TVP WEEKLY: You do not mince your words, Professor. In a recent article, you wrote about the “class murder” going on in the United States, where “class inequality and the creation of a neo-feudal system have almost completely destroyed social mobility” and thus, the middle class. Is it really that bad?

JOEL KOTKIN: Yes, the situation is serious. It affects us deeply because the whole ethos of America was, and is, based on the possibility of rapid social advancement. This is why millions of Poles are able to climb the social ladder here, just as my ancestors from Ukraine, Bessarabia and Lithuania also did. The crisis can be seen, for example, in the declining number of young people who can afford to own a house and in the increasing concentration of capital among an ever smaller group of homeowners.

For you, a long-time supporter of the Democrats who has only recently re-defined himself as an “independent” voter, this is not an ideological issue. In your recent book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, you predict that the reduction of opportunities for social advancement, together with the powerful concentration of capital, will result in the coming of an era of neo-feudalism – with the modern equivalent of an aristocracy fused with central power, and a group of modern free peasants. These are people on labour contracts who are only able to improve their material situation through money transfers from government sources. In this way they become subordinated, just like mediaeval serfs. Is this the inevitable evolution of capitalism? .

I sure hope not. But the biggest problem is not the far left, which enjoys limited support, but the corporate elite. Lenin would say that these people are preparing a high quality rope on which they will be hanged.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE What do you have in mind?

Eliminating competition or enforcing irrational energy policies reduces support for the free market. The leaders of our society – politicians, CEOs of corporations, academics – no longer identify with such important institutions as religion, a stable family or social control at the local level. All this weakens capitalism, presenting us with two choices: either oligarchic socialism or – God forbid – a return to true communism.

In your book, you write about the special role which belongs to intellectual elites – you call them “clerisy” – to provide intellectual justification for the emerging hierarchy. This secular global elite (cultural creators, intellectuals, academics and media workers) is the modern clerisy. Like the World Controllers from Aldus Huxley’s “A Brave New World”, aided by technology and culture, they legitimise the new world order.

We can see this on many levels. The so-called experts are important, of course, but in areas such as climate change, issues of race or gender they have accepted, or created, an orthodoxy that harms society. As Daniel Bell points out in his excellent book “Coming of Post-Industrial Society”, the growing importance of science and technology gives these elites incredible power. What is saddening, however, is that they are not working to expand the areas of knowledge, but rather to create ideological bubbles, even in fields such as mathematics, medicine or science. The same mentality that has already corrupted the humanities is extending to the STEM field (science, technology, engineering and maths). For many, obedience to “official science” has taken the place of independent thought. Those belonging to the chosen elite have incredible power, determining what constitutes acceptable behaviour. And all those who have a different opinion are increasingly marginalised or cancelled.

The new neo-feudal Elite badly needs central government, which is why – with the support of the intellectual elite – they support the expansion of the welfare state. The state, through subsidies and direct payments, is supposed to stove off various rebellions like the “yellow vests” in France, the truckers’ protests in Canada or the farmers’ protests in the Netherlands. This is why people calling themselves libertarians, who stand for unlimited freedom of movement of capital on a daily basis, support such radical extensions of the welfare state as the call for the introduction of a universal basic income, right?

It is a phenomenon that I am trying to understand. Libertarians have become blind servants of capital, and because the system produces unimaginable inequalities, they want to wave “the proletarian alms-bag” – as Marx called it in The Communist Manifesto – in order to rally the people to them. Instead of reaping the benefits of wage labour and concentrating on getting as many people as possible to increase their opportunities, libertarians and oligarchs thought it would be better to bribe the modern “peasantry” than to risk their own heads…

You write that the process of oligarchisation of capitalism began as early as the 1970s, when the opportunities of the middle class diminished. In 1989 Poles were probably the most pro-capitalist society in the world. The snag is that our vision of American capitalism at the time, known from Hollywood films – with an average family owning a beautiful house with trimmed grass in the suburbs, two cars, and a bunch of kids on bikes or skateboards – was already largely out of date. Now we are reworking the latest version of it: turbo-capitalism with speculation and abusive financial markets, junk contracts, wages suffocated by the export of industrial production to cheaper markets and mass emigration. It is hard to see a better future... .

In many parts of America, the model you describe is still functioning. The dream of a house in the suburbs is still alive in the South – in Texas, the Great Plains Prairies or the Midwest. But at the same time, this dream is becoming increasingly difficult to realise, especially in areas governed by the Democrats. The regulations they are introducing are forcing people to move to densely populated urban areas, where, in turn, property prices are the highest.

