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Using the phrase is a dead giveaway that you’re smug and overeducated.
There are certain phrases that, in just a few syllables, will peg a person’s background, even his worldview. If someone talks about “the swamp,” or “the deep state,” you can assume he’s on the populist right. If a dignified woman of a certain age says, “Well, bless his heart,” you’ll know she’s from the South, and that she possesses a subtler wit than you suspected. And when I hear people blame a problem on “late capitalism,” well, that conjures up a whole Weltanschauung.
People usually toss off the phrase with an implied eye-roll of sophisticated exasperation. “Can you believe how long it takes to get an Uber around here?” they’ll say. “Late-stage capitalism.” Life is a parade of indignities, in other words. But they’re also telling you their politics: They blame every annoyance on the capitalist system, which, it goes without saying, is an engine of oppression, even for people who ride around in Ubers. And by adding the word “late,” they’re expressing their belief that capitalism is in its final era. Someday something better—some socialist utopia with free Uber rides and always-hot lattes—will come along. But probably not soon enough. As even the left-wing Guardian columnist Zoe Williams notes, “the word ‘late’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal
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James B. Meigs is a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is the former editor of Popular Mechanics, where he helped reposition that century-old brand to become a major voice on technological issues.