They have a good university education, work in prestigious professions, and grew up with privileges, but at some point they turn against the system that created them. Why is America’s educated class beginning to lose faith in capitalism and veering toward left-wing ideas?
Is the socialism of the privileged hypocrisy or insight? Having money does not contradict the desire for a fairer economic system, writes Tyler Austin Harper, an American writer, journalist, and staff writer for The Atlantic.
When it became publicly known that one of the co-chairs of the New York chapter of the "Democratic Socialists of America" (DSA) lived in a $1.5 million house in Brooklyn purchased by his father, DSA’s critics were handed a golden opportunity to attack. The New York Post went after Gustavo Gordillo, a 38-year-old former Yale student, mocking him for taking advantage of his father’s generosity "while attacking the rich and private property." The criticism grew even stronger when the Post reported that Gordillo had dropped out of his electrical training and had never fully qualified for the profession. "This communist failed at his practical training because he wasn’t doing his job," NewsNation host Katie Pavel wrote on X. Gordillo told me that leaving his electrician training had been a "difficult choice" that he made in order to devote more time to his role in the DSA. Gordillo is only the latest example of a well-known figure on the left accused of being part of the silver elite, born "with a silver spoon in his mouth," while pretending to be a radical close to the working class. Before Graham Platner’s campaign for the Senate in Maine collapsed following a scandal, Platner was repeatedly portrayed as a privileged man pretending to be a worker by wearing Carhartt clothing. His grandfather had been a prominent interior architect and designer, his mother’s restaurant had been the main customer of his farm, and his father had helped him secure a home—much like Gordillo’s father. Zohran Mamdani was also criticized during his mayoral campaign for being a socialist despite being born into a family of parents connected to Hollywood’s film industry and owning an estate in Uganda. The accusations of hypocrisy only intensified after DSA candidates won a series of Democratic Party primaries in various parts of the country. Conservative and centrist media and political circles described these progressive successes as a movement led mainly by white, wealthy, and highly educated people These claims are not merely accusations—they are supported by national and more recent surveys of DSA members. They showed that 77% of members are white, while more than 80% of members over the age of 25 have at least a university degree. If Democrats are experiencing their own "Tea Party," as The New York Times recently suggested, then this is a revolution fueled mainly by people who are disillusioned with higher education, many of whom are relatively financially secure. Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker called these voters "Subaru socialists": people with university degrees who earn enough to afford, say, a mid-range car and dinners at good restaurants, but who may not own a home or feel completely economically secure. Republican Senator John Kennedy prefers the more biting nickname: "Lulu Lenins." The attacks on socialists like Gordillo, who publicly advocate radical policies while secretly encouraging the gentrification of Brooklyn and whose ties to the working class appear suspicious, are understandable and often amusing. But focusing on the many contradictions of the left emerging from wealthy families is also a way of avoiding a far more interesting and potentially more instructive question: Why are so many privileged people drawn to a politics aimed at destroying the system from which they themselves have benefited? In a 1977 essay for Medical America magazine, Barbara and John Ehrenreich introduced a term to describe the growing number of highly educated American workers: the "professional-managerial class" (PMC). The authors noted that members of the PMC generally occupy positions that contribute to shaping and maintaining capitalist culture and its associated values. They work in fields such as the arts, education, medicine, the entertainment industry, law, advertising, and technology—sectors that can be seen as evidence of capitalism’s ability to provide a culturally rich, physically healthy, intellectually stimulating, and comfortable life. According to Ehrenreich, the professional class of the 19th century played a decisive role, indirectly and sometimes quite directly, in preserving public confidence in the economic system. But the professional class’s growing shift toward left-wing policies today suggests that the PMC is no longer particularly enthusiastic about fulfilling that mission. A CBS News/YouGov poll published this month showed that Democrats—a party dominated by the professional class—were almost twice as likely to express a positive view of socialism (58%) as of capitalism (32%). Among Democrats with a university education, socialism was supported by 71%. This is not an entirely new phenomenon. As early as 1977, the Ehrenreichs noted that radicalism, even anti-capitalism, could be found among some educated professionals, particularly in academia. But the PMC’s current turn to the left is unprecedented in American history. Until the mid-2000s, voters with university degrees were more likely to be Republicans than Democrats. In 1984, people with bachelor’s degrees voted for Ronald Reagan by a margin of more than two to one. What distinguishes the professional-managerial class of the 21st century is that the very people who, in one way or another, present capitalism to the public as a successful system have lost faith in it. Many members of today’s professional class have become defectors from the system. And this defection deserves to be taken seriously as a sign of an economic order that seems no longer capable of justifying itself even to its own "army of public relations specialists." When a mid-level manager at a tobacco company refuses to smoke, when a technology company executive sends their children to screen-free schools, or when a meatpacking worker becomes a vegetarian, many people realize that such choices stem not only from hypocrisy but also from the knowledge of someone who has seen the system from the inside. According to a demographic survey, the DSA is full of people who work in or are preparing for traditional professional-managerial occupations: teachers and professors, social workers, healthcare professionals, and government employees. The fact that some people in these sectors, including highly paid ones, look at our economy and search for different ways to organize it is neither hypocritical nor surprising. A teacher who has to buy teaching materials with their own money; an adjunct professor working at three universities to make ends meet; a social worker who cares for people in need every day; a nurse in a hospital bought by a private equity fund; a federal employee who sees lobbying groups weaken safety regulations; a data engineer who helps create a product that gives teenagers advice on suicide; a student taking on huge loans to earn a degree that is no longer a guaranteed ticket to a middle-class life—what should these people think of capitalism in its current form? And why is it considered hypocrisy rather than a defensible moral position when some members of the professional-managerial class conclude that the abuses they encounter in the workplace, in corporate offices, and in everyday life are symptoms of a system that deserves deep, even systemic reforms? Of course, some of the "Subaru socialists" may be drawn to progressive political movements simply because that is what their friends do or because they feel guilty about their own privileges. But many socialists from the professional class are undoubtedly making an honest moral judgment born of direct experience:
Modern capitalism has profound flaws. Explaining his reasons for participating in the DSA, Gordillo wrote to me: "I have experienced the economic life of this country from many different positions, and I know that fate often determines whether someone will have financial stability. That is wrong." A political lesson can be drawn from Mamdani. With his elegant suits and natural eloquence, he makes no effort to conceal his social status or his prestigious degree in the humanities. Rather than elevating leaders who pretend to belong to the working class, socialists and left-wing populists would probably do better by presenting themselves unapologetically as they are: concerned, disillusioned, and often angry members of the educated professional class.
Source: news.bg