13 Comments

As always, this is a wonderful article with a thoughtful analysis that makes sense. I love this sentence: "As a rule of thumb, whenever anyone in politics invokes a 'danger' to society, assume that the danger is to their own political standing." *That* should always be a person's first reaction.

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Fabulously well-written.

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Great analysis. Twitter is a distant issue for me. But I do hope for a break in the stranglehold on communication held by the Elite. What lies and selective news.

Thank You

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I love your writing but I wish there were more evidence and details.

I don’t think your categorizations work. You’re conflating a whole series of policy arguments with corporate management. And PMC vs entrepreneurial billionaire isn’t a bounded category either.

For example: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/jack-dorsey-bu-center-for-antiracist-research-gift/

Regardless I’m a subscriber because it’s wonderfully written.

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Thank you so much, Matt.

You may be right. I myself am not totally intellectually satisfied by "PMC" as an objective category. I use it because I do believe it identifies a class structure that's separate from and at this moment in history more important than the traditional Marxist categories of "owners" and "workers." And as such we're worse off ignoring it than we are discussing it, even if it's still somewhat half-baked. But I agree that it needs a lot more shaping and honing and testing, and part of that is what I try to do in this space.

A lot of ideas I explore in this substack are not in final draft form — I use this format to write and think more freely than I would in other places. So I concede that much of what appears here is well open to critique and deserving of it.

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Yeah it’s tough because it’s clear there is a shared culture among this educated upper class world of bureaucratic elites. I think one way out is to focus on details. I love your work on drug treatment, that really gets at it.

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Matt I love your work - was funny seeing you in comments. I thought of you when Leighton touched on it, but didn't drill into the reality that...a (key) component of "this" stems from antitrust failures for decades that allowed monopolies to dominate and elites to accumulate incredible wealth (especially relative to the proletariat) which has inevitably led to a lot of rich kids who didn't "earn" their economic capital but do have a great desire to obtain/flex cultural capital. Leighton you also mentioned how economic success proved some level of wisdom in the past, and I agree in a sense, as I keep coming back to this: the West's problem is too much intelligence and not enough wisdom. Capitalism with strong antitrust is the best system...it works in conjunction with human nature, not against it. I view the current "PMC" as the consequences of our actions.

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I read this interesting book recently called "Revolutionary Apocalypse: Ideological Roots of Terrorism" by Luciano Pellicani that discussed some of the same issues as you in re the tensions between the money class and the ideas class (more or less):

"In Alfred von Martin’s sociological analysis of renaissance civilization we learn that, between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the economic and cultural changes produced in European society by the expansion of capitalism led to the emergence of two new classes: men of letters and merchants. Both felt they were superior to the “common folk” whom they despised and had no desire to frequent; both were very much opposed to the classes who held the power at the time: the aristocracy and high clergy. Although the two new classes shared the same aversions, they were hardly allies, because they had completely different values and capital. For intellectuals, knowledge and virtus—spiritual education—were the supreme value; for the merchants, wealth, because they considered that personally accumulated riches were the only criterion for judging people and things. This profound difference explains why the two “chosen” classes tended to despise each other and, worse still, why the intelligentsia “who believed they were endowed with a spiritual mission because they represented the elite of their class, insisted on the other class appointing it to act as its spiritual representative."

"Von Martin’s analysis is particularly useful in terms of understanding why, especially in the last two centuries, intellectuals have tended to support anti-capitalist movements. In their view, a capitalist society is structurally incapable of achieving the supreme values they claim to incarnate. In effect, in capitalist societies, material values prevail “over all other values, with the consequence that the economy leaves its mark on every field of society and culture.” The sensation of profound alienation and impotence experienced by intellectuals derives therefore from the incompatibility between the role of spiritual leadership they aspire to fulfill and the specific nature of the social order that revolves around values and forces that are completely foreign to them. In this material world, pervaded by material values, intellectuals feel like aliens, who are unable to leave a mark on society. Their natural vocation is to guide consciences, indicate goals, transform the public ethos. The fact that modern society is dominated by economic issues, is impervious to their messages, and refuses to recognize their role of spiritual leadership offends them deeply."

This tension seems to be one of the major fault lines in Western capitalist societies. But if history is any guide, the elite will eventually come to some power-sharing agreement, things will stabilize for a generation or two, and then we'll get to do it all over again.

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Not sure you've properly accounted for "woke capital" in this equation. Via their control over elite universities, the PMC has seemingly consolidated control over the vast majority of Wall Street, and hence, Wall Street-funded corporations.

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Yeah I was going to but it seemed like it required a whole piece to itself. I think corporations and the state are the two fields of contestation between the two factions of the elite. The PMC are at the moment ascendant in both.

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What an interesting and original analysis!

The hysteria surrounding a Twitter takeover in which censorship and cancellation of dissident views will no longer be ascendent is the clearest indication that the elite seek to expand a lot more than their economic and social capital. The elite seeks to control minds by being the gatekeeper of what information is allowed to be disseminated and who is allowed to speak. The fear and hysteria over Musk's commitment to open dialogue is a clear indicator that the elite is seeking the same miserable oligarchy that Putin has built, and the outcome will be the same or worse.

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LW is so on the money here. It seems to me that the leftish PMC is entirely consumed by a solipsistic tussle for class hegemony because it senses the passing of the Enlightenment. Just as people hoard provisions for the coming apocalypse, they hoard cultural capital for the coming of a new era that broadly rejects technocracy. Twitter, as their elite members club and state broadcaster, matters a great deal more to them than the rest of us. It’s where they accrue their survivalist provisions and Musk might make it a bit harder to do that.

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Thanks for another thought provoking article. (Please consider adding a tip jar)

Of all the Elites with economic capital, what would your rough guess be of the % that align with the Musk/ Thiel camp (i.e those who do NOT hold the Cultural Capital of the PMC in high esteem)

My guess would be:

Elite Capital Individuals: 1%

Elite Capital in $$ Slightly higher?

Am I way off?

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