The Great Elite Revolt Against Civilization
Educated political elites often champion socially damaging policies as calculated strategies for electoral success rather than through ignorance, according to French outlet Causeur.
Modern democracies face a troubling paradox: highly educated political elites continue to champion policies that undermine social cohesion and economic prosperity, not out of ignorance but as a calculated strategy to gain and retain power.
A society thrives when internal rivalries take the form of constructive competition, driving innovation and collective progress. Yet in contemporary Western democracies, according to Causeur, significant portions of the political class have discovered that electoral success can be achieved through destructive programs that weaken the social fabric.
The puzzle of elite irrationality has long perplexed observers of political life. How can overeducated and well-informed elites defend absurd, incendiary, or irrational ideas, the French outlet asks. Historical examples abound: cultural and political leaders who devoted themselves to Bolshevism, Hitlerism, Maoism, and more recently to Islamo-leftism or anti-speciesism.
The phenomenon extends to contemporary policy debates. How can intelligent, informed individuals advocate for state control of the economy, confiscatory taxation, retirement at sixty, denuclearization of energy production, or lax immigration policies? How can philosophy professors, unable to maintain order in their own classrooms, continue promoting student-centered educational ideology? How can economists believe that rent control will solve housing shortages?
When Elite Competition Served Civilization
Stupidity, ignorance, and bad faith among elites cannot be dismissed, Causeur notes, but another explanation deserves consideration: their positions are interested, strategic, and calculated. The analysis focuses specifically on political elites and their motivations.
A naive view of political life assumes that leaders and party chiefs aim for the common good, disagreeing only on its nature or the means to achieve it. Everyone supposedly wants to reduce unemployment, increase purchasing power, and combat injustice and ecological problems, just through different methods and priorities.
Reality proves far less sympathetic. The question occupying most politicians is not “What can I do for my country?” but rather “How do I access power and keep it?”
This cynicism becomes unproblematic when political competition stimulates innovation and produces grand achievements. Just as Adam Smith’s baker makes good bread not from philanthropy but to enrich himself at competitors’ expense, elite rivalries have historically generated extraordinary cultural productions: temples of ancient Egypt, the Athenian Acropolis, Mayan pyramids, and the Forbidden City.
Great empires and civilizations emerged through political and geopolitical competition. Whether motives were religious, economic, or political matters little if the result produces more wealth, beauty, and knowledge for growing numbers of people.
The Democratic Turn Toward Demagogery
In classic civilizational processes, different social layers contribute together to strengthen economic and cultural edifices, even through rivalry. Each person works according to their competencies, and nearly all work has social utility or at least cultural value. Museums and libraries overflow with refined production from leisured classes: goldsmithing, marquetry, icons, paintings, and literary, theological, and philosophical works.
The system breaks down when politically profitable actions diverge from collective interest. Imagine a baker discovering a recipe allowing him to surpass competitors by adding ingredients harmful to consumer health. Without moral restraint, competitive logic pushes him to poison his customers.
This describes political life when elites discover formulas for accessing power by deceiving their clientele and weakening the social body. At what historical moment did the politically profitable separate from the socially constructive? When did demagogery become profitable?
The answer, as Causeur observes, arrived when flatterers gained an electorate to flatter. The advent of modern democracies marked a fundamental turning point: demagogery and populism saw their returns explode once the people gained voice in public affairs.
The Structural Flaw of Mass Democracy
That demagogery tends to accompany democracy has been understood since antiquity. The structural reality of mass suffrage creates incentives for political entrepreneurs to promise what voters want to hear rather than what serves long-term collective interests.
When vandals surge through city centers at every opportunity—national holidays, football matches, New Year’s Eve—some elites respond by denouncing the “repressive society.” Faced with classroom chaos, education officials double down on placing students at the center of the system. Confronted with housing shortages, economists propose rent controls.
These positions may appear nonsensical from a policy perspective but make perfect sense as electoral strategy. Political elites in modern democracies have learned to profit from policies that damage social cohesion, much as an unscrupulous baker profits from adulterating his bread.
The competitive dynamic that once built civilizations now increasingly serves to undermine them, as electoral incentives reward those willing to tell populations what they want to hear rather than what they need to know.
With information from Causeur
