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Yves here. Tom Neuburger’s recap of Stanley Dundee’s taxonomy of key groups in American politics provides a simple, coherent explanation of why our politics suck and why mass voters are so disempowered. It is consistent with another overview we have long favored, political scientist Tom Ferguson’s “golden rule” theory, that American politics has long been money-driven.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
“Masters are the rulers. Minions corral the muppets. The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them to serve the muppets.”
—Stanley Dundee
“Only the destitute are blameless.”
—John Dominic Crossan’s translation of “Blessed are the poor…”
Following Robert Benchley’s admonition, I’ve long advocated for a three-part view of the nation, a vertical view, a look from top to bottom. This will be a simplification to be sure, but it usefully illustrates a few hidden truths.
Three Layers of American Parties
Let’s start with this: What do people think of when they say “the Democrats did X” or “those Republicans did Y”? Not all “Democrats” are Democrats; same with Republicans. Most people are neither. They have no control; they exist to be marketed to.
Let’s be specific. Each of these parties is divided, like Gaul, in three parts. The stratification is vertical.
Layer 1 are the leaders, deciders, people with real party power: the Schumers, the Trumps, the Millers, the Pelosis, the Obamas. This group also includes the lessers — Mike Johnson, Mark Penn, Lindsay Graham, the Podestas, J.D. Vance and the like, the higher consultants and upper strata of Money. These, in the aggregate, run their particular show, do the deeds that control the nation.
Layer 2 are the flag-wavers, people who carry the banner and rouse the troops — the activists, consultants, media allies and organizers, messengers and advocates. Ezra Klein is in this group. So is the army of consultants and surrogates who “get out the word,” bend media ears, get on the talk shows and sparkle. They raise the banner and cheer, hoping to move the masses to cheer along.
There are greater and lesser among them. Some work for candidates in reasonably high positions (think Jennifer Palmieri or Nicolle Wallace); others toil in the fields, harvest and glean the crops, encourage the locals, get out the vote in precincts from Maine to Alaska.
It can be a noble calling, waving the flag, depending one what’s being encouraged. All local organizing, for example, involves showing the banner and trying to move the unmoved.
Layer 3 is the largest group, the masses, the multitudes. People like us — the millions on millions of voters and equally large numbers of angry and disaffected. The target market, in other words, for the other two groups. If candidates are soap, these are the weekly shoppers.
Note that in the U.S., the masses can’t literally be Democrats or Republicans, however they fancy themselves. They’re bystanders when it comes to deciding; they have no say. They’re asked to vote when the party decides who will run, and only rarely get candidates they themselves choose. Sorry to add this, but primaries really don’t matter. Sanders in 2020 is an excellent example; the Party picked against Sanders, and Sanders was out. Trump in 2016 is the rare counter-example.
These are the layers of what Americans call a party — layer 1, layer 2, layer 3, each with their place. By this reckoning the “party” is small; only at the top does an organized group exist whose wishes are heard.
Keep these distinctions in mind. I’ll refer to these layers later. When we talk about “the Democrats,” it matters which layer we mean.
Masters, Minions and Muppets
This brings me to Stanley Dundee. He holds a similar tripartite view of the nation, a division that’s especially true economically, since in metastasized Western culture, only money gives life. That’s by design; God didn’t make us this way.
Here’s Dundee’s national three-part division:
Class in the USA: Masters, Minions, and Muppets
2020-07-29 v. 1
Masters, the 1% of the 1%, are the owners and rulers. Minions, aka the professional-managerial class (PMC), corral the muppets (precariat working class) on behalf of the masters. The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them into service to the muppets. For that, we’ll need muppet solidarity.
To a first approximation, there are three classes in the USA. At the top is the ruling elite, the one percent of the one percent. These are the owners and rulers. I’ll call them the masters.
Next, scrabbling for advantage in the meritocracy, we find the professional-managerial class (PMC). About 10-15% of the population, the PMC is essential to the continued rule of the masters. The PMC carries out most of the crucial missions of the masters, of which the most important mission might be maintaining the tribal divisions outside of the ruling elite. In recognition of the importance of the PMC role, I designate the PMC as minions.
