I enjoyed the piece immensely, especially that quote of the old colonial solider (if I ever heard anything could explain the Taliban's victory it was that).
Good breakdown of the evolution of this group through the different economic systems.
As to the current as is PMC, my feelings on that are I'm beyond exhausted of the group with three car garages telling me that I'm the asshole while they lift the ladder up for themselves.
All the while hiding behind performative platitudes and sneering at those who don't behave per high court protocols.
If your thesis is correct, depressingly I shouldn't be hopeful of them evolving or changing for the better.
I have a theory about "woke"/idpol and the PMC and why it is such a thing. Yes, some managers are necessary in the world we inhabit, but by and large, they are a bloated, self-serving, and self-sustaining class. You need workers. In a capitalist system, you need owners. But you do not *need* managers, at least not in the numbers we have them or at least not "professional" and "educated to be" managers. There was a time when you worked your way up the employment rung *to* the managerial class. Think of the person working the factory line that eventually runs the whole factories simply by dint of "people" skills and knowing the factory and process. But that doesn't happen anymore. You bring in an outside person who has theories and book learning but little practical knowledge. The PMC class could be whittled down to nothing and everything would still run smoothly, perhaps more smoothly. And I have a feeling the PMC class, at its heart, *knows* this.
Idpol or "wokeness" falls along the same lines. It is a self-serving and self-sustaining ideology (some might say religion) of no practical use whatsoever. In fact, it often is used to obscure the *real* problems. So that the two would attract each other is no great surprise.
But the Woke Agitators/PMC/Revolutionary Class provide a service to the Owning Class. Think of the PMC like a permanent mutually beneficial enforcement Stasi for the owning class. The Owning Class needs the PMC Stasi to keep them in power which makes the PMC hugely valuable, indispensable even - and as a result they are often highly rewarded.
The "you" is a healthy society in general. A lot of purposeless, self-serving people make for a poorly functioning society with a lot of tension and craziness (voila).
However, if you're right, and I'm not going to say you aren't, the "owner" class is going to be sorry about depending on these people. They owe allegiance to no one but themselves. They treat those they "manage" as resources rather than people. They'll do the same to the "owner" class. And the creation will eat the creator.
I think you are misunderstanding the term professional-managerial. I work in psychiatry. I do not own the hospital where I work, however without my professional skills the programs there would not run. It is also extremely easy for me to purchase the means of production which is simply a computer and internet connection if I wanted to run my own telehealth practice. Regarding management, I am team lead and technically manage the team (nurse, social worker, therapist). Now I am extremely hands off and allow each member to perform their role. However, at the end of the day if I write an order it gets done.
I have also had multiple patients in IT and they tell me it the same set up, they don’t own the amazon servers, but professionally code and “manage” teams.
Another name for PMC’s is symbolic analysts which seems clearer.
One of the best meta analyses I’ve read in a while. Very illuminating in that it brings clarity and historical context to a phenomenon that I’m sure most of your readers have intuited to some extent by now. Well done.
I'm of the opinion that on most issues of substance the Dems and the Republicans behave almost as a uniparty, with Republicans playing the role of the controlled opposition. But I think you're right when you claim that the Dems are more aligned with PMC interests, which, in turn, makes me think Republicans align more with the capitalist class.
Still, I agree with the general thrust of the piece. In their opposition to the workers and the middle class, the two ruling classes seems to molding into some new, unholy behemoth. God help us.
Please do not ever defend quoting or referencing anyone. Just do it and let readers react as they will.
I hope I shall not be the first person to ever note that Marx was a fucked-up loser who lived off the baffling forbearance of his wealthy friends towards his ravings and his ill-temper and his greed. It's a sad lesson about the intellectual capacity of the literate class that he became the means of destroying so many lives in so many ways.
That New Englander was right, and I'll say what he didn't articulate in a lengthy dissertational retort to a silly question: Philosophers make a living by telling everyone else what they ought to do, and normal people are motivated by practical responses to the actual problems in front of them.
