How elite competition turns into culture war

And how the left-leaning professional class empowers its own gravediggers.

Oct 30, 2024

In his 1976 The Coming of Post-industrial Society, sociologist Daniel Bell highlighted how changes to the global economy were leading to the emergence of a new social order—one driven by a “knowledge economy,” dominated by technical elites, and highly stratified on the basis of factors like intellectual acumen and academic credentials. Meanwhile, he argued, the labor and assets of those who traded in material goods and services would become increasingly devalued, leading to growing tensions between the technocrats and everyone else. Exacerbating these tensions, Bell argued, was the widespread embrace among intellectuals of what essayist Lionel Trilling referred to as “adversary culture.”

Within the new elite class, people gained status through delegitimizing and denigrating institutions, traditions, values, and ways of life associated with the middle class. This, Bell argued, would lead to further mistrust of and resentment against the new elites—as the “common man” was being marginalized not just within the economy but within the culture as well. Moreover, Bell noted, there were two deep tensions in the cultural project of these new elites.

First, adversary culture was itself unmistakably a product of the very bourgeois culture it condemned and was, therefore, unlikely to present a true threat to the prevailing order. Indeed, although these new elites continued to view themselves as outsiders and subversives, they were themselves, increasingly, “the man.” This leads to the second core tension: Insofar as these new elites were successful in advancing adversary culture, they could ultimately end up destroying the foundations of their own authority (i.e., trust in science, expertise, rationality, meritocracy, universities, the press, etc.).

The dynamic Bell described becomes especially clear during Awokenings. These are periods in which frustrated erstwhile elites attempt to delegitimize and displace establishment rivals (to make room for themselves) by indicting symbolic capitalist institutions and successful symbolic capitalists as too cozy with the wealthy and the privileged—and by presenting themselves as more authentic or effective champions for minoritized populations and the poor. Incumbents generally respond to these campaigns by trying to show that they are just as committed to eliminating inequalities as their critics or are even better allies for the marginalized and disadvantaged. That is, they try to meet or outflank their critics on “social justice” issues—creating a new consensus position among symbolic capitalists that is more symbolically “left” than before the Awokening. This, in turn, creates an opportunity for the opponents of mainstream symbolic capitalists to enhance their credibility, notoriety, and influence.

Symbolic capitalists are generally much farther to the left on “culture” issues than most Americans. “Awokenings” drive them to stake out positions that are even farther out of touch with the rest of their countrymen — and make the gaps more salient.

Again, symbolic capitalists are generally much farther to the left on “culture” issues than most Americans—and Awokenings drive them to stake out positions that are even farther out of touch with the rest of their countrymen. And as symbolic capitalists become more aggressive in trying to impose their values and priorities on others—and confronting, denigrating, marginalizing, or sanctioning those who refuse to get with the program—the differences between them and everyone else don’t merely grow larger, they also become much more salient. Moreover, during these interelite struggles, symbolic capitalists tend to be very publicly divided among themselves, with a faction of frustrated and aspiring elites explicitly disparaging more established symbolic capitalists and their affiliated institutions, often while they are themselves engaged in discourse and performative displays that strike most “normies” as extreme, unappealing, and ridiculous. Consequently, both established elites and frustrated aspirants often end up mutually discredited in the eyes of much of the public by the time Awokenings have run their course.

Right-aligned symbolic capitalists—anti-wokes and conservatives—often try to exploit and exacerbate both the divisions within mainstream symbolic capitalists and the growing gulf between the mainstream consensus position and the rest of society. They attempt to lump insurgents and incumbents together as corrupt, out of touch, and out of control. Right-aligned symbolic capitalists and their allies paint themselves as populists who will restore order, sanity, and dignity to the country and its institutions—or, that failing, defund, dismantle, and disempower them. What starts out as an intermainstream struggle often devolves into a left-right struggle.

Awokenings and culture wars, therefore, tend to travel hand in hand—and dramatic leftward movements within symbolic capitalist institutions are usually followed by “red waves” at the ballot box and beyond. Terms that were once the subject of inter-Left disputes, such as “identity politics,” “political correctness,” and “woke,” are appropriated by the Right as cudgels to attack everyone left of center and come to be used in almost exclusively pejorative or ironic ways. These conservative shifts that follow Awokenings are often uncharitably described as “backlash” against progress. However, readers should recall that, since the 1960s, progress toward egalitarianism has largely stalled out on most fronts—with the relationships between Blacks and whites, rich and poor, roughly the same as they were sixty years ago. There is no meaningful relationship between Awokenings and material gains for marginalized and disadvantaged populations, nor is there a meaningful connection between Awokenings and durable attitudinal changes among the general public. If anything, there has been an inverse relationship between Awokenings and material “progress” from the second Awokening forward.

When Americans shift right in the aftermath of Awokenings, they are generally not reacting against material changes that benefit marginalized populations at the expense of the majority.

It is actually somewhat intuitive that Awokenings could correspond with a perpetuation or exacerbation of inequalities given that these uprisings are fundamentally “about” frustrated elite aspirants trying to secure superior social positions. But what this means with respect to interpreting the culture wars is that, when Americans shift right in the aftermath of Awokenings, they are generally not reacting against material changes that benefit marginalized populations at the expense of the majority group. Those have been few and far between and don’t cleanly correlate well with Awokenings in any case. The “backlash” instead seems to be about growing alienation among “normies” from elite culture and elite institutions, whose outputs shift far more during Awokenings than any laws or relative material circumstances between groups.

Across the board, trust in experts tends to decline during Great Awokenings. In their aftermath, however, attitudes tend to polarize. Left-aligned Americans shift from critiquing mainstream symbolic capitalist institutions to trying to bolster their legitimacy. Trust among right-aligned Americans, meanwhile, is often more durably eroded. One regular response to this erosion of trust is to construct alternative (right-valenced) infrastructures for cultural production. These often persist long after Awokenings and anti-Wokenings have run their course and durably undermine the authority and reach of mainstream symbolic capitalists.

The institutions formed in reaction to Awokenings tend to have an existential stake in sowing mistrust in mainstream symbolic capitalists and perpetuating the culture wars.

For instance, in the aftermath of the second Great Awokening (about 1965-74), many on the right concluded that academia was a lost cause and sought to establish an alternative ecosystem for right-aligned intellectual pursuits, beginning with the establishment of the Heritage Foundation (1973) and the Cato Institute (1977). In the wake of the third Great Awokening (late 1980s and early 90s), there was a perception that a right-aligned intellectual sphere was not enough, and there were moves to establish right-aligned media, beginning with a major push for conservative talk radio and culminating with the 1996 establishment of Fox News. In the midst of the current Awokening, there have been repeated attempts to establish right-aligned social media spaces, from Parler to Truth Social to Elon Musk’s “anti-woke” takeover of Twitter and Peter Theil and J. D. Vance’s major investments in Rumble.

In each Awokening, the already-large gap between symbolic capitalists and the general public tends to rapidly expand and is made highly salient. This creates a perceived market for alternative institutions of cultural production. Born out of the culture wars, these new institutions tend to have an existential stake in perennially sowing mistrust in mainstream symbolic capitalists and perpetuating the culture wars. They build symbolic capital for themselves, capture audience share, and grow their revenues by depicting mainstream institutions as biased, exclusionary, censorious, and out of touch. To the extent that mainstream symbolic capitalists actually do come to approximate these right-wing caricatures during periods of Awokening, they produce and empower their own gravediggers.

Musa al-Gharbi (@Musa_alGharbi) is a sociologist, Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University, and a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center.