At the bottom (85-90%) is everybody else. The precariat. As we used to say on Wall Street, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re on the menu. Hence, I’ll designate the bottom rung as muppets.
Muppets are a resource to be exploited by the minions on behalf of the masters, not unlike oil, lumber, and soil. Or perhaps domestic livestock is the best analog. To keep the muppets in line, a never-ending program of divide-and-conquer is played by the minions in the media. Muppets are divided into ever-narrower slices according to the dictates of identity politics, and are encouraged to hate each other and blame each other for their ever-worsening conditions. The cure for this affliction is muppet solidarity.
Thus is the nation divided. Why does this matter?
Because minions are loyal to masters. They feed from the master’s table on scraps they’re allowed. That’s still a good life; scraps from the feast is a meal, especially so when the other choice is to starve. A low-end minion can make $100,000 a year running the system that pulls millions a week for the masters.
It should be obvious from this that minions — the PMC, professional management class — are the key to the whole operation. Without them the state comes apart. With them, the muppets are managed, milked and controlled.
Notes for Future Discussion
A few additional comments before we get out. (These will be expanded on later; this is long already.)
The Ratios
Notice the relative numbers of these three groups:
- Masters: the 1% of the 1%. Some estimate this at about 300,000 households, but in terms of sway, I think less than 1000 people make decisions that count.
- Minions: the top 10–15%. Minions by definition are comfortable financially — earning good salaries, enough to feel reasonably safe unless overextended. Minions win when the masters gain; an economy that’s good for masters is good for them too. That’s almost by definition; it’s how and why they’re rewarded. Their loyalty is bought in a structure where money is life.
- Muppets: all of the rest, the bottom 85–90%. While those above them do well, they stay flat or do worse. Muppets are those who are milked when their betters need wealth. Their betters always need wealth.
This matches rather closely the ratios in classical societies like Rome:
- The ruler and governing class: about 1%
Retainers (administrators and soldiers): about 5%
Merchants and priests: some small number - Tradesmen, artisans, peasants and slaves: about 85%. Their wealth is taxed; they struggle to stay alive.
- The expendables, unclean, destitute: 5-10%. The refuse; they die in the streets.
(Source: The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan, Ch 3.)
Can the Management Class Switch Sides?
To bring down a system that maintains all this oppression, the minions must side with the muppets. Repeating Dundee from above:
The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them into service to the muppets. For that, we’ll need muppet solidarity.
Is muppet solidarity likely? Is it even possible? Dundee thinks the chances are low. So does Amber A’Lee Frost, whom he quotes:
The [DSA event] culminated during the Q and A, wherein a woman earnestly asked, What do I do if some alt-right guy wants to be in the union? Visibly vexed, I replied that if an alt-right guy wants to be in your union, you won. This … is the very premise of a union: it is not a social club for people of shared progressive values; it’s a shared struggle … She did not appear convinced.
These divisions are made and promoted, they serve the masters. But they’re also genetic; the species we are, and those from which we came, spent millions of years in tribes. Each tribe has a culture, and conflicts naturally arise.
“Only the destitute are blameless”
Finally, consider the state as the perp in this story — its nature, its very existence.
Without strong, strict and exploitable social hierarchies, these crimes can’t occur. Tribal societies, the life we were bred to live, don’t have these divisions, the kind that treats people as beasts. But once established, state power protects state power for the sake of the masters; only disaggregation or collapse will end their rule.
And notice this feature of that world: Everyone not at the bottom exploits someone below. Everyone.
It’s why John Dominic Crossan, in his books on the historical Jesus, Jesus the philosopher, translates this saying:
“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
(Sayings Gospel Q, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Luke)
as this:
“Only the destitute are blameless.”
Only those at the bottom don’t immiserate others. Life in a state. No wonder Jesus was killed.
This is basically the classic feudal model which capitalist plutocracies/oligarchies then seek to reinstate.
