This time, it is the world’s billion-plus, thwarted and angry middle class citizens who are driving change, potentially bringing all their money, connections, and cultural capital to bear.
At the close of 2018, the world found itself in a historical moment eerily reminiscent of other watershed revolutions. As liberals in the US raged against the “one percent” and populist movements gained ground across Europe, Yellow Vest protesters spilled into the streets of France. Some 230 years after France’s lower and middle classes revolted, the beheadings were, this time, only done in effigy.
Something, however, is different this time. As the French protests foreshadow, what we’re facing isn’t some Marxist revolution led by the working-class masses. This time, it is the world’s billion plus, thwarted and angry middle class citizens driving change, potentially bringing all their money, connections, and cultural capital to bear.
Meanwhile, wealth and power have become consolidated. Between 1979 and 2013, average incomes for the richest 19 percent rose by 70 percent. For the top 1 percent, income grew by 192 percent.Remarkably, Western societies’ upper and upper-middle classes often understand this consolidation as the inevitable result of a meritocracy, of a system that rewards the most deserving. But that hasn’t eased their impulse to enjoy policy that keeps the gates to upper-classdom virtually unscalable.
Somewhere along the way, as digital innovation increasingly captured our attention, the evolution of the tech industry’s capacity to build and guard their monopolies escaped notice. Collecting data on users’ habits enabled tech giants to perfect their products accordingly. And long unchecked by antitrust laws, tech behemoths maximize profits while employing fewer and fewer people—Netflix, for example, with 137 million subscribers, is worth more than Disney, but has only 5,400 employees.
But things have unfolded contrary to design. From the rise of far-right Italian populists, to the scapegoating behind Brexit and the vote’s pro-European backlash, we are seeing the middle class in crisis, its belief in the system giving way to a sense of impotence and invisibility.
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