Larvatus Prodeo

In the 2005 “dramatic documentary” The American Ruling Class, big oil heir turned Harper’s editor turned armchair socialist Lewis Lapham narrates the career choices confronting a group of shiny young Yale graduates. With their future at the crossroads, Lapham asks, will the nation’s brightest pursue private riches or commit to a pious life of public service?

Lapham, playing himself, leads his empty vessels through the streets of Manhattan, counterposing up-scale parties with wait staff slaving for tips. It’s a savvy piece of emotional manipulation designed to guilt the young rich into acknowledging the class structure that, above all else, got them to where they are. In one party scene, the hubris is intoxicating as a tipsy Ivy League cohort prepares, like their parents, to ascend to the heights of commerce, industry and influence.

Of course, this constructed ‘choice’ transcends the personal, reading as an obvious allegory for the nation as a whole. If the American working class has nothing to lose but their chains, Lapham clearly hopes a new generation will hand them the bolt cutters — a naive appeal to altruism perhaps, but one that continues to resonate as the economy tanks. Lapham’s choice is now more pressing, in that conditions have got much worse, and much easier in that elite opinion is again extolling the virtues of public service, always a potent (if submerged) strain of America’s DNA.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Andrew Crook: In a class of their own – Obama staffers and social change’