Adam Smith would be spitting at this perversion of his model. He hated monopolists.
Class politics never was supplanted. We are neoserfs.
But as Joel Kotkin’s ‘Coming of Neo-feudalism’ outline argues – neofeudalism involves much stronger power differentials.
Varoufakis then wrote a varation on this theme in ‘Technifeudalism’ – possibly even less optimistic..
The fin/tech- or techno-feudalism argument points to an important element left out of Neuburger’s otherwise useful model: mobility – and hope. There was a relatively brief moment in US history (and that of the West in general) when the economy was expanding and there was enough mobility that many (if not all) muppets could expect steady improvements in their standard of living and the real possibility that their children might become minions. That is no longer the case, as inequality has grown much greater and the means for inter-class mobility have shrunk considerably as we head toward a neo-feudal future. The resulting discontent will mean that “divide and conquer” strategies will be even more important, as will the mechanisms of repression. Events like Charlie Kirk’s assassination provide a useful example of how both will work.
Muppet solidarity! It’s our only hope.
The Global Database on Intergenerational Mobility (GDIM)
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/brief/what-is-the-global-database-on-intergenerational-mobility-gdim
Thanks, pjay. Clearly there are degrees of oppression in state life, and also changes from more to less to more again over time — witness the New Deal interregnum, for example, when crisis forced a lessening of oppression (via a kind of revolution), which then was later corrected by the usual perps.
All true, what you say. But my point is that the nature of the hierarchical state is itself oppression, is itself exploitation. There were 4000-5000 years of pre-state life that nevertheless included settlements, some with what we recognize now as agriculture, some with mere advantage-taking of a plentiful place — and some, a bit of both.
In pre-state societies — mobile or settled — the elders don’t rule with police, don’t get rich off of taxes, and groups act with a kind of consent that today we would envy. Graeber and Scott document all of this.
Yes, there are degrees and all is a continuum. But state life is a category apart from what went before (and sometimes persists today). And my bottom line contention is still: state life is the perp.
HTH,
Thomas
We humans do like to put labels on everything but the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with the “neofeudalism” idea. I’m reading Marxist (another label!) historian Eric Hobsbawm on the period just after the French revolution and English industrial revolution (more labels!). He makes a very good argument that when capitalism replaced the feudal system and former farmers were forced into urban factory work, it did create a middle class (minions), but life for the vast majority of the working class (muppets) become demonstrably worse. Instead of sitting in the sun waiting for the crops to ripen, people were now trapped in “dark Satanic mills” that might literally grind them to a pulp.
Feudal lords had a certain responsibility to take care of their “muppets” and generally did so – those crops weren’t going to harvest themselves and it wouldn’t do to dirty one’s own hands. I do not get this same sense of responsibility or noblesse oblige from the likes of Thiel, Musk and Zuckerberg. Instead, I get the impression that they’d have us all become disembodied sacks of protoplasm sitting in vats powering their data centers a la The Matrix if they could get away with it.
There was some humanity within the feudal system. With the system are current “masters” would like to construct, I’m not sure there will be.
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“There was some humanity within the feudal system.”
Yes, and perhaps that’s because those societies had a living conception of the Sacred or of a Tao that put some constraints on individuals and had a power overarching the generations. The civic religion of an expanding republican democracy that briefly and vulnerably held sway during the anomalous New Deal era has been purposefully demolished, and increasingly there is only Appetite – for power, for wealth, for status that signifies both – remaining, never be satisfied and pressing down ever more heavily on the masses. When you observe billionaire freaks like Thiel, Musk, Ellison and others, with their “blood bags” and delusions of immortality via uploading their brains to the Internet (talk about a virus!), I think you do see something qualitatively different about this Overclass; even the King needed absolution on his deathbed, but these characters are convinced they’ve gotten past all that.
I don’t see either the ‘petit bourgeois’ or middle class as the 10-15% serving the 1%.
Their praetorian guard do not equate to the middle class.
These are more a bureaucratic technocracy these days.
First identified in popular economics by JK Galbraith I think.
