1. Very interesting @IChotiner interview with Michael Lind about Lind's attempt to craft a high-brow Trumpism (although that's perhaps not how Lind would describe it).
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4. Here's Burnham in 1978 (reviewing Alfred Chandler's great Visible Hand) arguing that the managerial elite are the people who actually run the large corporations, notpic.twitter.com/UFSPbRrPoP
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5. Lind: cultural shapers & post-college are managerial elite. Burnham: “Who hires and fires whom? How many men can Norman Mailer or Walter Cronkite set in motion when he picks up the telephone , compared to Harold Geneen or What’s-His-Name at the top of IBM? Come now.”
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6. Burnham, as befits an ex-Marxist admired by Trotsky himself, had a far more materialist & economic understanding of managerial elite power than Lind. Lind's ideas aren't from Burnham but reheated 1970s neo-con "New Class" discourse.
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7. So why is Lind wrongly citing Burnham rather than the 1970s neo-cons (Kristol, Moynihan) who theorized New Class Because Lind wants to jump on Trump bandwagon & Burnham is (via Samuel Francis) much admired by paleo-con Trumpists. It's all marketing, not intellectual history
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8. Anyways, you can read the Lind interview here and keep in mind that what Lind is saying about Burnham is -- to use the politest possible term -- bullshit.https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/michael-lind-on-populism-racism-and-restoring-democracy …
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4. (Revised) 4. Here's Burnham in 1978 (reviewing Alfred Chandler's great Visible Hand) arguing that the managerial elite are the people who actually run the large corporations, not novelists and media people!pic.twitter.com/7rZawlUrJB
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9. One way to think about all this is that a lot of New Class theory (and, on the left, PMC theory) is about blaming the ills of oligarchy on a subset of the junior partners of oligarchy. It's the socialism of foolish pundits.https://twitter.com/rortybomb/status/1225509036659007488 …
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Ah, but the neo-fash project of demonizing the pursuit of education and the enjoyment of culture is key to their plan to enstupid the world.
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I am taking the word “enstupid” with me and leaving you to carry on ...... topic seems to be in capable hands.
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You know nothing of my work. The fact that you don't spend the day walking around with shit in your pants is frankly amazing.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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