The problem for Poland, as for other countries that caught on to late neo-liberal capitalism, was that by the time you broke free from socialism, much of the productive work in the world had already gone to China and other developing countries. The situation can only change if Western countries begin a process of reindustrialisation and make the provision of middle-class jobs their political priority. But finance and corporate capital likely prefers off-shoring to get higher returns and access to a subjugated workforce.

In a world where an established social hierarchy is rapidly replacing opportunity, there often is a backlash against global-consensus capitalism: Brexit, the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, the triumph of the right-wing parties in Hungary and Poland. The recent elections in Sweden and especially in Italy show that voters want a return to the old bourgeois values: the right to choose one’s own life path, to have a normal family, a nation, to live in a local community. On the other hand, there is a strong push to establish neo-feudalism on a global scale.

It saddens me that the right response to the excesses of capitalism is proposed not by the political centre but the extremes. In Italy and Sweden, it is the right side of the political scene, but in South America or France, left-wing authoritarianism gains stream. And yet it is possible to oppose the excesses of neo-liberalism without shrugging off slogans against the rights of women, gays or immigrants. The problem is that the intellectual elite, the “clerisy”, is increasingly becoming a follower of its own religion. This religion is a mixture of climate apocalypism, a belief in gender fluidity and anti-racism, which assumes that white people are inherently racist and must be either discriminated against or at least re-programmed.

Meanwhile, we need a rational, pragmatic alternative that supports economic growth, legal immigration and welcomes a growing role of women in society.

Let’s talk some more about the political situation in America, a nation divided into two almost equal halves, 45/45, with 5-10 percent of those in the real centre. As you say, Republicans “believe in the sanctity of capital in any form”. The Democrats, on the other hand, could talk about social inequality, but instead, as Thomas Frank wrote in The Guardian, they reject “populism” and favour a “grand vision of how society should be directed” through the agency of “responsible professionals” who share their favourite views such as the environment being treated like a fundamentalist religion. The Midterms are just a few weeks away (according to tradition, congressional elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, this year on 8 November – ed.), who’s going to win? .

Hard to say. Republicans should take control of the House of Representatives, but they may miss their chance to win the Senate. The Supreme Court decision invalidating the legalisation of abortion at the federal level and Donald Trump’s toxic presence in the public arena could stop their winning wave. On the other hand, high inflation, rising crime rates, what is happening at the border with Mexico and the demand for more parental control over children’s education should all help the Republicans. In the past, big media could impact the outcome of elections, but their obvious partisan cast (towards the Democrats – ed.), has caused many people to simply ignore them, even if they are sometimes right and report well.

The 2024 presidential election may show what Americans really want: more Florida or more California. By your description, California today is the cradle of high-tech, where there is a “segregation of innovation” in which “the upper-class waxes, the middle-class wanes and the lower-class live in poverty”. On the other side is Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, representing “Trumpism without Trump”. The clash of these two visions is almost inevitable. Will America survive the politicisation of nearly every sphere of life?

This is a key issue. The forthcoming elections, especially federal elections, are of exaggerated importance. Presidents today are like elected dictators, especially when Congress is paralysed by partisan wrangling and corporate control. One solution may be to allow more local variation, within reason, and to reaffirm the sanctity of family relations over the state. The Californian model is good for the rich and until recently produced enough money to expand the welfare state. However, it does not seem replicable elsewhere without the Californian attractions and deep technological lead. Florida is a competitor, but the real alternative seems to be Texas. However, Gov. DeSantis seems to have more credibility on the national stage than Texas Governor Greg Abbot.

You don’t seem too pessimistic. You recently noted that in 2021, after years of stagnation, Americans have “voted with their feet, heading from dense, usually highly regulated regions to suburbs, exurbs, and smaller towns, where they seek to find a more affordable way of life, and the chance of achieving a middle-class standard”. Is there any hope that America will reinvent herself yet again?

There is an old German saying, attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America”. It still holds true. We remain the only country that is both a resource empire and a techno-industrial one. One of our main rivals – Russia – has proved far weaker than anyone thought, their military technology in particular is no match for the US. Europe, on the other hand, is too divided, has demographic problems and lacks the raw materials to compete with us or China. So, I am very sorry, but it looks like America remains the only choice for the world.

– interviewed by Pawel Burdzy
– Translated by jz

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists