Book review: The Populist Delusion by Neema Parvini
The Populist Delusion is as an informative, succinctly-written and accessible handbook for those who wish to understand the core principles of elite theory.
Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion, Imperium Press, April 2022, paperback, 166pp, $20, ISBN 978 1 922602 442. You may purchase the book here.
In The Populist Delusion Dr Neema Parvini examines the myths regarding popular sovereignty that are held by those on the political left and right. Namely, the myths that society can exist without a state, that the state is neutral, that a free market could ever exist and the idea that powers of the state could ever be effectively partitioned. The greatest myth is that the populace can ever rule itself. Parvini draws on political theory stretching back to 1900 to propose that there can be no populism because all revolutions are manoeuvring of rival elites. Any movement that shapes discourse or takes power will eventually serve some vanguard. This analysis is called elite theory.
Parvini is well placed to conduct such an introduction to elite theory. His YouTube channel “Academic Agent” has for several years presented aspects of elite political theory, featuring discussion regarding the thinkers whose writing appears in The Populist Delusion. These are Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels, Carl Schmidt, Bertrand de Jouvenel, James Burnham, Samuel T. Francis and Paul Gottfried. They thought that although governments were run by elites governing their own interests, they required the consent of the population, even without the active support or electoral mandate of that population. If discontent grows too great, a rival elite will mobilise a section of society sufficiently to seize power.
It is significant that these theorists tend to approach analysis free of idealism; they describe how things are, not what they ought to be. Some theorists definitely approve of what they find in society and recommend leaders understand patterns described. The natural order manifests itself in different forms but conforms to recurrent patterns in every society over recorded history. It is Burham’s The Machiavellians (1943) which sets out the first comprehensive historical survey of elite theory, which Parvini here sets out to update.
The foundation upon which elite theory is based is Mosca’s The Ruling Class (1923, second ed.), which states that the organised minority can rule the disorganised majority. This (Mosca’s Law) explains why the idea of a populist uprising leading to genuine democracy is fallacious. Firstly, all influential movements become co-opted by the elites – even if those elites are the leaders of unions, militias or guerrilla divisions, who de facto are raised to the level of elite, through successfully attaining power. Secondly, there is no such system as democracy, by which the people can enact their will, directly or indirectly. For Mosca, there is the governing elite (generals, statesmen, kings), the subservient non-ruling elite (the top levels of the military forces, the Church, civil service, academia, press, publishing, industry) and the masses, to which can be added rival elites excluded from power.
Pareto described movement between these groups – either peacefully and routinely or violently and revolutionarily – as circulation of the elites. He also described leaders as temperamentally foxes (inclined to use persuasion and operate indirectly) or lions (inclined to use coercion and resort to force). Robert Michels added that, “The rank and file are manipulated into accepting policies with which they would not otherwise agree, and which are not in their interests, or at least are primarily in the interests of the leadership group.” (Quoted, pp. 42-3) Think of mass immigration, “hate-speech” laws and eco-taxes on fuel, and you will have in mind policies never mandated by popular vote. Parvini summarises Michels’s iron law of oligarchy, to wit that all organisations of any scale come to resemble each other because the unavoidable, universal necessities of bureaucracy favour certain actions and require similar hierarchies.
Schmitt’s contribution to elite theory is twofold: the idea of power lying in the hands of he who decides and the importance of distinguishing friend from enemy. Jouvenel’s key concept is that rulers tend to appeal to, and establish patron-client arrangements with, the working class, forming an alliance that marginally helps the poor but massively empowers the leaders by locking out the discontent upper middle class (the ruling-class-in-waiting), which seeks to take power for itself. Think of those populist leaders that their countries’ intelligentsia, press and chattering class all loathe – Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte – and you have it.
Of these authors, Burnham’s writings are best known to Anglophone readers today. He has the advantage of writing clear, short books in English and has had his ideas circulated and critiqued since the early 1940s. Burnham’s famous concept of the Managerial Elite is a description of the way politicians and industrialists tend to form a perma-elite intended to protect their power, control the masses, restrict rights of individuals, suppress democracy and defend their network from upstart entrepreneurs. Convergence of interests within a centrally controlled corporatist economy is found in liberalist democracies, fascist regimes and communist states.
Francis is put forward as a link between the elite theorists and the US Republican Party of the 1990s and the backers of Trump. Francis foresaw a revolt against the status quo by white poor and middle-class voters, who were scorned and discriminated against by the elites, which drew support from non-whites, immigrants and other political minorities. Gottfried’s prime contribution to elite theory is the notion that the state now actively engineers the population to suit the needs to the Managerial Elite. The population is battered by propaganda (from mass media and institutions) that it is culpable for historical “crimes”, culturally (even genetically) guilty of privilege and coerced into dismantling its values and culture to make it more pliant to technocrats.
While elite theory has often been characterised as rightist, it makes points about democracy and networks of power that form between press, politics and industry that would be agreed upon by libertarians and socialists. Many leftists will recognise the systems and tendencies described, though they will contend that all that is needed to break this cycle is the intuition of true democracy and a commitment to uphold it.
Parvini is a knowledgeable and lively guide to this area, providing plentiful examples of elite-theory critiques in action and episodes from recent topical events. The Populist Delusion is as an informative, succinctly-written and accessible handbook for those who wish to understand the core principles of elite theory discussed by reactionaries and the dissident right. For the student, it will provide a range of key writers to be read and ideas to be explored. This is a fitting companion volume for Burnham’s seminal The Machiavellians.
