Postindustrial elite and non-elite insecurities

Abstract

Two growing conflicts, peculiar to postindustrial societies, challenge the ability of elites to keep postindustrial politics manageable. These are (1) a conflict between elites and those non-elites who remain reasonably well integrated in the productive and social orders of postindustrial societies but who feel themselves vulnerable to elite personnel decisions they regard as arbitrary and uninformed – ‘insiders’; (2) a conflict between insiders and the many persons in postindustrial societies who are more or less unemployable for objective or subjective reasons and located in strictly marginal or wholly superfluous work and dependency statuses – ‘outsiders’. Both conflicts impede the managerial roles of elites and raise questions about how postindustrial societies can be sustained without suffering organizational paralysis and the socioeconomic retrogression that would accompany it.