The Information Class
A Serialized Tract for the Times
This book– as it will become, though I'm starting as a series of Substack posts for feedback– is a tract for the times, written in patriotic agony amidst the greatest crisis American democracy has ever faced, but it also channels some thoughts I've had for years. It's an attempt to make sense of the current constitutional crisis, and to chart a course out of it, though into a future different from the regime I've been accustomed to and loyal to all my life. It's an act of penance for being part of the nation that elected Donald Trump. But it's also an exhortation to my class to fight, in its own way.
This is a book about class. Class, after all, seems to be at the heart of this crisis. 2024 was a diploma divide election, in which most of the well-educated voted for the more conventional candidate, while the poorly educated took the dangerous option. Rising class stratification has been widely noted and often lamented. But I offer here a defense of class stratification, and in particular, of the leading role played in America and the West by what I like to call “the information class.” We're the ones who staff the universities, the managerial ranks of the big corporations, the bureaucracy. We're a kind of hybrid intelligentsia-bourgeoisie, the ones who know how to think through things, plan things, run things. We're the natural leaders.
But we have not led well, or at any rate, not well enough. We have failed to inspire. The crux of the matter is that we're very morally confused ourselves. We're cut off from the tradition of the virtues. We have a lot of good habits, but they are a wasting asset because we don't know how to renew or build on them. We lack wisdom and heroism. We've provided peace and prosperity, but ultimately, man does not live by bread alone. The nihilistic populism that is wreaking havoc expresses the frustration of a people who are morally adrift because the ruling class hasn't given them the moral direction they need. They need leaders whom they can admire and learn virtue from, and they don't have it in us, so they're flailing desperately and breaking things.
We need to step up and rescue civilization, but the even more important work, or at any rate the prerequisite work, is self-improvement. We need to become a ruling class that it's fun to follow because our characters are so admirable and our stories so fascinating. Then law and order and freedom will come back.
Class stratification is, unfortunately, unpopular in America. Our grievance against aristocracy was never just, but it used to be suited to our social conditions. No longer. As often happens in human history, we are living with one foot in a nostalgic myth, which makes us adopt an unrealistic and reproachful attitude towards the present. Our nostalgic myth is social equality, against a present reality of class stratification. Actually, plenty of societies have been thriving and progressive with class stratification. It's nothing to despair about. But we won't face up to it in a frank and practical way. That prevents the information class from refining its identity, reflecting upon its strengths and duties, finding its solidarity, and collaborating for leadership.
I'm hoping that the silver lining of the 2024 election is that it will be a teachable moment, when we come to terms with class stratification. The poorly educated have pushed the country into a troubling choice, which at the time of writing is imperiling America's democratic institutions as never before. It's a good time to remember the old aristocratic commonplace that things work best when the best people are in charge. Of course, in this country, no aristocracy can claim to rule by right. Our hallowed customs and traditions point another way. But aristocrats can rule by persuasion and by inspiring deference.
It's easy to prove, in a sense, that aristocracy is the best form of government. Aristocracy is better than monarchy because many heads are better than one. Aristocracy is better than democracy because some people understand what needs to be done better than others do. And there is a tendency for monarchies and democracies to converge to aristocracy in practice. Monarchs can't be everywhere and can't give orders directly to the entire people. They have to rely on some, the aristocrats, to help them govern the rest. A democracy, too, can't settle every day-to-day issue by popular vote. It must choose some whom it will entrust with power while the people go about their business. Because we have a semantic prejudice against the word “aristocracy,” we call it “meritocracy” instead, but the etymology is the same: rule by the best.
Are they the best? Well, often not. There's a word for that, too: “oligarchy.” There are reasons why the worst tend to get on top. Some people seek power in cynical ways. Sometimes they succeed. But there are also reasons why the best can get on top. A healthy people looks for our leaders of good character, whom it trusts and admires. And even a king who is fairly wicked himself will want a lot of virtue in his servants. Democracy in America has often meant aristocracy, or political meritocracy if you like, punctuated and maintained through popular elections. Now that's broken down. The worst are on top.
What's to be done then? It will take me a long time to explain and defend class stratification in general, and to introduce you to America's leading class, the information class, in particular. But beyond that, again, this book is a self-help guide for the information class, to help it acquire enough charismatic virtue that the masses might choose to trust us with leadership again. For we're the ones who can run things. We're the nation's best hope.
