#81k reads leviathan and its enemies

[eightyonekilograms]

This expansion in the size of the institutions of higher education, which accrued to the material advantage of managerial and verbalist-intellectual groups within them by increasing the material resources at their disposal and their own professional and social status and influence [...]

If only Samuel Francis had lived long enough to know about "wordcel".

[eightyonekilograms]

Only on chapter 2 so far, and while this conclusion is already starting to condense, I'm not sure how Francis is supposed to sell people on it. You spent an entire book railing against the evils of managerialism only to tell people they have to line up behind your managerialism?

Or to put it another way, if the United States fell to Francis's fascist dictatorship tomorrow, I suspect that within 20-30 years it would undergo managerialist value drift and mostly just revert to what we have now. How could it possibly be otherwise, if you believe that managerialism is an inevitable product of modern material conditions?

Presumably Francis leans on assuming there'd be some way to inculcate the leaders of his fascist utopia with the right set of self-perpetuating values such that this wouldn't happen, but his own thesis is that this couldn't possibly work: his history of the transition from bourgeois to managerialist values indicates that, no matter what systems of education you try to erect to get the next generation to carry on your values, they'll inevitably be swamped by the ones in alignment with material conditions.

probably one of the most interesting things structuring “leviathan and its enemies” is Francis’ economic determinism: managerialism is *inevitable* at high population densities, so his far-right program is one of almost classical fascist managerialism rather than any move beyond rule by management and mass organization

Yup that’s true, although I think it’s important to note while he thinks it’s inevitable I believe he still doesn’t actually like it.