Radical Chic Continues
Review of Freddie deBoer's latest book: How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
At the beginning of last month, the prolific substacker and self-identified Marxist Fredrik deBoer published his second book provocatively titled How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. In some ways this work is a sequel to his first book, The Cult of Smart, which was a critique of education policy and America’s culture of meritocracy. In The Cult of Smart, he alleged that America’s dominant social hierarchy is an artificially selected and maintained innate (genetic) aristocracy. This was a similar claim to those offered by other academic and think tank social scientists like Michael Sandel, Richard Reeves, and Charles Murray, but it was possibly more pessimistic and more left-wing than those prior critiques. Regardless, it was an argument that demanded attention at the end of the ‘10s and beginning of ‘20s.
In How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, deBoer turns his critical focus on a similarly urgent issue in public discourse, social justice movements and far Left politicking in America. As a fellow traveler and activist himself, deBoer offers a sympathetic analysis of the various pathologies that plague left-wing politics today. His central contention is that progressive and socialist activism, especially of the truly radical variety, has been captured by a particular iteration of affluent, urban liberals and their peculiar ideas.1 This cadre of elites has gone by many names,2 but deBoer is partial to the label that columnist David Brooks famously pioneered, the bourgeois bohemians or bo-bos. This class of elite or elite-adjacent liberals adopt revolutionary aesthetics but practice bourgeois/traditional ethics.
But are the bo-bos really what ails Left movement politics in America today? Let’s examine deBoer’s complaint.
American progressive movements are forever wandering from the righteous to the ridiculous.
~Freddie deBoer, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement (2023)
Revolutionary Theatre
In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, the first of its scale in one hundred years, a black man named George Floyd died after a police officer named Derek Chauvin restrained him by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes. These events, captured on video by cell phone and shared ubiquitously on social and legacy media, sparked waves of protests across America and to some extent the world. Given the ambient activity of Black Lives Matter (BLM) since 2014, the social response was only unsurprising in its intensity, duration, and distribution. Some of the protests spiraled into looting, property destruction, and violence. In some places, like the Pacific Northwest, segments of cities were nearly handed over to protesters, so called autonomous zones. Nearly all American institutions demonstrated or echoed support for the protests. This level of on-the-ground activism, pitched public protests, and corresponding institutional deference were arguably unparalleled in American history.
Then, nothing happened. No national legislation. No real reform of policing. Everyone quietly returned to business as usual.
Elites and the Great Political Stasis
In How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, deBoer reaches out to his compatriots on the Left and tries to explain why their urgent demands for sociopolitical change embodied by movements like Occupy, BLM, and #MeToo have dissipated. He pins most of the blame on a phenomenon called “elite capture.” Elite capture can mean a lot of different things, but in deBoer’s usage he’s referring to a process in which a smaller group of elites assumes leadership of a larger group of activists or even the entirety of the public and leads them astray. The elite group co-opts the energy, aesthetics, and purpose of said grassroots movement on whatever the particular issue du jour (say racial justice) and then substitutes their own agenda under the aegis of that righteous original issue (say self-enrichment or self-actualization). This capture is often not a conscious process on the part of the elites, who may be genuinely well-meaning. The elites are simply responding to institutional incentives and class-based cultural affinities; in other words, self-interest and class-interest wins the day; elite interests naturally tend to diverge from those they try to represent.
The idea of elite capture sounds a bit conspiratorial, but there is a body of scholarship, called elite theory, pioneered by Italian social scientists like Vilfredo Pareto, that has long asserted and worked to demonstrate the primacy of elite influence on political arrangements and decision-making. In some ways, elite theory is axiomatic. Leaders of groups necessarily emerge and these leaders inevitably garner status not available to those they lead. However, we’ll set aside to what extent elite theories are true and useful and pay more attention to how interesting it is to see a Marxist like deBoer turn to elite theory for answers to his discontent. Historically, proponents of elite theory like James Burnham tend to populate the political Right,3 but elite theorists of the Right also tend to be materialists, a point of agreement with Marxist.4
I am sympathetic to elite theory, but I wish deBoer’s analysis delved deeper into the current structure of the American elite and their incentive structures. He does some ethnography of the bo-bos, which probably comprise the book’s most entertaining portions, but this is not particularly new information to anyone who follows cultural trends and public discourse nor does it really plumb the origins of bo-bos. He does spend a chapter exploring the problems inherent to America’s non-profit sector, which he argues are generally vanity projects of the uber-wealthy that enervates young idealists and waste public and private resources. But this is really the only chapter that explores how the structure and function of institutions can themselves disarm Left politicking. Plus, his analysis is not particularly rigorous. For instance, it remains unclear why the non-profit sector is not also the bane of normal liberal or even conservative politicking. I imagine deBoer’s response would be that their interest are enmeshed with continuance of the status quo, but I think members of these respective political faction would say otherwise.