I spent all my full-time working life as a typical office indentured servant, and I've no love anywhere for the oppressive class, but I got to go home after my specified daily term of labor and the fate of the business (or mostly the persistence of the nonprofit entity) wasn't my headache. Owners have a right to profit because they take on so much risk; they shouldn't be allowed to abuse the workforce but they ain't all and entirely Snidely Whiplashes.
Civilization's eternal conundrum is that the hamlet is too small to survive in isolation and once you start growing communities, every ill enters with each good. An eternal battle between stasis and change. It's not so complicated as those who make a living from thinking all the time will try to convince you.
That is telling that citing Murray will reliably provoke a hostile reaction, while citing Marx, from whom a direct through line can be drawn to unimaginable horrors and atrocities, gets quite the opposite reaction. And this essay does a fantastic job explaining why this is the case among the PMC crowd.
It's not enough for me to hurl my darling little laptop at the wall, or anything, but I'd have thought it more effective if presented with shall we say a perfect blandness of expression.
Great article. I am reminded of my distant relative and similar thoughts he had on the subject:
“It is the bureaucratic socializers—if I may devise that label for the champions of a lawyer-manager-politician-intellectual revolution—who constitute a real and subtle threat to America’s democracy.”
One of the amazing things hinted at in this excellent piece is how if you know any upscale urban PMC members (which is basically my tribe), they all fervently believe that they are loyal devoted defenders of the downtrodden and that they've dedicated a large chunk of their lives to fighting oppression.
My friends are all mostly middle-aged, settled deep into their careers and relatively well-off (and of course I love them all), they vote in every election for Team Blue or even DSA, they want open borders and Trans rights and obey every BLM demand, and of course they passionately loathe anyone even remotely right-coded (Deplorables of course are beyond the pale).
But since I am an annoying contrary skeptic, I occasionally remind them that illegal immigration may have negative effects on working-class wages, that gender theory is blatant nonsense, and that not every demand for "Diversity" or "Representation" may be valid or in good faith, and that perhaps (for my friends in arts/culture) segregation of the imagination may have some negative consequences. To which of course they respond to by putting their hands over their ears and yelling RACIST!! until I shut up.
I guess my point is that not only have the PMC hoovered up all the loot, they've also managed to craft and exalt a morality that basks them in holy righteous light and makes any dissenter feel vaguely shameful, as if questioning any item on the Social Justice agenda is like stealing change from a blind beggar.
Hey, almost anyone can do well and almost anyone can do good, but doing well while doing good (or at least looking like it) may just be the real American Dream.
You pretty much nailed it...(I can't believe I spent the first half of my life being harassed for not believing in God or country and now I get to spend the second half of my life being harassed for not believing in "Social Justice"... (!) Ahh humanity)
I've felt this way throughout this madness as well. I escaped religious fundamentalism only to find that the left has it's own type of fundamentalism. I do believe in country, though - I'm a vet. Even if our ideals are still only ideals, they are good ones and worth fighting for.
Just your standard overclass with delusions of benevolence, like how a rich Calvinist believes God gave him his wealth because of his holy heavenbound heart. Is all very much in line with our American Protestant tradition.
Another really excellent piece! More good reading recommendations, also. I look forward to your analysis, which is getting better and better. But I do agree with another poster that this was missing the lynchpin issue of chattel slavery, which malformed America's economy, culture and history, in deep structural ways that we are now paying the price for.
Clearly slavery was a fundamental variable in the shaping of our country, but it wasn't immediately relevant to the point I was making and I wouldn't want to invoke something that big with just a passing mention just for the sake of mentioning it. I'm reading David Hackett Fischer's new tome on American slavery right now — if I ever finish it (it's long), then I'll probably be inspired to write a post on the subject here.
Although you and N.S. Lyons are two of my favorite (and most original and penetrating) writers on Substack, I have a gut feeling that the inevitable hegemony of the PMC/Virtuals is not so pre-ordained. I think of “Star Trek TNG”, the Borg, and “Resistance is futile!” The Borg were dangerous, but did not win. I tend to agree with the journalist Eli Lake, who said recently on the podcast “Ask a Jew”: “I think the super woke progressives are living in a castle made of sand, which is to say they do not realize how many people are tuning them out, and how much they have set back their own causes through the narcissism of their small differences……and their time is coming.”
