Every political project of the past century has faced the same dilemma. On the one hand, it serves the interests and ambitions of some elite, counter-elite, or avant-garde—call it what you will. On the other hand, it requires the ability to rouse a portion of the ordinary working population. These are the crowds that fill the squares, agitate among their neighbors, strike in the factories, or even fight in the streets. The difficulty lies in reconciling these two sets of interests.
One possible solution can be seen in Donald Trump’s call for the renewal of industrial society. The restoration of factories and their prosperity creates a shared stake for owners, managers, engineers, and rank-and-file workers alike. This vision unites capital, technology, and labor under the same roof. In the Czech context, even a figure like Tomáš Březina, the “concrete king,” seems to look in this direction.
But if we look closely, we see that the opposing camp has already built something similar—an alliance led by the financial oligarchy, supported not by steelworkers and machinists, but by the rank-and-file employees of advertising agencies, NGOs, bank clerks behind the glass window, and of course the minor bureaucrats of both state and corporate apparatuses—the “relationship managers,” “product specialists,” and the like.
The American sociologist Peter L. Berger, writing in the 1980s, described this as a horizontal class conflict—a fitting description that captures the dynamics we still see today.
Some may object that it would make more sense if the ordinary workers of the factory and the ordinary employees of the corporate office could act together. But they cannot. Without an elite—or at least an aspiring elite—to organize them, no common action is possible. And it is not at all clear that any capable elite has an interest in such an alliance.
And one more thing. One can imagine a national economy built upon farms and factories without banks or advertising agencies—at least theoretically. But no one can imagine an economy built upon banks and advertising agencies without farms and factories. Victory for the first alliance might lead to a stable society. Victory for the second guarantees collapse.