The Not So Sudden Death of the American Dream

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. Joel Kotkin. New York: Encounter, 2020.

“History never repeats itself. Man always does.”

In the classic 80s film, Back to the Future, Marty McFly, played by one of the icons of 80s cool, Michael J. Fox, travels back to the year 1955 to visit the America of his parents’ youth.

To the shock of the time traveling Marty, the small California town of Hill Valley, in which his parents grew up, is full of chipper and friendly well-dressed Americans. The town sign adorned Rotary Club and Future Farmers of America signs, proudly states, “A Nice Place to Live.”

However, there is a tremendous sense of unease that Marty feels, and after picking up a paper that reads “November 5, 1955,” Fox’s Marty McFly exclaims, “This has gotta be a dream.”

Indeed, as the scene opens, with The Four Ace’s version of “Mr. Sandman.”

There is thus a palpable feeling that the world of Eisenhauer era, despite its flaws, appeared to the Americans of the Reagan Era as an impossible dream world in which life truly was better—although there is always “Biff” and the Tannen family of bullies to deal with.

In his recent work, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, Chapman University’s Joel Kotkin raises the alarm that the tidy bourgeois life of the flourishing and prosperous middle class, idealized in Back to the Future, is nearly dead.

Rather than being a grouchy complaint, however, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is cri de coeur of a man truly concerned about the prospects of living in a world in which a very small minority of the population controls the day to day lives of the rest of the world who live in abject poverty.

At the center of Kotkin’s argument is the notion that “history also regresses” and that the world is currently regressing to a situation very similar to Europe (and much of the rest of the world) during (the early and middle portion of) the Middle Ages. While acknowledging that there were some admirable qualities of the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, Kotkin sees medieval life as primarily being defined by the rule of an educated and corrupt elite over a hapless, poor, and enfeebled peasantry.

As even secular medievalists note, the situation in the Middle Ages was much more complex than this. Kotkin’s argument does accurately describe some aspects of premodern human life.

Nonetheless, Kotkin, argues that, beginning in Holland, Europe, during the Reformation and Renaissance underwent a radical change in which the advent of capitalism and liberalism allowed for a radical increase in the size of the middle class. This economic revolution, which eventually led to industrialization, (which itself, Kotkin notes, was not without its faults) and the eventual rise and dominance and then global exportation of what became known as the American way of life in the twentieth century.

However, in the twenty first century, with the rise of the new Web 2.0 and the tremendous influence of Silicon Valley tech companies, the rise of a global middle class that, at least on some level, enjoyed the liberties of the Enlightenment project, has been halted and sent in reverse.

As Kotkin demonstrates, there are numerous signs that a new feudalism is a upon us.

A large percentage of young people, not only in the United States, but throughout the world, anticipate a future without owning a home or raising a family and living on less income than their parents or grandparents.

In contrast to this mass of underemployed youth, is a new elite class, primarily in the tech sector, supported by journalists and academics, which now has near monopoly control over information on the web (as well as variety economic monopolies in numerous sectors) and is attempting exercise more and more control over the physical, lived space of the world’s population.

Moreover, as opposed to the elegant “Mandarin” class of China or the top hat adorned plutocrats of the gilded age, this new class dresses in hoodies and baseball caps and promises a future of diversity, equity, and inclusion—Kotkin interestingly notes that early tech gurus such as Steve Jobs set the standard of robing oneself in a “hippy” persona to avoid criticism.  However, these new Mandarins have far more wealth and are rapidly developing the ability to exercise far more power than their aristocratic predecessors did in early periods of world history.

Furthermore, while earlier generations of aristocrats often (but not always) saw themselves as members of a specific place and culture, the new tech elite consider themselves “Anywheres,” or citizens of the world ,who often look with scorn on those “Somewheres” who are attached to their religion, culture, and hometown.

As Kotkin demonstrates, Silicon Valley and much of California itself has become emblematic of the divide between the ultra-wealthy and the poor attempt to subsist on government handouts and income from the “gig economy.” Many young people in the valley and throughout the bay area live on couches or in their cars, and a pronounced criminal underclass has emerged in the shadow of the big tech companies.

Kotkin also notes the tremendously deleterious effect heavy internet use has had on Millennials and members of Generation Z, inhibiting their cognitive and social functions. It is, as Kotkin argues, as if the nightmare intellectual and class divide between Alphas and Deltas in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, is emerging in our very midst.

Perhaps the most curious and most interesting elements in The Rise of Neo-Feudalism is Joel Kotkin’s use of argument drawn from left wing and even Marxist thinkers. As Kotkin rightly implies, while the most obnoxious elements on the left today are concerned with race and gender issues, there are still genuine “liberals” who employ a genuine (if, at times, misguided) concern for improving the conditions of the poor and working class.

It may even be possible for genuine liberals and conservatives to work together in the fight against neo-feudalism.

The second important and unique element in The Rise of Neo-Feudalism is Joel Kotkin’s global vision. As Kotkin notes, the middle classes of Europe and America are rapidly dwindling, but similar phenomena are occurring throughout Asia as well. China, a country with an allegedly blooming middle class, is in fact, an increasingly economically divided country with a class of desperate poor cordoned off from the wealthy.

Even amidst the emergence of nationalism, it is possible for people across the globe to work together in the struggle for authentic freedom and just prosperity.

In 1978 Arthur William Bell III, known simply as Art Bell, launched his conspiracy program West Coast AM, later to be known by its more popular moniker Coast to Coast AM. Long before the emergence of twenty-first century conspiracy culture, Coast to Coast dominated the airwaves with its stories, of UFOs, ghosts, and government conspiracies. With the 1990s sci-fi drama, The X-Files, there was always the sense that Coast to Coast was more entertainment than actual journalism. Certainly, there was some truth to some of Bell’s episodes, but the presence of characters such as the “Man from the Future” always provided comfort and assurance that the American way of life would go on despite what the “Illuminati” had planned.

However, what is so startingly about Kotkin’s The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is not that it is describing a yet to be developed world feared by radio and internet conspiracy theorists: Kotkin is describing the dystopian world in which we are already living.

It is thus incumbent about conservatives to work together with honest and sincere liberals who truly believe in personal freedoms and true economic social justice on a global scale to build a better future in which not only America, but the world can be great again.

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