This piece just nailed the overlapping part of the Venn diagram between Marxists and Libertarians.
The Kleracy/PMC has found a perpetual motion machine in accelerating the expansion of government regulation, which requires all productive enterprises to endlessly create new roles for PMC members to write all manner of TPS reports to submit to the PMC members of the government to demonstrate compliance. While one hand washes the other in perpetuity, this bureaucracy enriches itself without adding much in additional value, and this essentially becomes a tax that simultaneously drains funds from workers and consumers (through both higher prices and lower wages).
Another reco from me for Joel Kotkin’s “The Coming of Neo-Feudalism”. Your definition of the PMC overlaps significantly with his use of the term “Kleracy”.
I'd say yes, depending on your interest in plumbing the PMC. You might be able to find the text somewhere online of course. The full audiobook is on YouTube I believe. It's a long and detailed book though.
I enjoyed the piece immensely, especially that quote of the old colonial solider (if I ever heard anything could explain the Taliban's victory it was that).
Good breakdown of the evolution of this group through the different economic systems.
As to the current as is PMC, my feelings on that are I'm beyond exhausted of the group with three car garages telling me that I'm the asshole while they lift the ladder up for themselves.
All the while hiding behind performative platitudes and sneering at those who don't behave per high court protocols.
If your thesis is correct, depressingly I shouldn't be hopeful of them evolving or changing for the better.
You always write the most thoughtful articles.
I have a theory about "woke"/idpol and the PMC and why it is such a thing. Yes, some managers are necessary in the world we inhabit, but by and large, they are a bloated, self-serving, and self-sustaining class. You need workers. In a capitalist system, you need owners. But you do not *need* managers, at least not in the numbers we have them or at least not "professional" and "educated to be" managers. There was a time when you worked your way up the employment rung *to* the managerial class. Think of the person working the factory line that eventually runs the whole factories simply by dint of "people" skills and knowing the factory and process. But that doesn't happen anymore. You bring in an outside person who has theories and book learning but little practical knowledge. The PMC class could be whittled down to nothing and everything would still run smoothly, perhaps more smoothly. And I have a feeling the PMC class, at its heart, *knows* this.
Idpol or "wokeness" falls along the same lines. It is a self-serving and self-sustaining ideology (some might say religion) of no practical use whatsoever. In fact, it often is used to obscure the *real* problems. So that the two would attract each other is no great surprise.
But the Woke Agitators/PMC/Revolutionary Class provide a service to the Owning Class. Think of the PMC like a permanent mutually beneficial enforcement Stasi for the owning class. The Owning Class needs the PMC Stasi to keep them in power which makes the PMC hugely valuable, indispensable even - and as a result they are often highly rewarded.
So when you say “you do not need managers”
Who’s “you” in this context?
The "you" is a healthy society in general. A lot of purposeless, self-serving people make for a poorly functioning society with a lot of tension and craziness (voila).
However, if you're right, and I'm not going to say you aren't, the "owner" class is going to be sorry about depending on these people. They owe allegiance to no one but themselves. They treat those they "manage" as resources rather than people. They'll do the same to the "owner" class. And the creation will eat the creator.
Let's hope so. They are insufferable. I've never hoped so fervently for a group of people to be hoist on their own petard.
I think you are misunderstanding the term professional-managerial. I work in psychiatry. I do not own the hospital where I work, however without my professional skills the programs there would not run. It is also extremely easy for me to purchase the means of production which is simply a computer and internet connection if I wanted to run my own telehealth practice. Regarding management, I am team lead and technically manage the team (nurse, social worker, therapist). Now I am extremely hands off and allow each member to perform their role. However, at the end of the day if I write an order it gets done.
I have also had multiple patients in IT and they tell me it the same set up, they don’t own the amazon servers, but professionally code and “manage” teams.