It occurs to me this is a rather insolent book in many ways, calculated to offend nearly everyone somehow, though in very different ways. That seems wholesome. Our society has licensed so much oversensitiveness that it's become hard to say anything interesting or important for fear of offending someone. We self-censor far too much. I suppose that's the old insight of satire: that it's a brave and glorious thing to be insolent to the insolent, that it's right to give offense for the sake of the right. Not that this is really a work of satire. On the contrary, it's as earnest and pedantic as it is quixotic. But it's as bold and defiant as satire.
Enough introduction. Let the argument begin!
I'm eager to get to know readers along the way, and to that end, I've teamed with Richard Hanania to develop and distribute a survey that probes the “elite human capital” (his term) / “information class” (my term) experience, and to build a network. Here’s the survey. The intent is to keep sensitive answers confidential, while reporting out aggregate numbers that are interesting, and showcasing cool people we meet, with permission, to inspire others. (UPDATE: Richard Hanania is no longer involved. He’s busy, busy, busy as a desperate Horatio-on-the-bridge of liberalism and sanity against the MAGA barbarians. Thanks for the impetus, Richard. Survey is still live. If you fill it out, send me an e-mail at lancelot finn at gmail dot com— I’m trying to evade the junk mail bots, you can figure it out— to let me know.)
I'd like to get to know you. We of the information class need to stick together in these dark times. We need solidarity to help each other maintain our integrity.
The chapters of the book, most of which are fully written now– but they may be updated in light of events, or in light of things that I learn from debating with you in the comments– are as follows, with planned publication dates:
Chapter 1. The populist threat and the agony of the information class: February 25
Chapter 2. Muddle-headed egalitarianism and misunderstandings about class: March 4
Chapter 3. Class should be understood as ethos plus endogamy: March 11
Chapter 4. Marrying within your class: the graph theory of endogamy: March 18
Chapter 5. The case for marrying within your class: March 25
Chapter 6: The parable of the dishonest aspiring cashier: A proof of concept for the economic utility of virtue: April 1
Chapter 7: Professional ethos: The cases of the soldier and the philosopher: April 8
Chapter 8: Ethos as virtue, applied in a social role, and then imaginatively assimilated: April 15
Chapter 9: The ramifying specialization of occupation and ethos: April 22
Chapter 10: A class is a mating pool halfway up the specialization tree, which produces children who have a headstart in life: April 29
Chapter 11: The limits of individual and intergenerational specialization: May 6
Chapter 12: The tree of excellence: May 13
Chapter 13: The Golden Rule, the parable of the talents, and the Christian case for class stratification: May 20
Chapter 14: The Rawlsian case for class stratification: May 27
Chapter 15: Class and history, part 1: The concept of a path-dependent equilibrium: June 3
Chapter 16: Class and history, part 2: The case of the knights: June 10
Chapter 17: Class and history, part 3: Philhellenism, the European gentleman, and the class art of reviving dead cultures: June 17
Chapter 18: The mid-20th century classless society and its discontents: June 24
Chapter 19: The 1960s crisis, mass college education, and the rise of the information class: July 1
Chapter 20: MacIntyre’s curse, and how it came to be personified in the information class: July 8
Chapter 21: Debunking a few fallacies: case studies in information class ineptitude at moral reasoning: July 15
Chapter 22: Why tradition is better than rationalism in ethics: July 22
Chapter 23: Wokeness: July 29
Chapter 24: The unpopularity of information class leadership: August 5
Chapter 25: Philo-medievalism, and how to look to the Middle Agers for a modern reform agenda: August 12
Chapter 26: Becoming knights The ethos of chivalry: August 19
Chapter 27: The call of integrity and solidarity: August 26
All chapters will be posted free to read and comment on. Sign up and join the adventure!
Your central point about the convergence of both forms of government into a type of necessary aristocracy is fine, but the difference between aristocracy and meritocracy is that aristocracy is very often hereditary or arbitrary and thus not merit-based. You can't really use them interchangeably. In a true meritocracy, you wouldn't be in the "information class" unless you could prove usefulness beyond the king's personal, fallible, and mostly arbitrary judgement. Additionally, no one would be barred from joining the elites by anything other than their abilities, which is not the case for aristocracy.
Then you go on to do something weird and define the opposite of meritocracy as oligarchy, in other words rather than authority finding loyalty in smart people they look for it in resourceful people. But according to your own ethos (chapter 3), you want a society where having resources is a moral and intellectual virtue. That is of course what liberalist free markets combined with your American calvinist christianity basically is.
I would argue China is the pinnacle example of a country run by the information class, and it's actually what most of you guys want without realising it. A group of about 7-120 elites (depending where you draw the line), all with high information backgrounds, pick a general secretary to run the country. The general secretary works with his ministers to direct national economic policy and protect their power. Because it is secular, non-liberal, and centralised, there is little room for oligarchy to form.