The French Revolution shaped Europe’s history like no other event. Today we are at a similar point as then: before the transition to a post-industrial order.
Our society also shows amazing parallels to the feudal estate society of the time. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, one of the main theorists of the French Revolution, asked in 1789: “What is the third estate?”
At that time, Sieyès’ hopefuls included everyone who did not belong to the first two classes, from the upper bourgeoisie to the craftsmen and farmers to the urban lower classes, i.e. around 98 percent of the population. 500,000 clerics and aristocrats faced 25 million third-party entrepreneurs. So many and so politically irrelevant!
“What is the third estate? All. What has he been up to now in the state order? Nothing. What is he asking for? To become something in it,” says Sieyès.
The pre-revolutionary estate rule faltered because it lacked the ability to participate and future, it indulged in privileges and vested interests, and coalitions with parts of the third estate hardly flourished.
Climate change, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are increasing the pressure to transform
Similar to today. The elites of the republic feel the transformational pressure fueled by climate change, the pandemic and the Russian destruction of the European peace order. But they lack the “sense of urgency”. Diversity-driven designs for the future await us.
On the one hand, disturbing scenarios: from the top-down construct of a “Great Reset” at Schwab & Co. to dystopian bottom-up conflicts between the many losers and overwhelming upheavals. On the other hand, in the search for utopian scenarios of a humane market economy and resilient democracy, a new fourth estate comes into view: the co-creative.
These three estates exist today
What stands are we talking about today?
At the first stand let’s think of “skimmers”. Karl Marx would call them coupon cutters, Nassim Taleb would call them haves without “skin in the game”. Just inactive owners.
At the second stand In our time we think of “administrators” in safety. People in authorities, politics and large corporations, who often only experience the psychological strain of change peripherally, because the rescue umbrella of monopoly or systemic importance stretches protectively over them.
Of the third stand is that of the “meaningless”. On the one hand, it consists of the disorganized plankton of the self-employed and founders. On the other hand, from the dependent or precarious employees in health, care, education, service work or platform economy.
Manuel Castells, icon of the network economy, already sensed it in 1996 in his book “The Rise of the Network Society”: The well-organized networks of the elites and – vice versa – the disorganization of the masses seem to form the double mechanism of social domination and the reason for the failure of the to be “insignificant”.
This is the fourth estate
In contrast to the struggle between the estates of the French Revolution and the class struggle of socialist revolutions, the “insignificant” and the progressive of the other two estates could now form a coalition and form the fourth estate of co-creatives.
This requires new types of alliances: hitherto skimming multimillionaires, especially billionaires, must come together in corporate responsibility alliances with the new generation of founders and civil society actors. Instead of increasing industrial assets or managing fund and real estate assets, they have to become new investors again and again, as is common in many valleys around the world.
We need a new debate about patriotic patronage. Family-run billion-dollar corporations such as Würth, Kühne, Albrecht, Schäffler and Loh, in conjunction with educational activist stakeholders, could pull off a national effort to combat educational poverty in this country and to give hundreds of thousands of unqualified people access to vocational training. A billion-dollar endeavor.
We would also need mega-public-private-partnership boosts for new types of research factories – whether in microelectronics, biotechnology or energy technologies – both for product and service innovations as well as for speed innovations.
We need a similar nationwide effort for STEM education. Large foundations such as those of Bosch, Klaus Tschira, Mercator, Kröner-Fresenius (but also smaller ones such as those of Telekom, Siemens or Joachim Herz) have to join forces with thousands of civil society education actors and unselfishly pool resources.
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Those in administration who are willing to change must forge transformation alliances. In order for corporate administrations and public administrations to penetrate agility, intrapreneurship and administrative reform, a coalition with the “insignificant” layer of digital freelancers and solo entrepreneurial experts is required. And, not to forget, the coalition with the social entrepreneurs who bring innovative solutions to health, care, education and administration. The crowning glory would be a Ministry of Labor that frees solo entrepreneurs from the sword of Damocles of bogus self-employment.
The entire third estate must form strengthening alliances within itself. It is about the renaissance of medieval guilds and guilds in the form of professional communities, including cooperatives. Movements that seek to advance social and technological reform as twins. Trade unions are particularly challenged. You have to understand that there is no going back to the dominance of the industrial age. Your future lies in opening up to the digital economy.
There are already first signs of a new order
Some are already helping to advance reskilling, rebuilding and renewal Germany, for example the Alliance of Opportunities initiated by Continental or the Schwarz Foundation with a regional venture capital arm for an innovation ecosystem in Heilbronn.
The Tech4Germany fellowship program sends digital talents who are thirsty for change to the ministries. In the Teach First initiative, young university graduates support pupils in troubled schools. As a patron, the pharmaceutical company Sartorius finances laboratories at important medical locations.
We need multiples of such coalitions in our ecosystem.
The American social scientist Richard Florida recognized early on its role as a manageable, regional nucleus for a co-creative economy and society.
The Berkeley professor and Techcluster pioneer AnnaLee Saxenian researched early on what contributed to the decline of bureaucratically organized innovators along the famous Massachusetts Route 128 around Boston – in contrast to the rise of low-hierarchy, horizontal, collaborative structures in Silicon Valley.
The fourth estate needs ecosystems like fish needs water. A society of co-creative ecosystems is ambitious. However, she decides whether future social upheavals will eat her children or whether transformation will succeed.
The authors: Thomas Sattelberger is a member of the Bundestag (FDP) and a former board member at Deutsche Telekom and Continental. Winfried Felser is an internet entrepreneur, futurologist and author. He co-founded the Fraunhofer application center for logistics-oriented business administration in Paderborn.
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