In a justly bygone era, in a justly bygone empire, in the city of Chernomorsk, men in white quilted vests commented on the work of the Geneva disarmament conference in the pages of an unforgettable novel:
„- Bernstorf is a big head”… “- No need to talk! Snowden is a big head!”… “-…believe me, Chamberlain is also a big head.”… “- Briand!” – they said with enthusiasm. “He’s just a head! Briand!” … ” – Briand is a head! They repeated sighing. “Benes is also a head.”
So there were times when, in the opinion of the general public, only big heads were involved in international politics. “Head” was synonymous with cunning, prudence and wisdom unavailable to ordinary bread eaters. Foreign policy was the privilege of the elite.
Domestic politics has long since descended to the level available to the common citizen. The citizen knows how to reform healthcare, he has ideas for reforming education. He can banter for hours about economy, taxation, police, trade. He wants referenda, new elections every month, politicians taking his opinions into account.
But he leaves foreign policy to the elites. As usual, he only comments on it.
At the same time, he has contempt for the elites, he does not trust them. Or he thinks the elites have screwed him over.
There is no doubt that the West is experiencing the most serious elite crisis in years. Not for the first time in historical retrospect, but previous crises are not comparable to the current one. There was a crisis of the elites and even a general revolt against the elites in 1789, 1848, 1917-18, 1945 or even 1968, but today it is a completely different experience.
As Pareto argued, societies are always doomed to be led by elites. They are not a social class, they are not even a social stratum. They are amorphous, hazy, definable in various ways, devoid of structure and connections. But they are there. We intuitively know that they exist. We assign them a leadership role in politics, business, culture, religious and intellectual life.
The thesis about the crisis of the elites has been circulating for a decade. Is it justified? Or is it just a tool used to arouse populist sentiments in Western societies? Populism lives after all by attacking the elites, by undermining their legitimacy.
The crisis of the elites seems to be a real phenomenon, although the populists have blown it up to pyramidal proportions. Without referring to the weakness of the elites, it is impossible to explain such phenomena as the crisis of democracy, the crisis of liberalism, the crisis of the welfare state, and even the crisis of the European Union.
This elite crisis has three sources.
Firstly, the financial crisis of 2008 and its social and economic consequences. Secondly, it is the upheaval of the globalization process. Thirdly, these are the repercussions of the ongoing technological revolution.
The financial crisis of 2008 led to the moral collapse of the financial elites of the West, primarily bankers. Because with their irresponsible policy, they cynically led to it, and then hid from its effects under the umbrella of government guarantees and subsidies, taking generous bonuses. But the crisis undermined also trust in financial experts and even economic academics, because they did not foresee the crisis, they did not warn of the crisis. It also weakened the ratings of the political class, because it was unable to protect the weakest against the effects of the crisis. The constitutive myth of capitalism that greed was good has collapsed. The crisis has deepened the income gap in Western societies. The Gini coefficient began to rise even in the most egalitarian societies, and Piketty aggravated pessimism by predicting that the rich would get richer, living only by clipping coupons from accumulated wealth.
Hopes for enlightened leadership from a new global plutocracy to guide the world safely through globalization upheavals have been dashed. Because it turned out that in a dark hour, international capital rediscovers its national face and seeks the protection of the national state.
The crisis was a painful blow to faith in the efficiency of meritocracy, including the international one. It hit especially the EU and Brussels bureaucracy. Because it did not foresee, did not alarm about the consequences of careless indebtedness of Greece and other countries. The bureaucrats succumbed to procrastination habits in the process of solving the crisis. Even when they proved successful in implementing the plan to save the Greeks, they were criticized for burdening poorer countries with aid in the name of falsely understood solidarity. Once again, the offcials acted too slowly, too reactively, and were too confident in their legitimacy.
Political elites in Western countries showed that blood was thicker than water and instead of protecting ordinary citizens, they protected the banks.
The second important factor turned out to be the inability of the elites to control the effects of globalization. Globalization meant the transfer of Western production and service potential to poorer countries, which offered lower production costs, and especially lower wage costs. This has led to the liquidation of hundreds of thousands of jobs that do not require special qualifications. Jobs migrated to the East and South, and people of different cultures and religions began to migrate to the West in a massive stream. Societies have ceased to trust state elites that they can control the borders of their own state. And locally, old and stagnant communities were exposed to culture shock through coexistence with the “stranger”. Promises of cultural security no longer have worked. The prophecies of the “society of fear” have come true.
The third source of the crisis is the effects of the technological revolution. Technological progress has become exponential. People and entire societies cannot get used to its pace. And political institutions proved even more anachronistic in managing the technological revolution. On the one hand, they cannot cope with the massive influx of data. On the other hand, they use new technologies, especially those related to surveillance, against their own citizens. With the help of “big data”, they manipulate the awareness of citizens and their choices. But they can’t control hate speech. They cannot regulate the artificial intelligence. Political institutions and the political class itself have lost the trust of citizens. And this is only the beginning of the great turbulence caused by technology.
Political elites therefore cause natural reluctance. And these elites became even more closed than before. Even the term “chumocracy” was coined, meaning a closed group of friends, people graduating from the same schools, following the same promotion path in politics, creating a cynical, closed caste of political managers.