Serfdom involves around 85% of the population.
Hobsbawm is interesting, but so are EP Thompson and Polanyi in this context.
The notion of reciprocity (or ‘noblesse oblige’) did apply somewhat to feudal overlords – but they were extremely unhappy after the Black Death when the serfs got uppity during the Peasants Revolt, and any signs of autonomy and self empowerment were stamped on.
The later mid 19thC movements – the Rebecca Riots were dominant in my local area in West Wales – such as the rise of Chartism after the 1834 punitive Poor Law were basically unsuccessful.
The theft of the commons dominated throughout enclosures but were written into later Enclosures after 1845 which were extremely and deliberately biassed to the ruling elite.
The working class were crushed whenever possible, as were many of the working rural population.
Yes, life expectancy fell considerably during indiustrialisation, by comparison with later staged feudalism. From memory it fell to well under 30 from about 40-42 in centres like Manchesterr during the period of rural-urban migration, off the land.
I can’t help thinking this early Friday morning, as summer wanes into fall but daily temperature highs still linger as though the calendar is late August instead. Of all our elected and non elected officials, how many of them are worthy of a satirical jab from the likes of Gary Larson, he of The Far Side famously funny comic strip images ? Quite a healthy percentage I wish to suggest.
Knuckleheads who aren’t exactly required to live according to the same laws and regulations the rest of Americans live by, or at a minimum try to not daily break these. The blind leading the blind.
So Neuburger is a Crossan fan. Interesting. Crossan was a big promoter of the Gospel of Thomas, and a member of the Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar was a collection of scholars of the Greek bible who got together to decide which of the “red letter” material in the Gospels (sayings attributed to Jesus) were actually teachings of the historical Jesus. Like a fraternity, they used colored beads to vote on whether a saying should be attributed to Jesus or not.
The Jesus Seminar represented diverse views in the scholarly community. Crossan was pretty much a class warrior who relied on the Gospel of Thomas for his picture of the historical Jesus. That gospel was just a collection of sayings in Coptic–no stories–edited from a Gnostic point of view, and was never included in the Greek bible canon by the church, so Crossan’s views were often rejected in favor of the more mainstream views. One of my teachers in my never-completed Ph.D. program, Adela Collins (spouse of my advisor, John Collins) was also in the Jesus Seminar, and she saw the historical Jesus as a teacher for whom apocalypticism was central rather than earthly concerns. All three, Crossan and the Collinses, were Catholics who taught at Catholic universities in Chicago early in their careers, and Crossan and John Collins had both grown up in Ireland, so they knew each other well and were on friendly terms despite their very different scholarly perspectives.
I imagine that a lot of what Crossan has to say would resonate with Michael Hudson.
Er…
Guilty your honor?
I did not quibble but this is clearly not correct. Look at how only slightly more recent immigrant waves treated newer arrivals. Or the way in the South, what was impolitely called poor white trash oppressed recently freed slaves.
And as Jay Gould famously said, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
And lately many of the po’ white trash have risen above their raisin’, and not only in the South.
I’ll return to my corner now.
It is a great philosophical question, and a personal one for me. I am constantly aware (or am I?) of how I interact with others, and they with me, of hierarchies. This extends to all life, really; I watch the ground in front of me when I walk so as to avoid the tiny life that I might inadvertently extinguish. I’m sure there are areas beyond my conception, and ones where I get it wrong. What makes me more in the right to some privilege? Each individual will answer such questions for themselves, they are answered even by abstention. Broad statements are rendered suspect, as you note. Jay Gould may have been correct, but I doubt he could have known which half. I do know that much of humanity fails, and that one can’t judge a book by the cover.
Quite right. Having known destitute and homeless people, I’ve known them to steal and cheat each other if given a chance. Which is not to deny people are capable of great kindness and decency; just don’t expect it. Desperate people do desperate things. We are all human.
Hmm – The Masters of the Universe loot the many for billions, maybe something of a difference from stealing a loaf of bread, no?
I’m below the FPL, I give people asking for money on the street a dollar. I’d give more if I could.
