Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the new class are forging their own chains. The “New Class” is how Alvin Gouldner described the expert managerial class. The people that run the bureaucracies, corporations and make up the experts. Without them, marshaling large organizations couldn’t be done. They’re enablers. The new class facilitates things like, company picnics, hostile takeovers, and genocides. The apex of the new class meets on a Venn diagram, at the intersection of education, jargon and intolerance. The leaders of the new class are, as Thomas Sowell calls them, the Intellectuals, (producers of ideas). There are also the think tanks guiding them. Their hammer and anvils are the Black Rock, State Street and Vanguards of the world. Upon them the new class are forging unbreakable chains that’ll pinch forever.
While I don’t subscribe to class ideology I do believe that Gouldner has some important things to say. I’m no expert on the man or his ideas, but those I have read and understand are profound. The new class uses jargon. It may be peculiar to their specialty but jargon is an attribute of the new class. The new class are highly educated. Being the recipients of university educations… they consider themselves the intellectual superior of the common run of man. Moreover, Gouldner pointed out that it’s the intolerant that set the parameters… not the tolerant. His example was, if you have a dinner party and you invite a single vegan over. You’ll have to set up a vegan option. But if you invite several… everyone has to eat vegan. Because the tolerant will tolerate tofu but the intolerant vegans wont tolerate fish.
The new class is led by the intellectuals. People who produce nothing but ideas, and suffer no consequences for the implementation of those ideas. Intellectuals are people with no skin in the outcome of the game, but a big stake on it being played. In intellectual circles, novelty is favored above the mundane. Everyone knows that capitalism, works, it won the cold war for heavens sake, making subscribing to it… mundane. Those who can make communism work however, are clever, exciting and novel. Moreover, Marxism, fascism and socialism all require bureaucracies, filled with well paid new class public servants. Therefore, intellectuals who favor global communism, in whatever form, are the favored of the intellectuals. The summit of the new class. Based on pure self interest.
Meanwhile, the new class, that considers itself smarter than the rest of us, tends to act as a herd. “Common knowledge” among the new class is often contrary to common sense. Moreover, that common knowledge is inculcated into the new class via their journals, in their own jargon. Making it all the more persuasive. The arguments for the absurd are framed in the most intellectual terms. Plus ostracism is used against any that question the narrative. Since careers are built on cooperation, and destroyed by ostracism, that tool is effective at controlling discourse. Making the new class intolerant. Why accept an idea from the grazing masses, that goes against something told to them in their own jargon, by intellectuals? So, as a herd, the new class moves against common sense.
Today the new class (better) think global unlimited aristocracy would usher in a utopian age. A world administrative state, run by expert bureaucrats, led by expert intellectuals and enforced with unlimited omniscient power. They believe this will bring an era of star trek like glory. A goal worthy of any atrocity. Despite having read or watched 1984… and the torture of Winston, a member of the new class. The new class charges ahead building that future for themselves. Because they’re led blindly. Ideology now trumps science making an expert more of a religious figure. With all the privilege of such a figure. The new class may be waking up to the sound of chains being forged… or not. It’s up to us to shake them awake. Those chains they’re forging, are for themselves, to bind them to a bed of nails.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
