BROOKS: Karl's New Manifesto - New York Times

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Lyon <jelyon () mac com>
Date: May 30, 2005 3:03:24 PM EDT
To: "johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com" <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Subject: [johnmacsgroup] BROOKS: Karl's New Manifesto - New York Times
Reply-To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/opinion/29brooks.html

Karl's New Manifesto
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 29, 2005

I was in the library reading room when suddenly a strange specter of  
a man
appeared above me. He was a ragged fellow with a bushy beard, dressed  
in the
clothes of another century. He clutched news clippings on class in  
America,
and atop the pile was a manifesto in his own hand. He was gone in an
instant, but Karl's manifesto on modern America remained. This is  
what it
said:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggle. Freeman and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and  
proletariat, in a
word oppressor and oppressed, stand in opposition to each other and  
carry on
a constant fight. In the information age, in which knowledge is power  
and
money, the class struggle is fought between the educated elite and the
undereducated masses.

The information age elite exercises artful dominion of the means of
production, the education system. The median family income of a Harvard
student is $150,000. According to the Educational Testing Service,  
only 3
percent of freshmen at the top 146 colleges come from the poorest  
quarter of
the population. The educated class ostentatiously offers financial  
aid to
poor students who attend these colleges and then rigs the admission  
criteria
to ensure that only a small, co-optable portion of them can get in.

The educated class reaps the benefits of the modern economy - seizing  
for
itself most of the income gains of the past decades - and then  
ruthlessly
exploits its position to ensure the continued dominance of its class.

The educated class has torn away from the family its sentimental veil  
and
reduced it to a mere factory for the production of little meritocrats.
Members of the educated elites are more and more likely to marry each  
other,
which the experts call assortative mating, but which is really a  
ceaseless
effort to refortify class solidarity and magnify social isolation.  
Children
are turned into workaholic knowledge workers - trained, tutored,  
tested and
prepped to strengthen class dominance.

The educated elites are the first elites in all of history to work  
longer
hours per year than the exploited masses, so voracious is their greed  
for
second homes. They congregate in exclusive communities walled in by the
invisible fence of real estate prices, then congratulate themselves for
sending their children to public schools. They parade their enlightened
racial attitudes by supporting immigration policies that guarantee
inexpensive lawn care. They send their children off to Penn,  
Wisconsin and
Berkeley, bastions of privilege for the children of the professional  
class,
where they are given the social and other skills to extend class  
hegemony.

The information society is the only society in which false  
consciousness is
at the top. For it is an iron rule of any university that the higher the
tuition and more exclusive the admissions, the more loudly the denizens
profess their solidarity with the oppressed. The more they  
objectively serve
the right, the more they articulate the views of the left.

Periodically members of this oppressor class hold mock elections. The
Yale-educated scion of the Bush family may face the Yale-educated  
scion of
the Winthrop family. They divide into Republicans and Democrats and  
argue
over everything except the source of their power: the intellectual
stratification of society achieved through the means of education.

More than the Roman emperors, more than the industrial robber barons,  
the
malefactors of the educated class seek not only to dominate the working
class, but to decimate it. For 30 years they have presided over failing
schools without fundamentally transforming them. They have imposed a  
public
morality that affords maximum sexual opportunity for themselves and
guarantees maximum domestic chaos for those lower down.

In 1960 there were not big structural differences between rich and poor
families. In 1960, three-quarters of poor families were headed by  
married
couples. Now only a third are. While the rates of single parenting have
barely changed for the educated elite, family structures have  
disintegrated
for the oppressed masses.

Poor children are less likely to live with both biological parents,  
hence,
less likely to graduate from high school, get a job and be in a  
position to
challenge the hegemony of the privileged class. Family inequality  
produces
income inequality from generation to generation.

Undereducated workers of the world, unite! Let the ruling educated class
tremble! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world  
to win!

I don't agree with everything in Karl's manifesto, because I don't  
believe
in incessant class struggle, but you have to admit, he makes some good
points.




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