Intellectual Elites against Democracy

James Madison’s reference to the “confusion and intemperance” of the multitude used to be the rationale of a government by the elite. What is the intellectual legacy of elitism in the United States today?

“Elitism might be defined as the political principle which assumes that the existence of unequal abilities is an irrefutable fact,” says Sheldon Wolin. Though the existence of unequal human abilities may look like a mere fact of life, it needs to be correctly understood. Since they had not developed a written culture and a science-based technology as much as Europeans had, native Americans or people from Africa were once considered savages incapable of theoretical thinking. Prejudices can easily substitute themselves for reality.

If racism or social status discrimination can hardly be used anymore as formal reasons to enforce the power of a ruling class, the self-serving system of fake elites will always be a threat to democracy. “Today in the United States there is a circular system whereby elites are produced and the institutions producing them are confirmed as “elite institutions,” thereby attracting a fresh supply of promising material that further confirms the institutions’ special status. . . . Elitism functions as a self-sustaining enterprise. The key is to produce not only successful alumni but rich ones to feed the virtually insatiable appetite of elite institutions, where fund-raisers are as prolific as scholars and university financial officers are millionaires. While still in school those chosen as future elites are encouraged to “network” with each other for later reference and assistance.”

What is the state of the elites today in the U.S.?

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People coopted as part of the elite are no more or no less able than the rest of the population, but they definitely take advantage of privileged conditions in growing their careers. Moreover, the circular system they belong to is a system of power that extends its rings further than alumni associations: “Bright prospects are passed along to think tanks, institutes, and centers. There they learn the arts of developing “policy proposals” and demolishing the arguments of their enemies. . . . Flanking these are the foundations that support think tanks, supply grants to select recipients, and promote projects to their liking.” All in all, “The existence of elites doesn’t just happen; it is systematized, premeditated, refined to a practice assuring that those who are selected as ‘promising leadership material’ will prove to have the right stuff, thus validating the methods of selection and, in the process, perpetuating the system that has made them possible.”¹

Affluent people in the United States can make donations to academia. Not so surprisingly, the benefactors are in most cases politically hell-bent against a public system of education. Their liberalities have consequently little to do with the furtherment of academic endeavors and a lot with keeping power in the right hands. To corporate moguls, it is a crucial investment. The last thing they want is power rising from the bottom up, notably through decent access to education. They will not say they are against it, as former slave owners would have, but will ensure with a sincere heart that rich kids do not have to compete with poor ones. This is not just about corporate moguls prolonging the domination of the upper class against the rest of society, of course; all of us are invited to reflect on our motivations when refusing our tax money to go to poorer neighborhoods.

Eventually, the destined corporate and political elites will derive their feeling of legitimacy from the fact that they know better than the vulgum pecus. And one area where the best and the brightest can be sure to stand among themselves is war, the acme of power and secrecy. “Elitism, says Sheldon Wolin, is perhaps most pronounced in the areas of politics relating to international relations and foreign policy. . . . Foreign affairs, like military affairs, were about power politics, unpredictable dangers—including threats to the very existence of the nation—complex strategies, and ‘the’ national interest, subjects about which average citizens lacked the experience and competence to judge.”²

In this regard, academia’s utter absence of reaction to G. W. Bush’s Iraq war, and U.S. wars in general, shows that the elite power scheme has won. “One of the reasons why ‘the sixties’ continues to be a favorite punching bag of neocons and neoliberals is that it represented a decade of prolonged popular political education unique in recent American history. The most frequent topics were racism, foreign policy, corporate power, higher education, and threats to ecology—each in one form or another a domain of elitism. Public universities, such as those at Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and Madison, played a leading role in the organization of antiwar activities. That none of those institutions was ruffled by antiwar agitation at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 testifies to the effective integration of universities into the corporate state.”

If the victory of elitism inside academia is that of influential and well-financed networks, it also has a genuine intellectual background that Sheldon Wolin examines at length in this chapter. There again, the topic being discussed is not that of meritocracy—through which an elite emerges by its own talents and efforts exclusively—but that of an auto-proclaimed elite whose power over the majority of people is assumed to be the sign of a well-ordered society. According to Sheldon Wolin, “The academic genealogy of today’s elitism, consists primarily of two branches, one deriving from the émigré political philosopher Leo Strauss, the other from a native son, Samuel Huntington.”

“Like Superpower itself, Straussism is based upon a fantasy about power—in this case, the power to be found in a most unlikely form, philosophy. Unlike most of the fantasts of scientific and technological power, who are rapturous about the material benefits for humankind that such powers can bring, Strauss was a fantast who warned of the harm to the “masses” that the true philosophy would wreak should the Many ever gain even a glimpse of its meaning and implications. . . . What form does the awesome power of the true philosophy take? The true philosophy knows a great and dangerous truth, that society is founded on and held together by myths, that is, untruths. By nature the masses are credulous; their credulity is necessary to the existence and preservation of society and, not least, of philosophers. So the ‘Few,’ ‘wishing neither to be destroyed nor to bring destruction upon the multitude,’ must not expose to the Many, or publicly ridicule, the insubstantial basis of mass beliefs”³

Straussian ideology, therefore, does not assign to those at the helm of power the crafting of specific policies. Instead, their vocation is in the realization of grandiose ambitions. Sheldon Wolin refers in this regard to Harvey Mansfield, Jr, who has acknowledged the work of Leo Strauss as the key modern influence on his own political philosophy⁴ “Mansfield has sought to demonstrate, not so much how, but why power and virtue should be combined so that politics can again be a great stage for heroic action and noble deeds. In a dazzling and subtle account Mansfield depicts an ideal political world where the ‘executive’ dominates the political system, not a political system understood in terms of checks and balances or responsibility to the citizenry, but one inspired in almost equal parts by an ideal of monarchy, a patriot king, and a dismissive contempt for democracy.”⁵ . . . Mansfield’s prince governs in the broad sense; he ‘rules’ with a kind of Gaullist grandeur, testing the constitutional limits of office, while pursuing a politics of ‘daring, sacrifice,’ and ‘nobility.’⁶ Above all, ideally the executive stands not for programs but for ‘virtue.’ That means, among other things, he is prepared to act in defiance of the popular will. Virtue, or the love of the highest things, is something only the Few can aspire to and the Many never appreciate.”

1. Pr. Robert Reich, himself a scholar, offers a similar description in one of his Inequality Media videos here.
2. Sheldon Wolin adds, “The models for the kind of experienced expertise qualified to deal with high matters of state were the “wise men” assembled by President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later by President Johnson for Vietnam strategies.” See Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), for a hagiographic depiction, and, for a more critical appraisal, David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, 20th ed. (New York: Modern Library, 2001).
3. Shadia Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 7. This is a very useful analysis and account of its subject.
4. See, for example, Josh Harlan and Christopher Kagay, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.: The Question of Conservatism, interview, Harvard Review of Philosophy 3 (1993)
5. “Executive power . . . has a natural basis in monarchy.” Taming the Prince, 295. One of Mansfield’s earlier books was a highly suggestive study of Viscount Bolingbroke, who was the author of The Idea of a Patriot King (1738). See as well Sheldon Wolin’s review, “Executive Liberation,” and Mansfield’s spirited rejoinder, “Executive Power and the Passion for Virtue,” in Studies in American Political Development 6 (Spring 1992): 211–16.
6. Taming the Prince, 271