Social Justice Discourse, Inequality and the Rise of a New Elite

* Book: We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality and the Rise of a New Elite. by Musa Al-Gharbi. Princeton University Press, 2021.

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"It is a story about the rise of a new class of social elites who have not attained their social position by owning material assets, nor by developing or trading material goods or services. Instead, they traffic in symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis, ideas and abstractions. Drawing from Robert Reich, we can refer to this class of new elites as ‘symbolic analysts.’

Over the last four decades, symbolic analysts have come to control and ever larger share of social and financial capital in the United States, and have reshaped the economy, politics and the dominant culture to reflect their values, interests, tastes and priorities. Although these new elites present themselves as champions of the marginalized, vulnerable and disadvantaged, upward social mobility has stagnated under their tenure – both in the U.S. and other OECD nations — even as total factor productivity has stalled out. Simultaneously, and perhaps more importantly, a growing share of the population feels excluded from the dominant culture and locked out of decision-making. And they are not taking it lying down. They are revolting.

Put simply, the core tension roiling U.S. society (and other Western societies for that matter) is fundamentally not about whether science, education or journalism are good, or whether minorities should enjoy basic civil rights. Symbolic analysts like to frame the conflict as being ‘about’ these things because it allows them to position themselves as being ‘on the side’ of truth, reason, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged, while their opponents are portrayed as being ‘on the side’ of ignorance, fanaticism, oppression, exploitation and the like. That is, the ‘losers’ in the system are portrayed as being somehow responsible for most social problems, and it is implied that giving still more power or authority to those who currently dominate the system will somehow ‘solve’ those problems. This book aims to deflate these self-serving narratives, explaining how, despite their expressed commitments to egalitarianism, symbolic analysts have established a social order that is fundamentally premised on exclusion, exploitation and condescension.

Since the publication of Anand Giridharadas’ best-selling Winners Take All (Knopf 2018), there has been a good deal of attention of how the super-rich use philanthropy as a means of shaping society in accordance with their own tastes and interests under the auspices of helping others – often exacerbating the very problems they claim to be trying to solve. However, millionaires and billionaires are not capable of creating, enforcing, managing and perpetuating society and culture all on their own.

More realistically, to understand whose interests are being served by a social order – to see how it is formed, reproduced and sustained – we should look at the upper quintile of society, the top 20%. As Richard Reeves has demonstrated, ‘opportunity hoarding’ by those in the upper quintile — not just the top ‘1 Percent’ — have driven the stagnating social mobility and rising inequality in recent decades.

In the contemporary U.S., the upper quintile includes those with a total household income in excess of $130k per year.

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Given that most symbolic analysts are dual-breadwinner households, many reach the upper quintile without either partner individually meeting or exceeding a six-figure income. Consequently, many many in the upper quintile erroneously assume they are not elites. Indeed, as sociologist Rachel Sherman showed, even many who do have six (even seven) figure incomes insist that they are simply ‘middle class’ and attempt to define themselves in contradistinction to wealthy people (whom they describe as greedy, materialistic, ostentatious, privileged, etc. — unlike themselves).

Looking at the upper quintile would, of course, include the millionaires and billionaires. However, it would also count the people who actually run the non-profits, government bureaucracies, corporations, universities and other institutions through which the ‘1 Percent’ often attempt to exert their will; it would include those who shape public understanding of social reality as scholars, journalists, civic and religious leaders, teachers, artists, etc.

Indeed, research in the U.S. and around the world has shown that class per se is not the biggest driver of growing inequality and declining social mobility today, but instead, that certain professions have been increasingly hoarding opportunities and power at the expense of the rest of society, and transferring social capital across generations by means of those professions. Professions associated with symbolic analysts and the ‘knowledge economy’ are the primary drivers of these trends.

Indeed, as Shamus Khan has argued, it is probably too narrow a view to focus purely on criteria like wealth or income in order to determine who is part of the elite. Symbolic analysts’ dominance over knowledge production, culture, institutional bureaucracies, etc. often affords us even more clout than our (relatively high) incomes would suggest. And no less than the super-rich, (we) symbolic analysts attempt to shape ‘the system’ in accordance with our own will and priorities. We facilitate the operation of the prevailing order, ensure its continued viability, and implement reforms.