And the Irish immigrants riots in NYC during the Civil War, after the potato famine and subjugation by the Brits.
Mahatma Gandhi:
Gandhi embraced a reduced caste system.
Humanity knows no perfection, except in art.
In the novel “1984” George Orwell discusses the constant pendulum from the High, Middle and Low classes where it is the first two classes seizing the reigns of power-
https://www.george-orwell.org/1984/16.html
And in his novel, an attempt was being made to let the pendulum swing one last time and then to freeze it forever. I sometimes wonder if this is what digital IDs, mobiles, the surveillance state, etc. is all about. To freeze the present power structure into one configuration that will only be refined over time. To have the ability to watch every single citizen, to track them and to undermine them through the use of the massive amount of computer power that we have at our disposal.
““Masters are the rulers. Minions corral the muppets. The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them to serve the muppets.”
The Irish achieved independence by focusing their efforts not on their British occupiers but rather on the Irish who worked for them – constables, eg. At a certain point it was impossible for the Brits to maintain power as their Irish minions quit in fear for their lives.
However, this approach requires very strong nationalism and a clear distinction between masters and minions. Not sure this is the case in the US.
There’s some ambiguity. Are school teachers minions or muppets? They generally make less money than (say) plumbers but are somewhat more prestigious. And teaching children to read can be transmitting conformity or very subversive.
As a recovering plumber I can attest that being a school teacher confers a far better socio-economic status than the average plumber. The ‘real’ money in plumbing is with the owners. With the advent of financialized plumbing companies, the workers are squeezed in favour of the “shareholders.” I speak from personal experience.
In basic social terms, school teachers are “professionals,” while plumbers are “skilled workers.” There is a vast gap in social standing and often financial status between the two classes of occupation.
The secret to the ’empowerment’ of the skilled trades lies in the location of the work and the degree of unionization of that region’s working population. Otherwise, skilled workers are generally treated as expendable units.
Rant over. Stay safe.
If we examine the comparative standard of living of the three segments across the span of history, we find that contemporary muppets have significant advantages, including literacy, antibiotics, and cell phones. In the U.S. the poor are identifiable by obesity, a very different kind of malnourishment from that experienced by the poor of earlier times. Thus, the notion of the eternal immiseration of the bottom 85% is dubious.
Despite stout declarations of solidarity of the working poor, most members of that class are eager to move to the minion stratum, as is evidenced by the corruptibility of union leaders who rise from the ranks of their comrades. Revolutionary governments almost immediately establish a hierarchy of minions bases on political cronyism. Similarly, minions aspire to the rarefied heights of the master class and adopt their behaviors, as shown by the silicon valley nouveaux riches quickly developing a taste for super yachts.
It is the crooked timber of humanity that creates these social strata, not some malevolent conspiracy or malformed governmental structure. The best we can hope for is a rising floor under the conditions of the muppet class and a better understanding of how to run a sustainable global economy.
Read Rev Keev’s link above. It explains the dynamic of inter-class movement extremely well.
“It is the crooked timber of humanity that creates these social strata, not some malevolent conspiracy or malformed governmental structure.”
My, my. How did such a naturally self-destructive species survive this long? You’re going to have make quite a case against the archaeologists and the anthropologists to claim that hierarchy is built into our genes. There are a lot more persuasive theories out there about the origins of hierarchy like Luke Kemp’s (an archaeologist) Goliath that finds that the combination of lootable surpluses and bands of psychopaths produces hierarchy and even pyramids–up to a point.
I find that when someone makes an argument in the areas of policy or class and resorts to claiming humanity’s genes at fault, it’s usually the case that the proponent of the argument likes the current, highly stratified arrangement. TINA, right?
Closely related to this topic, Nate Hagens released a new “Frankly” this morning titled: Why Humanity Is Better Than We Think. It follows on his recent interviews of Luke Kemp, mentioned in my comment above, and “How Psychopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism Impact Our Cultures & Social Systems” with a psychoanalyst and a forensic psychologist.