Another name for PMC’s is symbolic analysts which seems clearer.
Correct. I mean a very specific senior managerial group. The propagandists. The herders of men.
One of the best meta analyses I’ve read in a while. Very illuminating in that it brings clarity and historical context to a phenomenon that I’m sure most of your readers have intuited to some extent by now. Well done.
Awesome piece, congrats. Very thought provoking.
I'm of the opinion that on most issues of substance the Dems and the Republicans behave almost as a uniparty, with Republicans playing the role of the controlled opposition. But I think you're right when you claim that the Dems are more aligned with PMC interests, which, in turn, makes me think Republicans align more with the capitalist class.
Still, I agree with the general thrust of the piece. In their opposition to the workers and the middle class, the two ruling classes seems to molding into some new, unholy behemoth. God help us.
Please do not ever defend quoting or referencing anyone. Just do it and let readers react as they will.
I hope I shall not be the first person to ever note that Marx was a fucked-up loser who lived off the baffling forbearance of his wealthy friends towards his ravings and his ill-temper and his greed. It's a sad lesson about the intellectual capacity of the literate class that he became the means of destroying so many lives in so many ways.
That New Englander was right, and I'll say what he didn't articulate in a lengthy dissertational retort to a silly question: Philosophers make a living by telling everyone else what they ought to do, and normal people are motivated by practical responses to the actual problems in front of them.
I spent all my full-time working life as a typical office indentured servant, and I've no love anywhere for the oppressive class, but I got to go home after my specified daily term of labor and the fate of the business (or mostly the persistence of the nonprofit entity) wasn't my headache. Owners have a right to profit because they take on so much risk; they shouldn't be allowed to abuse the workforce but they ain't all and entirely Snidely Whiplashes.
Civilization's eternal conundrum is that the hamlet is too small to survive in isolation and once you start growing communities, every ill enters with each good. An eternal battle between stasis and change. It's not so complicated as those who make a living from thinking all the time will try to convince you.
That is telling that citing Murray will reliably provoke a hostile reaction, while citing Marx, from whom a direct through line can be drawn to unimaginable horrors and atrocities, gets quite the opposite reaction. And this essay does a fantastic job explaining why this is the case among the PMC crowd.
Let the readers make their way through this without handholding.
I see where you’re coming from but think Leighton handled it well. I chuckled at “and, no, I don’t care”
I liked that, too.
It's not enough for me to hurl my darling little laptop at the wall, or anything, but I'd have thought it more effective if presented with shall we say a perfect blandness of expression.
Great article. I am reminded of my distant relative and similar thoughts he had on the subject:
“It is the bureaucratic socializers—if I may devise that label for the champions of a lawyer-manager-politician-intellectual revolution—who constitute a real and subtle threat to America’s democracy.”
~ Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Excellent piece. Subscribed.
Damn it, Leighton. Blowing my mind again! The second post by you that requires killing trees (aka printing hard copy).
Brilliant! Have you seen better, have you read better? Not me.
One of the amazing things hinted at in this excellent piece is how if you know any upscale urban PMC members (which is basically my tribe), they all fervently believe that they are loyal devoted defenders of the downtrodden and that they've dedicated a large chunk of their lives to fighting oppression.
My friends are all mostly middle-aged, settled deep into their careers and relatively well-off (and of course I love them all), they vote in every election for Team Blue or even DSA, they want open borders and Trans rights and obey every BLM demand, and of course they passionately loathe anyone even remotely right-coded (Deplorables of course are beyond the pale).
But since I am an annoying contrary skeptic, I occasionally remind them that illegal immigration may have negative effects on working-class wages, that gender theory is blatant nonsense, and that not every demand for "Diversity" or "Representation" may be valid or in good faith, and that perhaps (for my friends in arts/culture) segregation of the imagination may have some negative consequences. To which of course they respond to by putting their hands over their ears and yelling RACIST!! until I shut up.
