Review: The Revolt of the Elites - by Christopher Lasch

Chrisopher Lasch said, in the acknowedgements in his book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995, ISBN 0-393-03699-5) that it was written under trying circumstances. He had cancer and died before it was published. It was based on essays published in several intellectual magazines and journals. In The Gift of Christopher Lasch, James Seaton, writing in First Things, a conservative, religious, intellectual magazine, saw his work turning from fashionable radicalism to "the moral and spiritual depth that becomes possible when an intellectual disdains the consolations offered by the intellectuals' view of themselves as morally and mentally superior to the rest of humanity." The conservative critic Roger Kimball was less gracious, even condescending in "Christopher Lasch vs. the elites", (1995, Vol. 13, New Criterion, p. 9). (Lasch praised Kimball's book Tenured Radicals in one of his essays, and said little that Kimball would disagree with, except on capitalism and high culture).

Lasch favoured pragmatism in philosophy and populism in politics, and he was skeptical of high culture conservatism. The lead essay is a refutation of Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses, a favoured text among cultural conservatives. Ortega argued that modern politics were dominated and degraded by mass culture and that mass tastes were responsible for increasing ugliness in art and banality in public life. Lasch argues that the masses are primarily workers and consumers, with little choice in how to fill their needs and satisfy their tastes. They consume the tangible and artistic products that are available. His view is that society is dominated by elites. He argues that technocrats in business and government exercise wide powers of economic and social control, perpetuating their own power and influence as a new aristocracy of talent. He argues that there are enduring class divisions in American society, in spite of cultural pretenses to the contrary, and that technocrats are part of the ruling class.

"Opportunity in the Promised Land" traces the history of the term social mobility, a term that was popularized in the media after 1945 as kind of modern myth that tempers the reality of limited opportunities for the majority of modern Americans. "Does Democracy Deserve to Survive" addresses the way that American culture seems to have given up on the capabilities of the ordinary citizen, increasingly treating citizens as unintelligent and lazy consumers.

There is an essay on communitarianism and populism - he favours populism. There is an essay on isolation - we meet each other at work, or in specialized contexts. The social institutions of the neighbourhood have withered. We end up relying on our own families for our entire social life, unless we are fortunate or wise enough to connect with friends and fellow human beings in other ways. There is an essay on the racial politics of New York, the politics of identity and outrage of Al Sharpton, as opposed to Jim Sleeper's vision of a city of proletarian strength, professional excellence and high cultural achievement.

Article Author: Tony Dalmyn

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