Professor Budil and I often approach the same questions from opposite angles. Take his concept of “cognitive intolerance,” which broadly corresponds to what I describe as rationality. The difference is one of emphasis: he is more concerned with its social consequences, while I focus on what rationality actually consists of.
More importantly, however, consider the larger context. A few years ago, the dominant issue was the migration crisis. Even today, migration from the Islamic world remains the most pressing and urgent problem facing the West—though it no longer occupies the same central place in public attention. In The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray offered a compelling description of what was happening, but his conclusion—that Europe had lost its will to live—remained vague, more evocative than explanatory.
Seeking a clearer answer, I went further in my own work, Breached Enclosure. There, I argued that the ruling elite of the Western world differs fundamentally—in psychological profile, patterns of behavior, and modes of thought—from the elites that governed prior to the 1980s, even when they came from the same social backgrounds.
What I did not fully explain, however, was why this transformation occurred. I offered only partial clues—for instance, the growing dominance of large, transnational organizations. These observations still strike me as correct, but they fall short of a complete explanation.
Professor Budil’s framework helps illuminate what is missing. For several years, he has examined the distinction between productive and speculative capitalism. This distinction explains why speculative capitalism produces a fundamentally different elite than the older, productive system did. If one wants a vivid illustration of that earlier type, one might look at figures such as Tomáš Březina—a “concrete king” and, in many ways, a prototype of the old ruling class.
More recently, Budil has refined this into a distinction between latent and manifest capitalism. Latent capitalism roughly corresponds to the productive model, while manifest capitalism aligns with the speculative one. The key difference is this: under latent capitalism, political power ultimately governs; under financial capitalism, financial power does. Manifest capitalism tends toward the erosion of productive sectors and the replacement of traditional elites—often ruthless, even bordering on psychopathic, yet highly capable—with a new aristocracy marked above all by conformity and mediocrity.
This brings us to the central question: how can productive, industrial capitalism be restored—or, perhaps more realistically, what new system might preserve its strengths?
In this, we are hardly alone. Even the European Commission now speaks of increasing the share of industrial production in Europe’s economy. Yet no one seems to know how to achieve it.
That, however, is not a cause for despair. Every genuinely interesting problem begins with a period in which no one yet knows the answer.