First there is the yeomanry or the traditional middle class, which consists of small business owners, minor landowners, craftspeople, and artisans, or what we would define historically as the bourgeoisie, or the old French Third Estate, deeply embedded in the private economy. The other middle class, now in ascendency, is the clerisy, a group that makes its living largely in quasi-public institutions, notably universities, media, the non-profit world, and the upper bureaucracy.Kotkin argues the yeomanry is under siege by an ascendant clerisy, which is allied with the oligarchs who own maybe half of everything. This relationship resembles the ties between the nobility and the clergy in the Middle Ages.
Kotkin further argues that continued democracy requires a strong yeomanry. Absent that, bad things will likely follow.
The struggle between the two middle classes is not just a matter of wealth and power, but also of retaining the social basis for democracy itself. Without a strong, independent middle class operating outside the control of large institutions, be they tech giants or governments, we may be heading towards a technocratic future, that as one Silicon Valley wag put it, resembles “feudalism with better marketing.”I spent a career as a closeted 'subversive' in the clerisy, my heart was nearly always with the yeomanry. Trust me, you don't want clerisy flakes running your life or your country. I offer our screwed-up universities as evidence of how unskilled they are.
An independent and assertive property-owning middle class that can thrive remains the only force able to challenge ever-growing centralization. Without them, there is likely no way to prevent a new feudal order from emerging in the future. As the radical social theorist Barrington Moore suggested a half-century ago, “no bourgeoisie, no democracy.”