Put another way, we do not stand outside of society – nor are we neutral observers of the prevailing order. Symbolic analysts do not passively receive, nor mindlessly execute, the dictates of the ‘1 Percent.’ After all, most of the railing against the super-rich comes not from the working class, but from symbolic analysts — that is, from the very people that the ‘1 Percent’ rely upon to understand the world and exert influence over it.

Yet, no less than the super-elites described in Girdharadas’ book, symbolic analysts dress up our attempts to consolidate power behind high-minded rhetoric about empowering the marginalized and vulnerable. We, too, play a major role in fomenting the very problems that we present ourselves as the solution to.

As We Have Never Been Woke will demonstrate, the Americans who are the primary producers and consumers of content on antiracism, socialism, feminism, etc. also happen to be among the primary beneficiaries of gendered, racialized and other forms of inequality – and not passive beneficiaries. We are active participants in exploiting and reproducing inequalities.

And yet, it is difficult for us to ‘see’ how we contribute to the problem — precisely because of our deeply felt commitments to social justice. So we expropriate blame to others… often people who benefit far less from the system than we do, and exert far less influence over it. And when these others take umbrage at being characterized this way, this opposition is itself held up as proof that our narratives are correct (for instance, a white person objecting to the notion of white fragility is often held up as evidence of their white fragility).

However, this book is not intended to be a polemic against symbolic analysts or their beliefs. After all, the author is himself a member of this group, as would be most readers.

In We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard University Press 1993), Bruno Latour called for a ‘symmetrical anthropology’ – insisting that social researchers study and discuss their own societies and cultures in the same way they analyze ‘primitive’ or ‘premodern’ ones. He then proceeded to illustrate the power of this approach by turning the analytical ‘gaze’ towards modernity – demonstrating that the narratives ‘moderns’ tell themselves about what makes them unique in fact obscures the nature of the ‘modern world,’ making it difficult for its denizens to properly understand and effectively address contemporary social problems.

Just as Latour encouraged readers to turn the anthropological lens towards their own societies and cultures, and then proceeded to model this approach (as a ‘modern’) himself, We Have Never Been Woke is a work by a symbolic analyst, about symbolic analysts, primarily for symbolic analysts – looking at our history, the social order we’ve created, and the ideologies used to justify that social order. It will demonstrate how symbolic analysts’ preferred narratives about social problems often inhibit our ability to accurately understand and adequately address those problems.

We Have Never Been Woke will draw from, build upon, and unite the robust body of work I’ve built over the last six years explaining the rise of Trump, the crisis of expertise, the ‘Great Awokening,’ and growing social inequality. It will demonstrate each of these domains as a ‘front’ of a broader social and cultural conflict. It will highlight the ways symbolic analysts deploy wokeness as a weapon in this conflict, often at the expense of those who are actually marginalized and disadvantaged in the prevailing order. It will dismantle popular (and self-serving) narratives about the ‘losers’ in the system – leaving readers with a totally different understanding of social inequality, and unnerving questions about what it would take to meaningfully address it.

In much the same way that Latour encouraged the development of a ‘symmetrical anthropology,’ this work seeks to encourage and model reflexivity — a social scientific principle stating that general theories should also apply to the theorists themselves, as well as the institutions they are embedded in, the actors and causes they support, etc. For instance, if we want to understand systemic inequality, we must include academics, journalists, social justice activists, progressive politicians, dutiful bureaucrats, non-profit workers, et al. ‘in the model’ alongside those that symbolic analysts are less sympathetic towards (such as Trump voters or the ‘1 Percent’).

By folding ourselves and our allies into the analytical ‘picture’ in this way, we can get a much richer understanding of how social problems emerge and persist, and what can be done about them. Granted, the image that gets reflected back to us will often be unflattering. However, the upshot is that we have the capacity to do better if we don’t like what we see."

(https://musaalgharbi.com/2021/05/05/book-announcement-we-have-never-been-woke/)