Blaming the elites, and especially the intellectual elites that reside in academia, the arts, and the professional ranks, is very fashionable these days. They are accused of playing the meritocracy card too much, for being condescending on people with less education, and failing to recognize the contributions of blue-collar Americans. This is the usual litany of arguments that focus on attitudes and cultural divides. Even liberals who are members of the educated elites like to contribute to this critique.
I do not doubt that educated people may appear to be smug given their justified or not sense of personal endeavor to acquire knowledge and skills, nor do I doubt that the overemphasis on college education has ignored other pathways to productive and rewarding careers. The plight of many members of the working class is not, however, the result of wrong attitudes and the valorization of college education. It is rather the result of political choices and corporate policies. Apart from academia, the educated professional class found itself on the right side of the tracks only because these choices and policies favored people with knowledge and creativity.
So, what developments left blue-collar people behind? The answer, of course, is globalization, technological advances, and the decline of unions. Those behind these developments were corporate leaders, politicians from both parties, and that part of academia that professed confidence in the power of free markets to bring prosperity to the masses here and abroad.
But not all intellectuals and politicians sided with this conviction. Even more importantly, the credit of eventually documenting and publicizing the negative effects of that prevailing model came from academics. It was that part of academia that brought our attention to the deaths of despair in the deindustrialized part of the country, the growing inequality of incomes and wealth, the buildup of an oligarchic capitalism, and the danger of the rising plutocracy.
How do we explain then that working-class Americans seem to side more with economic elites than educated elites? After all, the members of the educated elites (professionals and academics) are also members of the working class. Isn’t it curious that many populist Americans feel comfortable with a Trump administration full of members of the economic elite, the most prominent being Elon Musk?
The late David Graeber, an anthropologist and co-author of “The Dawn of Everything,” offers a simple, yet reasonable, explanation on this subject in his posthumously published book “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World.” The answer may be in the fact that most populists are found within the ranks of people that lack college education. For this segment of the population, the path to social mobility and status runs more through engagement with the world of business than with the world of academia or that of the educated professionals. After all, the dream of the self-made individual is associated more with business success than with conducting top research. No wonder, therefore, that rich politicians exert a greater appeal to members of the working class.
Not only we have different elites, more importantly, their respective interests may often collide. Whereas economic elites dominate the production of things, academic, cultural, and artistic elites dominate the production of ideas and creative interpretations of the human condition. Academic research, ideas, and art often cast a critical eye on the conduct of business and its effects on society. Understandably, economic elites feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny of the academic and creative elites to the point they sometimes try to muzzle their voice and influence. Or, alternatively, the apologists of the economic elites turn the focus on the culture wars.
Thus, an often-heard criticism directed against educated elites is that they appear to look down on the members of the working class. In the words of Nicholas Kristof (NYT, 2/23/2025) “…elites too often have lectured them (meaning the working-class individuals), patronized them or dismissed them as bigots.” As I wrote above, educated people may come across as smug. But is this enough to explain the resentment of working-class Americans? Here is a thought: why didn’t working-class Americans feel unrecognized and underappreciated in the decades between the 1940s and 1970s? The most obvious answer to me is that these were years of solidarity and pride among blue collar Americans. They had unions with bargaining power; union halls for social nurturing; a much fairer participation in the American dream; and the pride they were building a strong American economy. They had a self-sustained confidence in their social status and labor’s worth. Who shuttered all that? The academic elites? Not really. All that sustained the social and economic status of the American working class was blown away by corporate policies enabled by a new allegiance of the political class to a model of unfettered capitalism.
As the importance of the blue-collar workers waned and that of educated workers rose as a result of the transformation of the economic model and the type of skills needed to succeed, American society also started to drift into socio-economic silos and become more segregated by class. Wealthy people retreated inside gated communities or exclusive urban and suburban enclaves. The shrinking middle class of professionals and proprietors retreated behind zoning rules that kept worse off Americans out. And the rest of the working class toiling in manufacturing, services, and farming were left in places lacking in public infrastructure and opportunities to take advantage of the digital age and share the benefits of a growing economy.
And that was not all. Just like shared prosperity became elusive for most people, shared responsibility in bearing the consequences of our national path also receded in our collective consciousness. Immigration, quality of education and public goods, homelessness and poverty no longer affected all of us equally. Home location became destiny in enjoying or not the good life. Thus, home location became a mark of class distinction.
So, instead of fighting wars about cultural choices and attitudes, let’s go to the heart of the matter, which is to build a collective consciousness rooted in the imperatives of shared prosperity and shared responsibility.
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