A Modern Reply to Ortega y Gasset

books:


	• The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy Christopher Lasch W. W. Norton & Company, 1996 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Revolt of the Elites.

_The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy_ by historian and sociologist Christopher Lasch is an interesting account of the situation we find ourselves in today. According to Lasch, contrary to the thesis advanced by Ortega y Gasset in _The Revolt of the Masses_, the revolt of the masses is over ending in the defeat of communism and is to be followed by a revolt of the cultural elite. Lasch advances arguments showing how we have reached a new stage of political development in America where the elite have become increasingly detached from the concerns of the common man. Unlike the elite of past ages, the former aristocracy of wealth and status, the new elite constitutes an aristocracy of merit. However, unlike in past ages, the new elite have increasingly alienated themselves from the common man. Lasch demonstrates how an increasing division between rich and poor, in which the working class has become alienated from the intellectual class of "symbolic analysts", has led to an utter sense of apathy among the American people. In addition, the values of the new intellectual class are utterly different from the values of the man in the street. While the working class is fundamentally culturally conservative (a fact which Lasch has certainly latched onto) demanding moral certainties on such issues as homosexual rights, abortion, feminism, patriotism, and religion, the intellectual class demands political correctness advocating affirmative action, feminism, homosexual liberation, and promoting a radical (or rather, pseudo-radical) agenda. Lasch seems to sympathize with the populists of old, who sought a sort of third way between the horrors of monopoly capitalism and the welfare state. Populists promoted the values of the common man, thus maintaining a cultural conservativism, while at the same time demonstrating an innate fear of bigness and far off bureaucracy. In addition, Lasch sees in communitarianism which seeks to emphasize the role of community, neighborhoods, and organic connectedness (contrary to libertarianism which emphasizes the individual at the whim of market forces and cultural pluralism) a new hope for the working class and cultural conservativism. Those who are opposed to communitarianism argue that based on previous experiments with small close knit communities (particularly emphasizing cases such as Calvin's Geneva and the New England Puritans but also small towns and neighborhoods) that these are oppressive. Obviously a balance needs to be struck; nevertheless, a re-emphasis on community and traditional values is obviously an important way to achieve improvement in human conditions. Unlike many right wing libertarians who may give lip service to "family values" but who then place the family at the whim of unfettered markets and corporate interests, Lasch argues for a restraint in order to facilitate family and community growth. Lasch shows how class remains an important division with equality of opportunity being merely a further means to oppress the working class. In addition, Lasch shows how the left uses the issue of race (extended arbitrarily to include all minorities and underprivileged - as defined by them, particularly so as to include whites) to create further difficulties for the common man, who is utterly alienated by political correctness. Lasch also argues that feminism remains an important force for the new class, because by allowing more women to enter the workforce they have achieved a situation whereby they perpetuate themselves. Lasch also turns his attention to education, showing how the modern system of compulsory education has failed, emphasizing the failures of such individuals as Horace Mann, who sought to eliminate politics from education. In addition, Lasch turns his attention to the university system, a hotbed of political correctness, multiculturalism, and postmodernist philosophies. Lasch shows how these philosophies have totally alienated any contact that universities may have with ordinary citizens, becoming more and more jargon-laden and specialized while at the same time promoting values completely contrary to those of the common man. Lasch refers to this as "academic pseudo-radicalism" to show how it differs distinctly from true radicalism, how it is fundamentally elitist, and how it further denies opportunities to the very minorities that it claims to so valiantly protect. However, unlike many of the other right wing critics of the university system, Lasch argues that corporations have continued to play a large role in the development of departments leading to a weakening of humanities programs. I found Lasch's criticisms of political correctness in the university system to be particularly cogent. While economically Lasch is opposed to unfettered capitalism, nevertheless he finds room to criticize the welfare state and government bureaucracy which promotes dependency and a culture of victimization. Lasch also shows how respect and shame have been misunderstood by the modern age. In addition, Lasch shows how a culture of narcissism has developed in this country, in which individuals have become excessively self interested and rely heavily on psychotherapies which promote self esteem and "happiness" as the highest good. Lasch also argues for a return to traditional religious values as a means for achieving hope and providing an inoculation against otherwise difficult times.

As a cultural conservative, I found Lasch's brand of populism/communitarianism to be particularly interesting. Lasch's analysis of the elites seems to make sense in light of their lack of contact with everyday reality, their lack of respect for common sense and the average person, and their lack of ties to nation and place. Our country is increasingly controlled by political elites in both parties who serve merely as tourists with little interest in America beyond what makes them money. In this respect, I believe Lasch's arguments to be particularly well thought out.