Additionally, deBoer plays a bit fast and loose with his definition of who is elite. His invocations of the term are often a bit vague. He does take a chapter to explore how the goals of BLM were inexorably subject to management by Americans of the professional managerial class (PMC), whose experiences, interests, and competencies diverge sharply from the black Americans living in blighted urban areas, who are more often subject to aggressive police conduct and weather a great deal of intra-community violence. Black Americans in need thus become symbols in what Liam Kofi Bright calls “White Psychodrama” (essentially liberal white guilt) rather than flesh-and-blood people in need. Black members of the PMC also tend to be too removed from the median experiences of black Americans to be of help. They become unhelpfully interested in race consciousness, linguistic gestures, and taking advantage of financial opportunities offered eagerly by liberal white elites who are trying to assuage their personal feelings of culpability. Although this narrative seems descriptively accurate, it would have been more compelling if this qualitative analysis was buttressed by some rigor.
Although deBoer’s elite capture argument is less airtight that desired, there also appears to be few alternative explanations for the very real observation that social justice movement do seem to fizzle out unlike social movement of America’s past (e.g. Civil Rights, Women’s suffrage, etc). Plus, there is a lot of social science, some of which is quite taboo to mention, that could be leverage to support deBoer’s framework. It just remains unused and unreferenced in this book.
Also, I don’t want to overemphasize the dependence of deBoer’s critique of contemporary social justice on elite capture. It is certainly the main thrust of the argument, but the broader ideology of today’s social justice movement doesn’t escape his notice either. And by social justice ideology, I am of course referring to the charged term “wokeness,” which deBoer endeavors to avoid. Nonetheless, deBoer reluctantly highlights the many ways in which ideas on the Left have muddied into a quagmire of self-defeat and paralysis. As part of an argument for a return to “class-based leftism,” deBoer argues that predicating political operations on playing language games and constructing ever more specified hierarchies of oppression/suffering are an exercise in futility. It is a politics of the abstract rather than the concrete. It is invested too much in symbols and not in material.
Unfortunately, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement is itself a bit plagued by the ideas deBoer attacks. He is caught by some of the same ideological, or at least rhetorical, traps. For example, he has to do a ridiculous amount of throat-clearing early in the book before he can even start his critique. Page after page is squandered to prove that deBoer is attuned to the contemporary sensibilities of the progressive Left. He goes to great lengths to demonstrate his bonafides as an authentic and passionate member of the in-group. In a dark irony, this aspect of the book is maybe the greatest argument for the existence of the problems deBoer is getting at. However, it seems like a quite deeper bind than just dispensing with some unhelpful idea. Is it possible their is rot at the core of the whole ideology?5
How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement is a useful introduction to contemporary political dynamics on the Left in America. It is a narrative account of both the problems of elite capture and ideological confusion plaguing the Left. Primarly exploring the former issue, deBoer asserts that the structural incentives of social media, nonprofits, the Democratic party, and corporations (woke capital) have rendered radical politics impotent. He does a reasonable, if superficial, job of explaining the competing web of incentives and the different ways that institutional parameters end up diffusing rather than concentrating radical energies. Beyond the thinness of the analysis, the central issue with his thesis is that it is partly premised on the idea that there is actually authentic radical energy to concentrate. I don't really see any good evidence of this. America, for lack of more erudite phrasing, seems fat and happy. We can look at deBoer’s professional success as case and point here. Despite a somewhat wayward and tragic youth, which saw early the loss of both parents and harrowing battles with mental illness, deBoer is now in his 40s making six figures writing at Substack and living in Brooklyn. How can one truly sustain radical politics amidst prosperous success? This is why deBoer's praise for left wing radicalism feels so hollow in this text - something that has gone unnoticed by other reviewers. In some ways, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement makes for a great read as it illustrates just how the prosperity and leisure available in 21st century America make the expression of radicalism quaint - more a nostalgic reverie than an urgent desiderata.
