Review of Matthew Goodwin's book "Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics", Penguin Books 2023.
The radical American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in 1956 about what he described in the title of his book as The power elite. The American elite, he noted, represents a "compact social and psychological entity" that "rises above the lower strata of the population of officials and workers" and whose values are "differentiated" from those of the "lower classes." “All their sons and daughters,” he adds, “attend colleges, often after private schools; then they marry among themselves... when they marry or get married well, they acquire the right to own, take positions, make decisions."
Seven decades later, in a new book titled Values, voice and virtue, British political scientist Matthew Goodwin similarly speaks of a "new elite" in Britain. The already recognizable approach to the subject that Goodwin adopts draws on the work of communitarian and "post-liberal" thinkers of recent years. Britain got a "new dominant class" that seized the institutions and imposed its "radically progressive cultural values" on the rest of the nation, moving away from the conservative instinct of the majority.
It's an image Mills would recognize immediately. "The adopted identity of ambitious and successful graduates of elite schools," writes Goodwin, "provides them with a crucially important collective sense of unity" and "shapes their values and loyalty to the collective." Such a sense of common identity "is reinforced by social networks where graduates of similar elite universities are advertised. Members of this elite usually marry within the same group."
The similarity of observations spanning decades should not surprise us. The idea of a separate new elite defined by education and accepted values, which occupies a dominant position in relation to the population of other people, has a long history and was often used during the 20th century. The roots of the current debate about the new elite should be sought in the 70s of the 20th century. Barbara Ehrenreich and her husband John published a paper in 1977 in which they coined the phrase "professional-managerial class." In the text, they described the emergence of a new class of professionals with university degrees - from engineers and members of middle management to social and cultural workers - which differs from the old middle class and is essential for the functioning of capitalism. Barbara and John Ehrenreich hoped that this class could be mobilized for progressive causes. But, they warned, the same class can produce what "seems at first glance to be a contradiction: anti-worker radicalism."
Many on the left have been claiming for several years that this is exactly what we got. One of the most uncompromising analyzes of "anti-worker radicalism" comes from the pen of the American scholar Catherine Liu, in a book entitled Collectors of virtues.
Drawing on the work of the Ehrenreich couple, Liu argues that the professional-managerial class in universities, expert institutions, and non-governmental organizations has grown into an elite that "finds in its own particular cultural preferences and tastes justification for an unshakable sense of superiority over working people"; the elite who "obfuscate the truth, balkanization and the formation of interest groups as attempts at a true transformation of the social order". Members of this elite appropriate various virtues as a means of confirming their own values. It is a group that in many ways corresponds to what Goodwin describes as the "new elite".
Catherine Liu's depiction of the professional-managerial class is much sharper than Goodwin's. It is also more realistic. Liu does not claim that virtue collectors are the new ruling class. As a follower of Bernie Sanders, what bothers her most is that the new class, having rejected class-based politics and embraced "performative transgressiveness," is preventing real social change. While Goodwin argues that "the cause of today's political turbulence" is the takeover of society by the "radically conscious", Liu understands that the new elite is actually a product, not a cause, of political turbulence, one of the consequences of dismantling mass movements for social change.
On the other hand, Goodwin is convinced that members of the new elite are "ruling Britain", having pushed out the old ruling class of "aristocrats, landowners and industrialists". The idea that Gary Lineker or Mehdi Hasan, a British journalist based in the United States, or Sam Freedman, a researcher at the Institute of Public Administration (whom Goodwin lists as key representatives of the new elite), influence our lives more than Rishi Sunak or Andrew Bailey, the governor of Central banks, to say the least, is unbelievable. Likewise, claims that the people responsible for austerity policies, union-busting laws and slashing the wages of nurses and railway workers do not actually control the levers of power in this country are stunningly short-sighted and show that post-liberal concern for the working class is performative , as much as the anti-racism of the "new elite".
It is true that a new generation of thinkers and activists helped to consolidate a new culture that relies more on identity thinking and is more prone to censorship (but also less racist, more ready to accept the rights of women and the gay population). However, claims that it is a new ruling class indicate a poor understanding of how power works and where its true sources are.
Liberals who sit in the media, think tanks and universities undoubtedly participate in shaping the national dialogue. But it's not nearly as simple as Goodwin claims. He cites research that shows that most journalists belong to the left. However, the discussions in the media about issues such as the policy of "stopping the boats" or the deal reached with Rwanda cannot be described as "leftist". On the contrary, the language that was once reserved for the extreme right is now used without hesitation by well-known commentators of the major media. It could be argued that people like Goodwin influence the public debate more than the "new elite" he points the finger at.
Ten years ago, Goodwin warned that voters could shift to reactionary positions due to the actions of a "toxic and malicious group of opinion makers who sow the seeds of xenophobia, protest and division" by abusing the immigration issue. