Elites

A General Model

Murray Milner, Jr.

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745671833, 9780745671826
• eBook ISBN: 9780745689524
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

At a time when significant social status, economic resources, and political opportunities seem to become ever more unequally distributed and only available to a few, this book represents the first systematic effort in recent years to develop a sociological model of elites and non-elites. In outlining a new typology of economic, political, and cultural elites, as well as drawing attention to the important role of non-elites, this accessibly written book provides novel insights into the structure of historical and contemporary societies.

Milner identifies the sources and structures of economic, political, and cultural power, and investigates patterns of cooperation and conflict between and within elite groups. Analyzing politicians and propagandists, landowners and capitalists, national heroes and celebrities, ordinary folks and outcasts, the book applies its model to three distinctly different societies – ancient India, Classical Athens, and the contemporary United States – highlighting important structural commonalities across these otherwise very dissimilar societies.

A significant contribution to scholarship, Elites will also be useful for an array of courses in sociology, political science, and history.

 

1
Introduction

Introduction

Two of the recurring issues in social theory are (1) who has power and (2) how does the exercise of such power shape subsequent events? In an attempt to answer these questions, analysts have drawn on the concepts of class and elite. Sometimes these are made more specific by notions of ruling class and power elite. Often the analyses of classes and elites are linked to implicit or explicit arguments about what produces or limits social change. Some of the factors focused upon include production technology, weaponry, demography, and culture. The notions of class and elites have produced insights into the nature and direction of social life, but they seem increasingly inadequate to understand the complexity of contemporary social life. Moreover, they have been inadequate for understanding both the commonalities and the differences between societies, and between the past and the present.

The purpose of this book is to improve the analytical tools for addressing such problems by proposing a new model of elites and non-elites. The model suggests that it is important to look at the relationship between different types of elites and between elites and non-elites. The aim is to create a model that is general enough to usefully analyze a variety of societies and historical periods without lapsing into a philosophy of history, which already “knows” what the future will bring. While serious intellectual endeavors build upon the work of previous scholars, in my opinion this too often leads to a kind of scholasticism that makes new work more arcane and inaccessible than it needs to be.

Much if not most of the literature about elites focuses on how concentrated or dispersed power is in a particular society or community or how the actions of those with power have shaped the past or will shape the future. While I do not completely ignore the first question my primary focus is on the second question. My approach to answering the second question does not focus on studying the biographies of past elites to explain the past, or interviewing current elites to predict the future. Rather, I look at the relationship between different types of elites and non-elites in such a way that we can begin to see patterns that cut across multiple societies and how these patterns are related to key social changes. I am especially influenced by Max Weber's notion that there are three main types of power: political power, economic power, and status power. Elites typically specialize in one of these types of power and in different cultures and historical periods the type of power and the type of elite that is most prominent can vary. I want to avoid the tendency to assume that a particular category of elites is always the most powerful, or that the future is predetermined. This has been the tendency of both Marxism and the elite theory. Marx assumed that history was driven primarily by class conflict. In capitalist societies the proletariat would be the key mover of history by bringing about a revolution and the eventual establishment of communism, which would eliminate class and class conflict. Elite theorists tended to assume the opposite. Elites make history and for the most part others were primarily their pawns. Any apparent moves toward egalitarianism, such as electoral democracies, were largely illusory and eventually succumbed to what Robert Michels called the “iron law of oligarchy.” Who made up the elite may change, but real power was always held by a relatively small group. In contrast, the approach I am proposing attempts to avoid notions of inevitability – whether they are “optimistic” or “pessimistic” ones. The future is shaped by the past, but not determined by it. To paraphrase Marx's famous epigram, people make their own history, but they do not make it just as they want.

I have found four theorists especially helpful in formulating a new model: (1) Karl Marx, (2) Vilfredo Pareto (and other elites theorists such as Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels), (3) Max Weber, and (4) Pierre Bourdieu. I will discuss each of these in turn as a way of identifying some of the key elements that should be incorporated in a new model.

The “Classical” Theories

Since the pattern of cooperation and conflict between various elites and non-elites is my primary concern, rather than the precise concentration of power in particular settings, several classical social theorists seem most relevant to this task. I focus on how their work is useful in suggesting the relevant elements of a new model, though I try to present enough of their theoretical perspective to show how their theorizing about elites is related to their broader body of work.

Marxian theory

After a brief prologue, the Communist Manifesto begins: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” This pregnant sentence introduces three central concepts in Marx's thinking: history, class, and conflict. In Marx's vision, class differences, which were the basis of conflict, could and would be transcended following a Communist revolution. History, however, would not stop. Stated in another way, Marx's notion of class conflict was placed in the context of a broader theory of social change. The power of Marx's analysis is not in his systematic and detailed analysis of the notion of class – he never got around to that. Rather, it is in his ability to throw light on the changes that were occurring as Europe was transformed from agrarian feudalism to an industrialized bourgeois society with new forms of exploitation and conflict. This part of Marx's analysis is not particularly controversial. More debatable has been the Marxian view of the long-term economic, political, and cultural consequences of these changes.

The classical Marxist sketch of capitalism goes something like this: New technologies and the dynamics of capitalist market competition usher in an enormous increase in productive capacity. Because of the pressure of competition, capitalists need to keep costs low, including the costs of wages. To lower costs, forward-looking capitalists invest most of their profits in more efficient technologies that produce more products with less labor. The working class experiences increased economic insecurity and a decline in their share of the income. As consumers they cannot afford to buy the increasing supply of products. This reduces consumer demand and lowers prices and profits. Many businesses go broke or have to lay off workers. This leads to recessions and depressions. The longer-term result is that capitalist economies go through alternating periods of booms and busts with the downturns becoming increasingly severe. This leads to political unrest and protest. Such protest may be reduced by various forms of ideology that mislead workers into a false consciousness. The state is primarily an instrument of the capitalist class and the police and army are used to suppress working-class dissent, protests, and strikes and to protect private property, especially private capital. Increasingly repressive measures must be used to maintain order, intensifying working-class hostility. Eventually this leads to a proletarian revolution and the creation of a socialist state. The new state substitutes rational economic planning for the “anarchy of the market” and gradually morphs into fully developed Communism. This process is not limited to particular capitalist societies, but is an international process. Workers see that the key conflicts were not between different ethnic, religious, occupational, or national groups, but that this is a worldwide struggle between a capitalist ruling class and an increasingly internationalized proletariat. This is expressed through the effort to organize international associations of workers movements such as the “First International” (1864–1876) and the “Second International” (1889–1916).

In retrospect we know that the model was incorrect in predicting a series of proletarian revolutions and the disappearance of nationalism and religious affiliations. Most popular revolutions were supported by rural peasants rather than an urban proletariat. Following World War II, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were established under the military hegemony of the Soviet Union, which is not to say they had no popular support. These regimes not only failed to result in utopias, but were generally highly authoritarian and economically inefficient. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the economic liberalization of China (as well as Vietnam and Cambodia) are obvious indicators that these societies have not been economically sustainable.

The Marxian model has, however, been amazingly prescient with respect to pinpointing the economic dilemmas of market economies: The contradiction between keeping wage costs low and sustaining consumer demand continues. This tendency to boom and bust has been problematic for most capitalist economies. This was certainly true of the U.S. economic downturn of 2008.

What Marx did not anticipate is that the state could significantly soften and limit these instabilities by manipulating taxes, public expenditures, and the money supply. These possibilities are the great insight and contribution of first Keynesian economic theory and policies, and, a little later, monetary theory and policies. While capitalist societies have not “solved” the contradictions that Marx identified, they have been able to manage them sufficiently to avoid the degree of economic instability and revolution that Marx predicted.

Marxism has often attempted to take into account Keynesian and monetary efforts to manage the economy by seeing the state primarily as an instrument of the capitalist class (Miliband 1969). There are, however, two fundamental problems with this view of the world. First, the vast modern welfare state has interests and goals of its own such as adequate funding for its bureaucracies and their expansion. Moreover, in democratic states the ruling government must retain the popular support of at least a large proportion of the non-elite voting population. The most urgent concerns of non-elites cannot be ignored with impunity. Second, defining government economic policies as the state pursing the interests of the capitalist class assumes that this class has a high level of consensus, solidarity, and farsightedness. This is unlikely in large, complex, and diverse societies in which many of the key actors are global multinational corporations.

It is in this context that Fred Block's work is useful (Block 1987, esp. chap. 3). He characterizes modern capitalism as having a “ruling class that does not rule.” The basic argument is that the managers of the state have a strong interest in maintaining a productive and expanding economy. First, this is the basis of taxes and other sources of government income. Second, a stagnant or declining economy tends to erode popular support for the government in power. Since productive economic activity is highly dependent upon the willingness of individual capitalists and corporations to invest private capital in business enterprises, it is in the state's interests to avoid policies that would discourage such investment. Political elites are, however, interested in the productivity of the economy as a whole, rather than simply the profits of a particular capitalist, corporation, or industry. Therefore they sometimes pursue policies that benefit the economy as a whole, even though they may reduce the profits of particular economic enterprises. In Block's terminology, a key role of the state is to maintain “business confidence.”

The essence of Block's argument is that political elites have a strong vested interest in seeing that economic elites as a class prosper and in maintaining “business confidence,” but this is not primarily because they are “instruments” of that class, but because they are pursuing their own long-term interests.

To summarize, some of the key limitations of Marxian theory are:

1. While class conflict often leads to social change, other types of power and conflict are also important sources of change and these tend to be ignored or attributed to economic interests.
2. The Marxian assumption that polarization will lead to essentially two classes has been largely inaccurate with respect to historical developments in m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• 1: Introduction
• 2: The General Model
• 3: Traditional India: the Varna Scheme
• 4: Athens in the Classical Period
• 5: The U.S. 1980–2008: Economics and Politics
• 6: The U.S. 1980–2008: Other Actors
• 7: The 2007–2009 Financial Crisis
• 8: Conclusions
• Appendix: Some Implications and Elaborations of the Model
• References
• Index