In the eyes of citizens, political elites have lost their ethos. Their members are ordinary managers who want to run the state the way a company is run. No lofty goals, no noble missions. They simply make sure that the business goes well, that is, their activity finds the right gratification over the ballot box.
Jacek Żakowski,, a Polish journalist, once divided political leaders into herbivores and predators (carnivores).
Herbivorous leaders focus on the rule of law, legal culture, law-making, multiculturalism, empathy, tolerance, disarmament, trade liberalization, the welfare state. They make decisions slowly, without pressure, without rushing. They indulge in the little pleasures of life. They want to build a “civilization of free time” for others.
Predatory politicians dazzle with the slogans of getting up from our knees, rebuilding the greatness of our own country, caring for the honour of the nation, bringing order, locking criminals (other politicians) in prisons, erecting walls on borders. They claim the right of man to be the master over nature, they propagate the cult of power in international politics.
A symptom of the crisis of the elites would be the displacement of a species of herbivorous politicians by a tribe of predatory politicians. As a result, shouting replaced persuasion, hectic pursuit replaced silent chewing of time, feigned action replaced discussion, enjoyment of power replaced enjoyment of life.
Żakowski wrote that for the last half a century in the West, herbivorous leaders took over public life and dominated politics (but what about Reagan or Thatcher? But never mind the details). Predators ruled business and finance. There would be a big reversal today. In politics, predatory politicians took over the reins (but what about Merkel or Hollande? But never mind the details).
It seems that even if it is true, it will not be for long. Because societies, after all, if you look at the lifestyle of the young generation, especially in cities, are becoming more and more “herbivorous”. The return of the predators is merely a psychopolitical temporary retreat.
Carnivory has become the corporate identity of populists. But it is more declarative than real, at least in the West. What blind and self-righteous carnivorousness leads to in foreign policy can be best seen on the example of Putin. Xi’s carnivorous turn in China’s policy is also not conducive to the country’s international position. It has brought tensions to relations with the West and frightened the neighbours. Even sublime rapacity (Erdogan) does not pay off in the long run.
The new elites that took control of the states in the post-Soviet space and tried to control societies in the Western Balkans also appealed to predatory instincts. Because there, independence and democracy were associated with chaos, disorder and lawlessness. So the predators built a neo-feudal social ladder, at the head of which the neo-nobility sat. As Vlad Inozemtsev wrote, following the example of the French ancien regime, the “nobility of the robe” (bureaucrats, state functionaries, oligarchy and clergy) competed with the “nobility of the sword” (army, police and special services). A strict hierarchy of social roles and serf dependencies of an almost existential nature prevailed. And the main principle regulating the social order became the axiom that “the law applies only in relations between two equal subjects”. If the son of a minister has done harm to the son of another minister, the court will step in with all severity. If the minister’s son has done harm to the son of a poor guy, the matter is swept under the carpet, explaining it with the special circumstances of the event. And in general, the life of a neo-noble has more value than the life of a commoner.
In neo-societies dominated by neo-predatory elites, stability was built on neo-slavery dependencies and hierarchies of serfdom. Political control has become more important than legitimacy (the exercise of power ennobles those who wield power and legitimizes the way it is acquired and exercised). Political control over society has become more important than economic development.
The crisis of the elites in the West has exhausted the existing political notions. Long ago, Noam Chomsky proved that the terms “left” and “right” had no substance. Analysts have long written about a new dividing line on the political scene separating “globalizers”, i.e. supporters of globalization, from “localizers”, i.e. supporters of local thinking. Globalizers come from both the ranks of the traditionally understood left (intellectual cosmopolitans, charity activists, people of culture) and the right (supporters of free trade, international business leaders). And within the ranks of their own camps, they have to resist the supporters of the separation from the world (on the left, they are trade union activists, and on the right, they are right-wing nationalists, xenophobic provincials). The disappearance of the industrial working class was an ideological blow to the left, so it could only be held together by ideals of social justice (combating income inequalities) and social empathy (solidarity with “vulnarable” groups). The right wing (especially the Christian Democrats) was plunged into the crisis of the institutional church, social secularization (who would have thought that the legalization of same-sex marriages in Germany and Great Britain would be carried out by nominally right-wing governments).
Tensions between the horizons of prospects in some countries (post-transformation in Central and Eastern Europe and galloping modernization in the Third World) make the young metropolitan (capital) elites feel like foreigners in their own country.
And generally in the West there has been a long-unseen alienation of elites, at least in social perception. Power has been concentrated in the hands of an extremely narrow circle. And Western societies have been smitten with an autoimmune disease, as described once by Jochen Bittner. It was fueled by doubts and remorse, which for centuries had grown into the identity of the West, and especially of Europeans.
And in political decisions, the political class is paralyzed by the complexity of the world. They choose procrastination, ad hoc actions, full of fear of unforeseen consequences of their own decisions. They think in the present, they talk to society in palimpsests in the hope of its short memory. They treat voters like children. And voters who are treated like children behave like children. Thus voters do not mind others choosing for them, indicating what they need, provided that their basic consumption needs are met (guaranteed monthly income, allowing for occasional shopping madness in value supermarkets and holidays on the beach once a year, an apartment, a car even a fifteen-year-old diesel, but a car).
While in domestic politics voters can free themselves from the child complex, in international politics it is still difficult for them to get rid of it.
