BISCOTTI AND CIRCUSES

Book Review N^o. 4 is Joel Kotkin's The New Class Conflict.  Let's say that he's not happy about the alliance of Wise Experts in the academy and in government agencies with rent-seekers in business, and ward-heeler politicians everywhere.  The alliance makes for a mutually self-enriching oligarchy, without necessarily creating an opposed mass of impoverished proletarians in the best Communist Manifesto way.  But Mr Kotkin's Yeomanry class (independent contractors and small business owners) face a fate similar to that of the petty bourgeoisie of Capital.  But with the absence of the factory system, no emergence of a radicalized proletariat incompatible with its capitalist integument is anticipated.  Sadly, neither is much of anything else.

(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.)