Virtue Hoarders

Virtue Hoarders by Catherine Liu (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) Catherine Liu argues that the professional managerial class (PMC) are marked by their use of meritocracy, philanthropy, and virtue signaling to promote the core premise of neoliberal economics: an isolationist individualism that simultaneously preaches self-sufficiency and achievement and blocks collective efforts towards social justice. Liu is unsparing in her assessment of the PMC, and the book is an uncomfortable read if, like me, you are an erstwhile member of it. But we cannot change or interrupt what we cannot face, and here is our chance to face it—to look squarely at the set of cultural and political practices that the PMC have promulgated and come to terms with what they have wrought. Liu concludes that the principles of professionalism itself—with its twin concerns for truth and accountability—are critical to upending capitalism and building towards socialism. But only if the PMC get out of the way. View…