Societies are in equilibrium- i.e. stable- when, for all mission critical classes of society, expectations match outcomes. Ceteris paribus, a Society will be unstable when an important class of people either gain much more or much less than was foreseen. Instability isn't a bad thing. If some make unanticipated gains because their productivity rose, this could have Tardean mimetic effects which raise productivity across the board. What if an important segment of society faces a much bleaker future than had been anticipated? Might this not precipitate a revolution? The answer, generally speaking, is no. Kill a few thousand malcontents and show that you are just warming up and suddenly there are no malcontents.
What if the malcontents are 'elite'- i.e. stand out from the crowd by reason of superior intelligence, education or arduously acquired skill? The answer is elites can be killed just as easily as non-elites. Moreover, kicking their heads in brings joy to the hearts of horny handed peasants and the sort of decent, god-fearing, pimp we find in the humbler class of speakeasy or honkytonk.
Peter Turchin grew up in Soviet Russia which certainly had plenty of very bright people- like his father- who might be called an elite though they also tended to be in greater danger from the KGB.
About 15 years ago he published his influential theory of Elite overproduction
which describes the condition of a society that has an excess supply of potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure. This, he hypothesizes, is a cause for social instability, as those left out of power feel aggrieved by their relatively low socioeconomic status.
People who feel aggrieved about not having enough to eat- more particular if they are soldiers & policemen- can indeed cause 'social instability'. So can the desire to kill and eat the rich- or at least those of the rich who belong to the wrong religion or region or whatever. But, it would be truer to say that such a society is collapsing or that it is not currently viable that to say it is unstable.
Some countries have traditionally had an elite administrative & military cadre. The French "énarque"- or graduate of France's elite ENA school- is an example. But we might also speak of elite schools or Colleges or particular academic programs (e.g. the Harvard MBA program or Yale Law School) or particular enterprises (Goldman Sachs, McKinsey) which are disproportionately represented amongst the ranks of the 'great and the good' or the 'movers and shakers'. Do such institutions overproduce? They may do but elites are generally smart enough to do 'product differentiation'- i.e. find a way to reclassify themselves so as to restrict supply. That's why some people who went to Eton & Oxford end up teaching Classics while others move effortlessly between the Treasury or the Foreign Office and the top Merchant Banks or Hedge funds. Indeed, they might even decide that spending a couple of years as Prime Minister might be a way of giving back to the community.As a term in sociology, elites are simply a small segment of the society who concentrate social power in their hands.
Sociology is the province of stupidity. It is obvious that elites perpetuate themselves even when 'social power' changes hands. The suave Mandarin can serve a Minister who was a coal miner just as easily as he can serve an Aristocrat or a self-made billionaire.
They are the power-holders (and I increasingly use this term in my lectures, to avoid confusing them with those “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” folks that the right-wingers love to hate).
You aren't a power-holder if there's a guy who tells you what to do. In China, Chairman Xi is that guy. This doesn't mean China doesn't have an elite.
Next question, what is social power? Answer: ability to influence other people’s behavior.
If that behaviour does not entail compliance for some purpose of maintaining or extending power then 'social power' is irrelevant. We may imitate Borat or Ali G or the KPop singer 'Psy'. But fictional personae have no social power.
Sociologists such as Michael Mann distinguish four sources of social power: military (coercion),
that is military power. It isn't social power. Only if the Army takes over the country can it gain sufficient political power to attain the power to dictate behaviour across large swathes of society.
economic, administrative or political, and ideological.
what about cultural, aesthetic, religious, spiritual, moral etc. ?
Put simply, there are many ways to influence people behavior.
Behaviour is mimetic and affected by incentives. Provide a better mimetic target or incentivize others to do so. That's it. That's the whole story.
I can make you to do something by force,
by giving you the incentive of not having your head kicked in if you imitate the actions of the person I consider to be compliant with my order
or a threat of force;
i.e. 'expected disutility'
I can pay you to do it;
That is not an exercise of social power. It is just buying and selling- i.e. exercising spending power.
I can order you;
if you are an agent, employee or otherwise obliged to follow my directions
or I can persuade you.
In which case, it is you who have the power to decide whether to listen to me or tell me to fuck off.
The last is one of the most important, if often underappreciated, forms of social power.
No. We understand that an enterprise with a lot of money can hire very smart Advertising or PR professionals to persuade us to buy all sorts of trash or to vote for all sorts of morons.
The bottom line is that in a liberal, democratic, country, money talks to a certain extent but various types of countervailing power exist.
In most situations, different kinds of power are combined in various proportions. For example, military officers primarily influence the behavior of soldiers by giving them direct orders (political power), but this is buttressed by the threat of court martial (coercion).
This may be true of the Russian army or a conscript army under conditions of total war. Otherwise, the sanction which applies to a non-compliant soldier is the same as in private enterprise- viz. denial of career advancement and, possibly, being fired for cause.
Most effective power involves all four components. Thus, a charismatic military chief (think Alexander the Great) gives direct orders through the chain of command, rewards followers with loot, hangs the deserters, and inspires his followers to fight for an idea.
