Your excellent essay makes me wonder correspondingly about the power and impact of people like Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter Thompson, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson. Carson's father was an insurance salesman.
You can probably think of many others, the un-elite, those people who slice the world open with a sharp knife, showing us the truth as they see it, as they know it. Our truth.
What do you make about this idea, the idea that the economic elite must still contend with the genuine article, the keen and ruthless eye?
I'd like to believe this, but as I suggested in the last paragraph, this may just be a story we tell ourselves. I honestly don't know. But writers like that help make life worth living anyway, for me at least.
I love the shirtsleeves, but I am not sure about a "return to the earth from whence you sprang" scenario lol. With an elite class, regardless of how you define elite, as ensconced as the one we have now, it's hard to imagine how they might implode or explode. They only structural leveling factor I envision would be a stock market collapse.
Unfortunately, that hurts the middle class much more than the wealthy. If we shave 50% off a really big number, we still have a big number, and then everything becomes cheaper for the wealthy. Then it all roars back. Meanwhile the middle class members lose their jobs and their homes.
What analyses such as these tend to forget is that material power, in the final measure, always resides with the mass of laboring people. Remember-- it's not only technicians in a plant manufacturing tootsie rolls, or chemical products, who pull the levers of production in a society. Police too, for example, hardly constitute an invisible elite. Not to mention those belonging to professional classes, laborers, to be sure, of a different stripe. None of these people control the means of production of our society. The question, after all, is one of solidarity. If the multi-dimensional class structure of American society can be marshaled toward revolutionary change in a radically democratic direction, we may finally abolish the invisible crust of an elite to whom our future, at the moment, looks inevitably bound. The task is one of mass organization, a major prerequisite of which is the creation of solidarity between different classes by virtue of recognizing their mutual condition of bondage.
There is no "final measure" and any genuine attempt to "abolish the invisible crust of an elite" will just lead to a new elite, and one that is hell bent on destruction. I'm not buying.
Thanks for the preview. I just emailed asking if it will be live streamed or if a replay will be available. I realize the agenda is set, but they should add UT professor James K. Galbreaith, as he has some opinions about elites, and too bad Peter Turchin is not included, he has an entire theory and book (like you do) on "elite over-production" as the cause of societal collapse.
Also, you allude to this, but including in the discussion the general atomization at play in society across multiple social, business, financial, and religious sectors, and how that effects elite management and power would be useful.
It's a good start to the discussion. I think "elite" has this almost romantic conception where it's just anybody who can make you stop doing something and does so. It's the same for "totalitarian" or "authoritarian"; these are just made up classes defined by the negation of the individual. Hardly anyone considers Bush a totalitarian, minus political news cycles, but anarchists certainly do. Obama was considered so by second amendmentists, or 2a-ers or whatever. People wax about definitions of fascism and those previous terms but they get swept up into political projects and applied towards political enemies. For what it's worth, I don't think the term has much substance. There are probably better ways to classify things.
Yes, writing like this - with precision, insight and imagination - matters greatly. And it will help us greatly as we pass through the incredible turmoil you highlight.
Your excellent essay makes me wonder correspondingly about the power and impact of people like Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter Thompson, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson. Carson's father was an insurance salesman.
You can probably think of many others, the un-elite, those people who slice the world open with a sharp knife, showing us the truth as they see it, as they know it. Our truth.
What do you make about this idea, the idea that the economic elite must still contend with the genuine article, the keen and ruthless eye?
I'd like to believe this, but as I suggested in the last paragraph, this may just be a story we tell ourselves. I honestly don't know. But writers like that help make life worth living anyway, for me at least.
It's more than a story.
The non-elite truth tellers certainly impact the managerial classes to a significant degree.
In fact, I suspect that the children of the economic elite fade into irrelevant obscurity quickly.
Their family foundations are like wandering ghosts.
As the saying goes, "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."
I love the shirtsleeves, but I am not sure about a "return to the earth from whence you sprang" scenario lol. With an elite class, regardless of how you define elite, as ensconced as the one we have now, it's hard to imagine how they might implode or explode. They only structural leveling factor I envision would be a stock market collapse.
Unfortunately, that hurts the middle class much more than the wealthy. If we shave 50% off a really big number, we still have a big number, and then everything becomes cheaper for the wealthy. Then it all roars back. Meanwhile the middle class members lose their jobs and their homes.
What analyses such as these tend to forget is that material power, in the final measure, always resides with the mass of laboring people. Remember-- it's not only technicians in a plant manufacturing tootsie rolls, or chemical products, who pull the levers of production in a society. Police too, for example, hardly constitute an invisible elite. Not to mention those belonging to professional classes, laborers, to be sure, of a different stripe. None of these people control the means of production of our society. The question, after all, is one of solidarity. If the multi-dimensional class structure of American society can be marshaled toward revolutionary change in a radically democratic direction, we may finally abolish the invisible crust of an elite to whom our future, at the moment, looks inevitably bound. The task is one of mass organization, a major prerequisite of which is the creation of solidarity between different classes by virtue of recognizing their mutual condition of bondage.
There is no "final measure" and any genuine attempt to "abolish the invisible crust of an elite" will just lead to a new elite, and one that is hell bent on destruction. I'm not buying.
Thanks for the preview. I just emailed asking if it will be live streamed or if a replay will be available. I realize the agenda is set, but they should add UT professor James K. Galbreaith, as he has some opinions about elites, and too bad Peter Turchin is not included, he has an entire theory and book (like you do) on "elite over-production" as the cause of societal collapse.
Also, you allude to this, but including in the discussion the general atomization at play in society across multiple social, business, financial, and religious sectors, and how that effects elite management and power would be useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
It's a good start to the discussion. I think "elite" has this almost romantic conception where it's just anybody who can make you stop doing something and does so. It's the same for "totalitarian" or "authoritarian"; these are just made up classes defined by the negation of the individual. Hardly anyone considers Bush a totalitarian, minus political news cycles, but anarchists certainly do. Obama was considered so by second amendmentists, or 2a-ers or whatever. People wax about definitions of fascism and those previous terms but they get swept up into political projects and applied towards political enemies. For what it's worth, I don't think the term has much substance. There are probably better ways to classify things.
I found this exceedingly dreary and wishy-washy. 🤷♂️
Yes, writing like this - with precision, insight and imagination - matters greatly. And it will help us greatly as we pass through the incredible turmoil you highlight.
It was just the start of a conversation.