Alex (Alexey) Krol describes himself as an “entrepreneur, author, lecturer, and film producer.” Judging by his LinkedIn profile, he has had an impressive career, managing multiple companies before stepping back to take on roles at lower levels. Along the way, he also worked in game development.
Recently, he has been focusing more on writing and designing concepts, particularly in the fields of gaming and NFT mechanics.
However, I only learned about his professional journey after reading his book The Theory of Castes and Roles, which is what I want to talk about here. The book has received quite high ratings across various popular bookstores and review platforms. Moreover, several of my acquaintances spoke about it with great enthusiasm. While I take online reviews with a grain of salt (even though I write them myself), recommendations from people I know usually carry more weight—though, of course, tastes may differ.
The book itself is quite short and presents a theory developed by Alex Krol himself. The core idea is simple: in this world, resources are limited, and not everyone will have enough. You are either in the role of a “slave” (at the lowest level) or you secure a place among the powerful elite, with all the accompanying benefits—high salaries, yachts, villas, and so on. But between these two extremes, there are many intermediate positions that largely determine who you are and what you are worth.
All these positions are divided by the author into lower, middle, and upper castes. The lower castes merely survive, their lives dictated by numerous factors beyond their control. The upper castes, on the other hand, have already reached a level where opportunities are abundant, and everything they have accumulated only helps them multiply their wealth.
Alex Krol meticulously breaks down his system and the roles within each caste. For example, in his framework, Slaves, Bureaucrats, and Gendarmes all belong to the slave caste. He also explains how one can develop a strategy for growth—essentially a path to transition from the lowest caste to the highest.
I should note that the concept of castes itself is not Krol’s invention. The caste system has existed in India for thousands of years and still plays a significant role in determining a person’s social standing and opportunities. However, Krol has adapted this structure to modern society, defining specific roles within each caste, each with its own characteristics and behavioral patterns.
At the same time, as I read, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this theory is essentially a “sideways look” at Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of needs. When you’re at the bottom, you have no room to think about anything beyond basic survival. But when you’re at the top, you suddenly have the luxury of moral values and existential crises like “Am I an imposter?”
And while at first, it was intriguing to look at the world from this perspective, about a third of the way through the book, I found myself growing more and more bored. The “introduction” filled with a series of assertions dragged on for far too long. The author delivers one absolute conclusion after another, with nothing to substantiate them. You keep waiting for him to start building a system based on these “axioms” or to draw some meaningful conclusions, but that moment never comes.
After presenting his worldview and the castes and roles he has devised, the author jumps straight into examples of how one can (and, in his opinion, should) build their life path based on their initial position. But all these paths follow the same caste-role matrix, with barely any variation—just an acknowledgment of the circumstances you were born into: your talents, environment, and starting position. To be fair, the examples are engaging, almost like fictionalized snapshots of “real life.” However, it’s unclear why all these people in his examples have such rigidly defined paths. Life is unpredictable. Yes, much depends on personal effort and goals, but there is never just one way forward.
Moreover, all these “solutions” in the form of development strategies are based on the assumption that the described caste-role theory is true. But what if it isn’t? The book provides no proof that the world actually functions this way.
I would argue that it’s quite the opposite. The author has created a neatly structured system, one that is visually appealing but entirely his own invention. And then he cherry-picks examples to fit that system. In other words, the evidence is adjusted to match the theory. Or, as the popular saying goes, “forcing a square peg into a round hole”. Because beyond this framework, the book offers nothing—no actionable recommendations, no real conclusions, nothing of substance. Just a “look at what I came up with.”
And the author’s own life journey doesn’t exactly demonstrate that this theory has propelled him into the highest strata. Yes, he is undoubtedly a successful person, but based on his own descriptions of the castes, he doesn’t quite measure up to the top. In fact, he even seems to “slip and fall” from time to time.
To sum up:
- The worldview presented—interesting
- The examples—vivid
- The actual value—questionable, and the suggested paths to success can be found in nearly any self-improvement book.
My rating: 1.5/5
