Joel Kotkin, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism. On p. 8, he writes,
The modern clerisy often claim science as the basis of their doctrines and tout academic credentials as the key to status and authority. They seek to replace the bourgeois values of self-determination, family, community, and nation with “progressive” ideas about globalism, environmental sustainability, redefined gender roles, and the authority of experts. These values are inculcated through the clerisy’s dominance over the institutions of higher learning and media, aided by the oligarchy’s control of information technology and the channels of culture.
Yeah according to Hayek in Counter-revolution in Science that has been the socialist modus operandi from the beginning under Saint-Simon.
I always thought that Ted Lowi developed that analysis most fulsomely in the USA context in his 1969 polemic “The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States “. Wikipedia provides a good blurb from the dust jacket:
“The main argument which Lowi develops through both editions is that the liberal state grew to its immense size and presence without self-examination and without recognizing that its pattern of growth had problematic consequences. Its engine of growth was delegation. The government expanded by responding to the demands of all major organized interests, by assuming responsibility for programs sought by those interests, and by assigning that responsibility to administrative agencies. Through the process of accommodation, the agencies became captives of the interest groups, a tendency Lowi describes as clientelism. This in turn led to the formulation of new policies which tightened the grip of interest groups on the machinery of government.”
As a Kotkin fanboy, I pre-ordered this and read it quickly when it popped up on the kindle.
Not disappointed even if it was mostly preaching to the choir. Kotkin, a Democrat, although repeating some of the usual slurs, also includes useful criticism of the right as well as those of his party with whom he disagrees.
Kotkin is no radical though. His solution to neo-feudalism is “awakening the political will of The Third Estate.” OK. Sure. And maybe we should just put some ice on it while we are at it. At least Kotkin isn’t as obnoxious as George Will.
The other observation I would offer is a general one about political books in general. Since the 60’s, shortly after Anthony Downs had sentenced political science to death with his left-right axis, when I got hooked on the genre with Robert Dahl’s Who Governs, it seems as if the notes sections of books have grown to consume, from about 10% of a book to now an average of more than 50%. Only 44% Kotkin’s book is writing before the acknowledgements and notes begin. This may be a publisher’s ploy to try to plump up books because bigger books sell or maybe authors are afraid of being accused of plagiarism. At any rate, I imagine I am not the only one who has felt faint irritation when one encounters the end of a book and is not even halfway through it.
I believe the context for that quote is that what Kotkin calls “the clerisy” is providing a justification for a society in which the vast majority of income producing assets are owned by a small share of the population, and the vast majority do not own anything of much value.
My impression was that he didn’t demonstrate a fine grained understanding of wealth inequality or market concentration. I cannot remember any discussion of network effects, or any discussion of the impact of IT on economies and diseconomies of scale, nor their impact on globalization and offshoring.
In an absolute monarchy, the society is vulnerable to the idiocy, insanity or other failings of the king. A society absolutely dependent for its functioning on a credentialed managerial class is vulnerable to that class becoming captivated by a dysfunctional ideological craze. This kind of dysfunction of what is really our society’s ruling class is what we are experiencing now. To me, it seems far more dangerous than the spectre of “populism” against which we are often warned, but which produces almost nothing but ephemeral and ineffective symbolic gestures (such as the election of the current president).
I noticed the neo-feudalism in this assessment of “our betters” back in 2016
“I found crucial to what is distinct between libertarians and valley folk that Silicon Valley’s ideology is pro-market but it is not pro-liberty. Liberty is not a value. They are highly, highly, collectivist. They believe that every single person has a positive obligation to society and the government can help people or coerce people or incentive into making a unique contribution.”
–Greg Ferenstein interview, May 2016, AEIdeas
https://www.aei.org/economics/what-does-silicon-valley-seem-to-love-democrats-and-dimiss-the-gop-a-qa-with-journalist-greg-ferenstein/
Of course, socialism is just feudalism by party committee, in the beginning.
Conservatives and liberals fighting over and unstable, declining government sector.