April 10, 2007
The Bourgeoisie and the Clerisy
Arnold KlingIn an interview, Freeman Dyson says,
In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status. As a child of the academic middle class, I learned to look on the commercial middle class with loathing and contempt. Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher, which was also the revenge of the commercial middle class. The academics lost their power and prestige and the business people took over. The academics never forgave Thatcher and have been gloomy ever since.
In The Bourgeois Virtues, Deirdre McCloskey refers to the merchant class as the bourgeoisie and the academic class as the clerisy. She, too, delves into the conflict between the two classes, which exists in the United States as well as in England.
This post by Greg Mankiw hints that perhaps at Harvard the economics department finds itself on the wrong end of this class struggle.
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