Entrepreneurial Statecraft Gets the Goods

Iquit my job,” he said, sitting across from me at the local ramen shop. “Now I want to start something in culture. We need a cultural movement of life-affirming excellence.”

It was a good start and a good spirit. As for the details, I told him otherwise. You don’t want a movement. You don’t want to do anything in “culture.”

“What?”

The problem with movements is that they end up dominated by a low-contribution majority who try to make the movement about rewarding social imitation rather than productive work. Despite their sincere belief that they are helping and assurances that they “totally support the movement,” these imitators are actually the most dangerous political enemies of any real project. If you don’t purge them, shut down “the movement,” and instead become a real organization or discipline, they will fatten themselves on whatever capital your movement amasses, manipulate or purge you, and then blame you when it all goes down in flames. Don’t bother with movements.

There is such a thing as culture, but any approach that aims to change it is too indirect. The indirectness of cultural strategies is apparent in their account of how they affect material outcomes in the world: you do a bunch of work to build up a cultural movement, the movement manages to change “the culture,” and then that finally inspires someone else to actually do something real. Or at least that’s the hope. More likely, it just inspires them to do something “in culture” like you did.

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