CONCEPT
Inclusive Vanguardism
Unger's alternative to the
insular vanguardism of the knowledge economy—extending advanced productive practices to the broadest population under democratically designed terms rather than confining them to elite firms and individuals.
Inclusive vanguardism is Unger's framework for addressing the structural tendency of knowledge economies to concentrate advanced productive capabilities in a small vanguard of firms and individuals while excluding the majority. The AI transition deepens this tendency even as it appears to democratize—
the developer in Lagos can now use
Claude Code, but the institutional arrangements governing access terms, gain distribution, and platform governance are designed by and for the insular vanguard. Inclusive vanguardism is not redistribution (extending benefits while preserving control) but institutional reconstruction: making advanced practices available to the broadest range of people under terms they have participated in designing, within governance frameworks subject to democratic accountability. It requires specific institutional constructions—
public AI infrastructure, cooperative ownership models, democratic workplace governance, educational systems cultivating
institutional imagination—each representing the extension of vanguard capability beyond the vanguard rather than its concentration within it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The knowledge economy, in Unger's analysis, operates through a distinctive form of inequality: not