Thanks for the Kemp recommendation – just added Goliath’s Curse to my reading list.
Your mentions of lootable surpluses and bands of psychopaths reminds me of one of my first and most short lived jobs. I answered a classified ad about a sales position for high end audio equipment. When I arrived at the address for what I expected to be an interview, I found myself in a warehouse with a bunch of other guys milling around. Eventually someone who seemed to be in charge showed up, had us break up into groups, and loaded us into unmarked white vans filled with cheaply made cabinet sized stereo speakers. The “job” consisted of roaming suburban parking lots, calling “Psst, wanna great deal on some real nice speakers?” at passersby, and then trying to sell them at the highest price possible to anyone dumb enough to stop. I lasted one day at that job (and it would have been less but I had to wait for the van to drive me back to my car), but others who enjoyed the grift apparently kept at it. A year or so after that experience, the band of psychopaths running the scam were exposed on 60 Minutes. It was a very odd sensation realizing I had been a participant on one of that show’s targets – they still had a lot of credibility then and companies actually feared their reporters showing up,
HMP is correct. Kemp is also pretty readable, and basically considers that there was a complex mix of human, social and environmental determinant factors as to whether a dominance hierarchy emerged anthropologically, rather tham man merely being naturally self destructive. The Curse is recommended ….
Crooked timber is often used a a metaphor for what used to be called “human nature,” an essentialist view of human behavior. Crooked timber is not always useless. Shoshonean people used the curved-gained wood from the lower, outward flaring section of tree trunks — it made perfectly curved bows. Madison argued for structuring the the US government on the principle that “ambition must be made to strive against ambition.” Plunkitt Of Tammany Hall is a masterclass in the use of crooked timber.
I prefer to think of this tripartite division in terms of the classic slave economies: 1. the masters in the big house or palace 2. the overseer class (includes slave patrols and enforcers) 3. the enslaved class (everything from house and field slaves to sex workers)
This draws from actual history and experience. BTW…not common, but masters of color and white slaves are allowed, so it’s not about race. Think about the origin of the English word ‘slave’. And the different categories from wage slave to chattel slave.
Minions and muppets is far too benign.
given this analysis it becomes obvious that identity politics, so beloved of our more “progressive” citizens is just another shuck and jive tactic to prevent muppet solidarity
You’re missing the pmc — the people who do the bulk of the political work, congressional staffers, office worker for lobbyists, non-profit managers. The flappers – they don’t decide policy, but they do drive policy. They’re not flag wavers — they don’t drive the masses, but they do all the intellectual work connecting the flag wavers with the leaders in both directions.
The officer corp – upper field grade and lower echelons of general staff.
Okay – my skimming was bad. I change my comment, the problem is that the officers are not the flag-wavers. The flag-wavers are low level leaders like pastors, organizers and so on… They’re distinct from the people doing the institutional work, the officers.
The flag-wavers need to believe, and are more likely to be promoted to the leadership level — see the history of Obama for example. The pmc can easily switch sides — a competent leader hires the for the quality of their work, like a speech writer or policy staffers, not for their personal zeal and charisma.
Only the destitute are blameless.”
—John Dominic Crossan’s translation of “Blessed are the poor…”
Orthodox anachronism.
One way to say the poor in Hebrew is ebionim. In the dead sea scrolls, some authors refer to themselves as ebionim. An early Christian sect that claimed to be lead by the family of Jesus, were anti Pauline, and Orthodox Jews were called ebionim. From that sect came the prophet Mani who created manicheanism, with it’s book of giants and gnostic enochianism.
The orthodox interpretation falls apart under well known history – the poor was a reference to the Jesus people, and the Jesus people were opponents of early Christian orthodoxy; they were poor not because they were destitute, but because they were spiritually opposed to material gain.
The texts in question are Greek. Crossan does a long exegesis of what words mean what in the sources.
Just FYI.
Thomas
Is that an incredibly young John Hurt playing Richard Rich?
Yep. He’s excellent. And if you like Hurt, check out The Naked Civil Servant.
Thomas