This book, of course, is not only diagnosis. As hinted above, deBoer’s prescription is a return to class-based politics - one that prioritizes improving the material conditions of the poor and reorganizing the market-based economic architecture of society. These prescription comprise quite an anachronistic plea. Hasn’t deBoer considered that material conditions themselves may be the reason why the Left has abandoned a focus on class? He is certainly aware that the Left is largely no longer made up of the working class. And those of poor and working class statuses on the Left tend towards more moderate and conservative political outlooks than the elite on the Left. In sum, deBoer may have delivered a nice eulogy for a bonafide Left, or at least his understanding of class-based Leftism, in American politics. The aesthetics and rhetoric of radicalism may endure but the essential arrangement of our polity will remain liberal.6
The Legacy of Radical Chic
The most glaring omission of How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement is any reference to the brilliant 1970’s satirical piece by Tom Wolfe called “Radical Chic.” Wolfe’s “Radical Chic” dissects the fashionable practice of upper-class liberals to associate with radical causes and movements. Most of the piece follows Wolfe’s visit to a party hosted by the famous conductor Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia for the Black Panther Party in their Park Avenue duplex. It is a memorable exposé of the hypocrisy and vanity of elites, especially concerning progressive causes. It is an exquisite look at how demonstrations of sympathy for oppressed groups tend to function solipsistically and eventually parodically too, marring all involved.
The existence of Wolfe’s “Radical Chic” is somewhat inimical to deBoer’s thesis. It is possible deBoer’s omission indicates concern on this point (of course, it is also reasonable to contend the essay is outside of the book’s scope too). First, I think “Radical Chic” suggests that elite capture may be inescapable at least in America. Presumably, deBoer would dismiss with various arguments, especially with the fact that there has been substantial progress on racial issues since 1970 and the Black Panther Party is no longer a political presence. However, pointing to social progress as evidence against elite capture isn’t dispositive as we haven’t demonstrated the actual cause of said social progress. Second, “Radical Chic” suggests there may be pathologies or at least contradictions at the core of elite liberal thought. These contradiction may forever prevent productive collaboration on issue of social and material justice. Finally, the reappearance of things that look like “Radical Chic” or elite capture may suggest that we have quite a bit less control over our material condition and political arrangements than we believe. It is possible deBoer’s materialism is not nearly as deep as it could or should be. It is possible our concerns with these things is concern for epiphenomenon, meanwhile the real causal variable operate beyond our awareness.
Regardless, I think it is important to look back at our history to see that many of the problems of today are not that dissimilar from the past. I can’t explain exactly why liberal elites have such an affinity for aesthetic of the far Left and their allegedly oppressed constituents or if they’re wholly to blame for failures of left-wing politics. All I can say is that we seem to be living in the same way as before, which means it may be quite a durable arrangement.
This loosely refers to various fashionable ideas among liberal elites, including postmodernism and what Yascha Mounk has recently called the identity synthesis, which fuses various casual notions of identity with various academic frameworks including intersectionality, critical race theory, gender theory, queer theory, standpoint epistemology, etc.
latte liberals, limousine liberals, champagne socialist, chardonnay socialist, Gauche caviar, bourgeois bohemians, etc. These terms tend to be used pejoratively. Brooks bourgeois bohemians formulation is probably the least charged.
This is not strictly true. There have been a number of elite theorists of the political Left, though their frameworks have often been a bit somewhat more conspiratorial, e.g. C. Wright Mills’ The Power Elite or perhaps a better and more recent example, Jane Mayers’ Dark Money.
Burnham himself was an ardent Trotskyite before his conversion. One wonders if such a conversion is underway in deBoer’s heart. This, of course, will be the charge made by eager critics.
This isn’t considered by deBoer as again it would make his claims null and void to the audience he’s hoping to reach. Plus, it would be a betrayal to ideas he’s held dear for a long time. However, there are many places in the work where there are crack where he does make concession to the fact that his worldview, a radically egalitarian ideology, is perhaps inconsistent with the defaults and limits of the human condition.
And by liberal I mean a Western democracy with a mostly market economy and a culture that prioritizes individual expression over communal solidarity.
I think it worth expanding upon the "elite" concept a bit more.
A ruling "elite" can be contrasted with a ruling "class", where the former is dynamic and the latter is static. Hence why it is also more difficult to point to concrete persons, families or groups which makes up said elite. People move up and down from, or in and out of the elite all the time. It makes the most sense to speak of a ruling elite, rather than a ruling class, in societies such as ours that are marked by a high degree of social mobility and individual atomization.
If you do a Google Ngram search for elite, you'll see that usage increases from around 1920 and then takes off from around 1950. This strongly indicates that the notion of a ruling elite is tied to how modern mass democracies functions, but that it has lesser relevance to how most societies e.g. pre 1900 functioned.
When it comes to the contemporary Left, I think you describe many of their deficiencies quite well. They seem to not want to admit that they actually are the elite.
Good review.
It's tempting to read this as a defense of wokeness – as force that largely moderates Marxist and other radical elements on the left. One cheer for elite capture?