Fuck has this to do with elites?
Although the elites governing a country
may not be an elite at all. The thing may be like Jury duty or 'Buggin's turn'. Elites may be perfectly content to let boring bureaucrats or stodgy socialists or brain-dead aristocrats do the governing. Deciding policy is what really matters. But skilled courtesans may be better able to do this. Aspasia was no better than she should be. Theodora took it up every orifice and clamoured for yet more dicks.
use a combination of all four kinds of power, there is a lot of variation in how ruling elites are recruited and from whom.
A governing class may not be elite. It may be hereditary or 'representative' in the sense of average and undistinguished or it may be merely a matter of 'Buggin's turn'.
Interestingly enough, an elite deriving its power from a particular source tends to dominate others. For example, in Egypt it’s the military elites. Modern Egypt has been ruled by generals from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak, and now (after a brief intermission) by Sisi.
Military regimes generally hand over the day-to-day administration to a technocratic elite which rose through public sector institutions.
China, France, and Russia have traditionally been ruled by administrative elites.
No. It is not the case that the most promising young Mandarin will end up as President though I suppose it could happen- look at Macron.
In Russia during the last Time of Troubles of the 1990s, a clique of wealthy billionaires, known as “oligarchs,” attempted to install themselves as the ruling elite. But they were easily defeated by the bureaucrats, led by Putin.
A KGB man. We suspect that he was good at killing people.
Some oligarchs were exiled, another ended up in prison and then was exiled, and the rest accepted subordinate positions in the political order.
Fuck does this have to do with elites? We are talking of gangsterism of a repulsive kind. It isn't the case that Putin represents the finest flower of the Russian academy.
In the United States coercive power is thoroughly controlled by the political leaders.
No. It is a country under the rule of law- though maybe not so much under Trump.
Political (and ideological) bases of power, in turn, are subordinated to the economic elites.
No. 'Bases of power' are Governorships, seats in Congress or City Hall etc. Money can certainly alter outcomes where offices are elective. But any vested interest group- or just a bunch of pissed off proles- can put some money together or create a grass-roots organization to turn out the vote.
I won’t go into details here, just note that power is exercised indirectly and in subtle ways.
No. Power is exercised directly and in legal ways which are matters of public record unless they are classified for reasons of National Security.
Those interested in understanding how this works should read William Domhoff’s Who Rules America (see also his web site) or Chapter 4 of Ages of Discord. The conclusion that we reach is that, to a first approximation, American power holders are wealth holders.
As opposed to hobos. America is a wealthy country. Smart people tend to be more productive and thus get wealthier. There was a sort of 'cursus honorum' tradition whereby the rich dude felt he needed to 'give back' by spending a bit of time in Government. Oddly, the Ambassador who had made a big donation to the President's campaign was often just as good or better than the career diplomat.
Thus, a pretty good answer to the question, who are the elites in America? is “those whose personal worth exceeds X million dollars.”
It is a shitty answer. Currently, the US has 2.3 million decamillionaires (individuals with a net worth, including assets like trust funds, of $10 million or more). We are speaking of a 'lucky sperm' club, not an elite.
What is X? It’s somewhat arbitrary, but it’s around 5-10 million as the following graph suggests:
You can see from the chart, that if you want to be in the proverbial 1 percent, you need to amass at least $7.8 million.
You read this and bought bitcoin at 50 dollars a dozen years ago. You sold last year at 126,000. Congratulations! You are part of the 1 percent. Are you of the 'elite'? No. You just got lucky like the shut-in in the trailer park who won the lottery.
An alternative way to define the elites would be to start enumerating the most important political offices and bureaucratic positions, from the US president down; the officers of Fortune 500 companies; the owners and editors-in-chief of major media companies; major donors to politicians, and so on. But you would end up pretty much with the same group of people, because the great majority of these people would also be significant wealth holders.
No. You would have excluded those who are stupid but who got a good alimony settlement or had a Mafia boss for a grandfather.
In America, wealth (economic power) is very closely correlated with overall social power.
Correlation is not causation. Turchin doesn't have a Structural Causal Model. He is just waving his hands and saying 'there are too many millionaires. No wonder things are turning to shit.' The truth is 'elites' are themselves capable of screening and signalling such that they differentiate themselves from the broader class they sprang from. Not every Old Etonian got to be Prime Minister in the last decade. It was just two of the stupider ones who did it on a dare because the alternative was to have to truthfully confess to the number of times they had bummed each other.
Leaving aside elites, what happens if lots of people make investments expecting one outcome but are disappointed to find they were mistaken? Consider the problem of 'educated unemployment'- i.e. guys with degrees or even Doctorates who can't get jobs. India has this problem in acute form. Is it causing 'instability'? No. People realize that they were taught worthless shite & don't really have any skills. The same thing happened to other over-credentialized people around the world. The good news is, young people are resilient. They may find a better path for themselves than any their Professors could have prepared them for.
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