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The failure of ideology

In this his last book, Christopher Lasch, as so many conservative readers observe in these reviews, identifies a cultural "elite" whose scorn for all things middle American is the cause of a great rift in American society which, if left unchecked, will undo American democracy. Writing against what he perceived to be the excesses of American liberalism, Lasch manages to thoroughly and skillfully map the cultural elitism of the urban managerial caste but, it seems, his own ideological commitments become an obstacle to seeing the role of corporatist neo-Liberalism in manufacturing and exploiting the middle American "concensus" and "values" for which the coastal elites have so little regard.

Lasch did not live to see the rise of the current political regime with its numb lip-service to family values, the work ethic, religious fundamental truths and Freedom, all seemingly "natural" elements of middle American culture. But these values, like those of the cultural elites that Lasch decries, are manufactured, orchestrated by powerful forces in the media and economy that benefit from their dissemination and survival. Surely a man of Lasch's intellect could not have missed the steady shift of the government towards "values" at precisely the moment when the Neo-Liberal agenda was so thoroughly gutting the foundational underpinnings of what we then knew as American society with a purely economic, "bottom-line" rationale for its policies. His fails to see that the true ruling "elites" (those that actually rule) could painlessly embrace a stock catalogue of "social conservative" views while maintaining a status quo of massive wealth redistribution upward which ultimately is more destabilizing to our democratic project than all of the social liberalism of the coasts. Furthermore, as anyone who pays attention well knows, the cultural elite project is simultaneously repudiated and massively consumed by the middle in the form of popular entertainment and the circus of bar room-brawl politics around so-called hot button issues like abortion.

In the end, it is not the latte-drinking intellectual and social elites who will divide and destroy America, it is the greedy corporatists who, using the government they so thoroughly control, shamelessly amass corporate and personal profit while unraveling the societal network that has provided a safety net to the "average American" since the Great Depression. These new elites are a much more dangerous lot, since they operate a government that conspicuously sounds the warning bells of the decline of American society to deflect attention from their organized theft of our national patrimony and personal, economic and social security.

In other words, why should a Christian from Idaho care if her kids don't have good schools, her corporate-controled healthcare consumes an ever larger portion of her shrinking (in real dollars)income, her future employment is uncertain, she has massive and increasing debt, and even the most rudimentary public services are being privatized for corporate profit? Look the other way! Gay guys are getting married in Cambridge!

Because he fails to address corporatism's unrelenting attack on the social fabric, Lasch's work largely serves as part of the smoke screen behind which this criminal transfer of wealth takes place.

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Thought provoking book

A book to make you reflect and think about what went wrong in America and how to fix it. This book is great food for enlightened conversation.

A Modern Reply to Ortega y Gasset

Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) was a historian and penetrating social critic. In his articles, essays and books, he challenged everyone - modern liberals and conservatives as well as the leftist and academic elite. While one did not have to agree with his conclusions, he was a man who always asked questions that needed to be answered, and raised issues that needed to be confronted. Politically, Lasch could probably be best described as a New Deal liberal, for he was very suspicious of both unfettered consumer capitalism and the rise of the New Left, whose goals and views he felt were in direct opposition to American values. He could also be described as a "thoughtful declinist" but one who always held out hope for the future.
In this book, Lasch's the last one published during the author's lifetime, he argued that America was not in danger from the "Revolt of the Masses" which was the title of Jose Ortega y Gasset's landmark book which was written in 1932, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Fascism, but that we are threatened by a "Revolt of the Elites." In 1994, Lasch had come to believe that the economic and cultural elite of the United States, who historically has insured the continuity of a culture, had lost faith in the traditional values that had animated and organized our culture since its inception. He saw a threat to the continuation of western civilization was not a mass revolt as envisioned by the pro-communist New Left of the 1960's, but a rejection of its liberal and pluralistic values by the educated elite that run its institutions and educate its children. Lasch's last question was an important one: can a society survive when a significant portion of its elite have forsaken its founding principles?

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

In this spirited work, Lasch calls out for a return to community, schools that teach history not self-esteem, and a return to morality and even the teachings of religion. Writing in a nonpartisan manner, he looks to lessons of American history, castigating those in power for the widening gap between the economic classes.

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