quoms:

That Wallerstein piece about the bourgeoisie is excellent, but I want to introduce one complication to his assertion that the “new middle class”/“administrative bourgeoisie” (following more recent trends, I’ll call them the “meritocracy”) are defined in part by their inability to ascend to aristocracy, which is that it only makes sense if you define “aristocrat” in the narrow sense of “person who lives a life of settled luxury on a rural estate”

Which is fine, but the aristocracy has always been more than that - it’s not just the literal landlords but also this entire network of fifth sons and second cousins, it’s an entire caste. And there are other angles from which the formation of the meritocracy is the very process of aristocratisation

I’m thinking here about Graeber’s essay about meritocrats’ “noble pursuits” - their ability to independently pursue ideals like Truth and Beauty and the way that overlaps with the predilections of the feudal aristocracy, and more specifically with the way the aristocracy justified its own existence to itself and others (refined aesthetic tastes and lofty values being proof positive of the somewhat less tangible concept of the nobility’s “higher breeding”)

But I’m also thinking about how much of the role of the meritocratic class in society is managerial; that is, how much of it boils down to bossing lesser people around. The elite universities, to the extent that they aren’t a playground for hereditary wealth, so much of what they do is produce managers - upper or middle managers, corresponding with the rank of the institution. The parallel I’ll point out here is that it was precisely the second-tier scions of the aristocracy who played corresponding roles (albeit in a very differently organised economy and society) prior to the rise of the bourgeoisie. Military officer commissions, for example, were in many places legally restricted to aristocrats, while today that’s almost a quintessential meritocratic function

And there is also the question of relations to servants and to servitude. A settled, rural noble household invariably consists largely of servants, and it’s true that the meritocratic class is unable to afford servants who are answerable to them personally. But I don’t think that means the relationship to servitude has changed. Salaried professionals are disproportionately the beneficiaries of the labor of what we now call the service sector, it’s this class of servants that makes it in any way possible for them to enjoy their lifestyle, and in fact I would suggest that they relate to service workers with the same underlying attitude of comfortable entitlement with which the nobility have traditionally addressed their own servants

Just as the meritocracy is becoming increasingly hereditary, the relationship between meritocrats and service workers is becoming increasingly naturalised, to the point where more liberal-minded professionals eagerly propose visions for society in which everyone could be a professional just like them, because they are somehow not capable of perceiving their own abject dependence. I would characterise this as an aristocratic mindset

What’s missing from this vision of merito- as aristocrats harkens back to my complaints on that recent article about the travails of the meritocracy, which is that it’s crucially missing the -crat part. As Wallerstein notes, the new bourgeois can never become truly idle beneficiaries of the labor of others, but more to the point - or perhaps it’s the same thing - they can never rule. So the analogy can’t be complete, and yet I think there are still reasons to question that assertion that the new bourgeoisie’s path to a form of aristocracy is entirely blocked. It depends what precise definitions you use and in some sense whether you’re looking at it from a social or economic perspective