far too much of my very limited budget .
I'm 79 years old , on a very low pension (despite being an academic economist NZ for 40+ years!) - but have had to do a cull of all the separate subscriptions services I had been buying, including by the way Entertainment subs like Netflix!! Entertainment I can do without, but solid , credible , timely analyses these days I don't want to do without.
Affordability crises hit many of us hard these days - it's not only about housing and food, but access to high quality information and analysis of social and political issues of the kind u so eloquently write about. Would you think about changing "paid". to "free" as Henry Farrell does , I do appreciate that you make a large proportion of your commentary and analysis free. I am sure there are many others like me, whether seniors or not, ex- academics or not, who will be struggling in terms of affordability yet also wanting/needing credible analyses and critical , rapid , commentary sources. Educational discounts offerred by Economist and the Atlantic for example help, but only for those with the income/wealth/human capital to belong to an accredited college: That type of system works for me as a senior on low income (yet highly educated) becasue I'm enrolled as a student at UBC - where I can actually take courses for "free" as a senior BC citizen . This is good for me, but there is a potential perverse reinforcement of income and human capital inequality here , -- one has to actually be educated and wealthy enough to be enrolled in an institution of higher education.
One other way to tackle the affordability [problem would be to suggest to substack a "bundling" option - eg make an annual subscritopion of say X=$100 a year for a bundle of Y=5 substacks of the users choice; X and Y would be chosen as part of an available substack subscription plan. I dont think you can do this on your own, but you may be able to organize with high traffic substack users like yourself , Krugman, Snyder etc. When there isn't effective competition for substack the platform holds all the market power, suppliers like yourself have to (could) organize collectively with a countervailing power. Market power of key components in network industries isn't something new - but it takes collective action to break it down when competition cant.
Potential future development: the AI revolution arguably will reduce the numbers and clout of the professional class bourgeoisie as their jobs become obsolete.
AI is going to go full Pol Pot on the credentialtive, creative class and when the paychecks stop, what then.
Thomas Piketty makes the same point, memorably so, when distinguishing between the “Brahmin Left" and the "Merchant Right" in Capital and Ideology (2020)
Perhaps Yascha could have been more precise, but I still accept his basic contention that a huge segment of the elite has realigned its political priorities (note to self: if there isn’t already a law asserting that no level of nuance can be sufficient to avoid accusation of insufficient nuance, then invent one).
To my mind, the most thorough and contemporary explanation of the sides in the Battling Bourgeoisie is “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite” by Musa al-Gharbi. He introduces the term “Symbolic Capitalists”, explaining that “Professional Managerial Class” and “Creative Class” are only partially explicative. Whether or not al-Gharbi’s new category name is going to gain traction is an open question for me, but the detailed explanation of who those people are is solid and well-reasoned.
To grossly simplify, he describes the Symbolic Capitalists as being people who are oriented around making a living through the manipulation of ideas and abstractions. This encompasses much of the corporate and government bureaucracies, lawyers, teachers, authors, artists, the media, entertainment, and much of the medical profession. In opposition to them, essentially the Merchant Right, are people who make things for a living, like factory owners and factory workers, small business people, farmers, and people involved with mining.
While it is the case that one of those two groups has more education than the other, higher education turns out not to be as strong a correlation as the form of work that they do. al-Gharbi points out that people who have university degrees in fields such as mining, and engineering fields related to manufacturing, are much more likely to be on the political right.
Large corporations and other mega organizations hire large numbers of what you refer to as Symbolic Capitalists and the Merchant Right. However, my experience is that the two groups, unfortunately, tend to be siloed with the Symbolic Capitalists in corporate locations and the Merchant Right providing goods and services in decentralized locations. Many Symbolic Capitalists are unfamiliar with the products and services that their organizations deliver while many of the Merchant Right do not understand the outside forces that influence their products and services.
That is a helpful distinction. The term "bourgeoisie" has always been a confusing one to me.
But you say "both of the two bourgeoisies tend to ignore working-class majorities in the West."
To me, the Bildungsbürgertum, which includes lawyers, doctors, academics, clerics, and civil servants, actually does care about the well-being of working-class majorities, and that's why they tend to vote for Democrats who favor a progressive income tax to help them out. This is especially true of academics who think a lot about how to empower people at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
And it seems to me that the Besitzbürgertum, which includes business owners and independent bankers (large and small), works hard to fool the working class into voting against their own interests by lowering taxes, ending regulations (which are designed to protect workers), and ending government aid for people who struggle.
Mr Mounk - I have a question for you . Would you consider changing your paid substack subscription pricing structure to permit "discounts" for those of us on low income and low wealth? In effect this is, or could be, "just" an application Econ 101 price discrimination with potentially desirable equity and mutual benefit impacts - but it might take some collective action organizing and governance changes to implement.
Let me explain: I used to have sufficient income be a paying subscriber for your substack and others, eg Timothy Snyder, Paul Krugman , but for affordability reasons I've had to stop many of my favourite annual subscriptions . Taken individually each of these substacks is terrific - but in aggregate they are eating up far too much of my very limited budget .
I'm 79 years old , on a very low pension (despite being an academic economist NZ for 40+ years!) - but have had to do a cull of all the separate subscriptions services I had been buying, including by the way Entertainment subs like Netflix!! Entertainment I can do without, but solid , credible , timely analyses these days I don't want to do without.
Affordability crises hit many of us hard these days - it's not only about housing and food, but access to high quality information and analysis of social and political issues of the kind u so eloquently write about. Would you think about changing "paid". to "free" as Henry Farrell does , I do appreciate that you make a large proportion of your commentary and analysis free. I am sure there are many others like me, whether seniors or not, ex- academics or not, who will be struggling in terms of affordability yet also wanting/needing credible analyses and critical , rapid , commentary sources. Educational discounts offerred by Economist and the Atlantic for example help, but only for those with the income/wealth/human capital to belong to an accredited college: That type of system works for me as a senior on low income (yet highly educated) becasue I'm enrolled as a student at UBC - where I can actually take courses for "free" as a senior BC citizen . This is good for me, but there is a potential perverse reinforcement of income and human capital inequality here , -- one has to actually be educated and wealthy enough to be enrolled in an institution of higher education.
One other way to tackle the affordability [problem would be to suggest to substack a "bundling" option - eg make an annual subscritopion of say X=$100 a year for a bundle of Y=5 substacks of the users choice; X and Y would be chosen as part of an available substack subscription plan. I dont think you can do this on your own, but you may be able to organize with high traffic substack users like yourself , Krugman, Snyder etc. When there isn't effective competition for substack the platform holds all the market power, suppliers like yourself have to (could) organize collectively with a countervailing power. Market power of key components in network industries isn't something new - but it takes collective action to break it down when competition cant.
Over to you - John
Finally, justice for Sheepshead Bay