I guess my point is that not only have the PMC hoovered up all the loot, they've also managed to craft and exalt a morality that basks them in holy righteous light and makes any dissenter feel vaguely shameful, as if questioning any item on the Social Justice agenda is like stealing change from a blind beggar.
Hey, almost anyone can do well and almost anyone can do good, but doing well while doing good (or at least looking like it) may just be the real American Dream.
In case you haven't read it yet: https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/moral-capital
Thanks!
You pretty much nailed it...(I can't believe I spent the first half of my life being harassed for not believing in God or country and now I get to spend the second half of my life being harassed for not believing in "Social Justice"... (!) Ahh humanity)
Appreciate all your excellent work.
I've felt this way throughout this madness as well. I escaped religious fundamentalism only to find that the left has it's own type of fundamentalism. I do believe in country, though - I'm a vet. Even if our ideals are still only ideals, they are good ones and worth fighting for.
a man without ideals is a beast! (just don't let your ideals turn you into a different kind of beast)
Exactly.
Same. You just described my life.
Almost like a separate nation unto themselves?
Just your standard overclass with delusions of benevolence, like how a rich Calvinist believes God gave him his wealth because of his holy heavenbound heart. Is all very much in line with our American Protestant tradition.
I balk at terms like “Overclass” or “Elite” because it incorrectly hints at an overall legitimacy and worthiness.
I prefer Leighton’s neutral term “Owning Class” to describe this current crop of shape shifting, rudderless Obedients.
Another really excellent piece! More good reading recommendations, also. I look forward to your analysis, which is getting better and better. But I do agree with another poster that this was missing the lynchpin issue of chattel slavery, which malformed America's economy, culture and history, in deep structural ways that we are now paying the price for.
Clearly slavery was a fundamental variable in the shaping of our country, but it wasn't immediately relevant to the point I was making and I wouldn't want to invoke something that big with just a passing mention just for the sake of mentioning it. I'm reading David Hackett Fischer's new tome on American slavery right now — if I ever finish it (it's long), then I'll probably be inspired to write a post on the subject here.
Absolutely fascinating
Great article.
Have you read any of Joel Kotkin's work? "The Coming of Neo-feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class", or "The New Class Conflict"?
I have not. Another for the reading list!
Yes. I've read both of those and more. I am an old-school little-guy Dem and have watched this shit show unfurl with absolute horror.
Although you and N.S. Lyons are two of my favorite (and most original and penetrating) writers on Substack, I have a gut feeling that the inevitable hegemony of the PMC/Virtuals is not so pre-ordained. I think of “Star Trek TNG”, the Borg, and “Resistance is futile!” The Borg were dangerous, but did not win. I tend to agree with the journalist Eli Lake, who said recently on the podcast “Ask a Jew”: “I think the super woke progressives are living in a castle made of sand, which is to say they do not realize how many people are tuning them out, and how much they have set back their own causes through the narcissism of their small differences……and their time is coming.”
One can only hope.
This piece just nailed the overlapping part of the Venn diagram between Marxists and Libertarians.
The Kleracy/PMC has found a perpetual motion machine in accelerating the expansion of government regulation, which requires all productive enterprises to endlessly create new roles for PMC members to write all manner of TPS reports to submit to the PMC members of the government to demonstrate compliance. While one hand washes the other in perpetuity, this bureaucracy enriches itself without adding much in additional value, and this essentially becomes a tax that simultaneously drains funds from workers and consumers (through both higher prices and lower wages).
Another reco from me for Joel Kotkin’s “The Coming of Neo-Feudalism”. Your definition of the PMC overlaps significantly with his use of the term “Kleracy”.
The answer to your penultimate paragraph is explained pretty well in Sam Francis' update on Burnham, "Leviathan and its Enemies".
Is the read worth $30? (That's what I'm finding it for used.)
I'd say yes, depending on your interest in plumbing the PMC. You might be able to find the text somewhere online of course. The full audiobook is on YouTube I believe. It's a long and detailed book though.
Went ahead and ordered it from the UK.
Thank you for reminding me about this book, I was meaning to read it and now will order it.