Rule by the upwardly mobile

The Revolt of the Elites
by Christopher Lasch
Norton, 1995

Towards the end of August, ABC radio's AM program carried an interview with an academic from New South Wales who likened the Marks Royal Commission in Western Australia to the 1955 Royal Commission into Espionage, which was established in the wake of the Petrov defection.  Both enquiries, so the learned doctor claimed, had the sole purpose of removing from public life a brilliant but troublesome politician, unquestionably of prime ministerial mettle, before his humane and impeccably social democratic radicalism could upset the established order.  Carmen Lawrence and Herbie Evatt were both intellectual giants, he said, a breed all too rare in Australian political history.  Their visions were boundless and sunny, their principles higher than Everest.  And yet, they were undone.  If any fault of their own contributed to this, the professor concluded, it was that the arguments they used in their defence drew on standards and an idea of public life that ordinary people were simply incapable of understanding.  If only the voters were a little more intelligent, he seemed to be saying, if only they were not so stupid, the two great Docs could have led us to a radiant future.

The attitude here expressed, that the citizens of a democratic polis are too moronic to know what is good for the country, let alone for themselves, is commonplace today but very seldom remarked.  An important local exception is Melbourne analyst Bob Browning, whose new book, Bad Government (Canonbury Press), provides a damning catalogue of the appalling contempt with which Australia's ruling elites treat the ordinary people they no longer pretend to serve.  Another, better known exception is the late American historian Christopher Lasch.  An important part of The True and Only Heaven (1991) was dedicated to documenting the gulf that divides the values of "the elites" and "the masses", and in his latest and last book, The Revolt of the Elites, this division takes centre stage.

OLD ELITES AND NEW

The existence of ruling classes is not the problem for Lasch.  They have always existed and always will, but they have never been so dangerously isolated from those they rule as they are today.  The old democratic elites were bound by strong local and regional loyalties -- old families became "old" because they put down roots -- and an ethic of civic responsibility which dictated both an active involvement in public life and generous contributions to building the physical amenities of the public domain.  The motivation for these involvements and contributions obviously varied, and was doubtless sometimes self-serving.  But underlying it was an important assumption:  that the ruling classes were part of the world held in common by all.

The democratic elites of today, comprising for the most part "the producers and manipulators of information", are quite different.  International in outlook, and without an attachment to place, they live in "a world of abstractions and images" and despise ordinary people for their "parochial" and politically backward concerns about the problems of every-day living.  They enjoy enormous privilege, but because their privileged position is owed to talent rather than to blood or valour, they do not feel obliged to make "a direct and personal contribution to the public good", and actually resist any such obligation.  They are the best and brightest, so they claim, and the privilege they enjoy is self-made.  The justification put forward here is that democracy means meritocracy.  It is precisely with this that Lasch takes issue.

SELF-GOVERNMENT

In itself, the principle that privilege is licit only if it is earned is unobjectionable.  Lasch's concern, however, is that the generalisation of this principle in the concept of social mobility has led to a distorted understanding of what democracy should be.  As it was originally conceived, democracy stood for "raising the general level of competence, energy and participation", not for rule by the upwardly mobile.  Whatever the opportunities democracy may offer for material improvement (and Lasch does not belittle or oppose these), the defining democratic opportunity should be that of "self-government by intelligent, resourceful and responsible citizens".  For Lasch, this is the only opportunity that matters.  Whether or not democracy has a future depends on it alone.

Meritocracy stands in direct opposition to true democracy, Lasch argues, for one of its corollaries is the conceit that government should be left to those of the greatest talent.  Experts and professionals should conduct public affairs, and the people should be left to what interests them most, the conduct of their own puny lives.  He observes that in support of this position it will sometimes be pointed out that people in general are notoriously ill-informed.

For example, apparently most Australians do not even know we have a constitution, let alone what it is or what is in it.  Various committees have been established to remedy this situation through a program of "civics", but more than public awareness campaigns are required to make citizens.  If most people do not know about the constitution, Lasch would argue, it is because they have no use for it.  They have no use for it because they are effectively excluded from government and participation in public life.  The constitution is, after all, a piece of information.  If you are directly involved in political and social debate, it is information you must have.  But if you are not so involved, it is completely irrelevant, like so much of the information we are awash with today.  All this would change, however, if the meritocratic exclusion of ordinary people from public life could be overthrown.  People would inform themselves if they were involved, for the necessary condition of democratic citizenship is not information but participation.  If you want to "educate people for citizenship", Lasch argues, let them govern themselves.

This is an interesting line of argument, and Lasch pursues it through a range of issues, including US racial politics, "cultural diversity", education's role in democracy, the media, communitarianism, and the academic denial of reality and value.  His book is in fact a collection of essays, although this does not really become apparent until the third and last part.  It is written as a polemic, and shares the flaws of polemical writing:  points are sometimes overstated, objections are sometimes not acknowledged, and targets are sometimes too broadly drawn.  But the arguments put forward, in compelling style, are serious and well-made and spring from insights of genuine importance.  Drawing on authors from both the left and the right, with discrimination and to telling effect, Lasch provides us with a model of the type of vigorous engagement with public affairs that he would wish to see restored to late democratic life, and now never will.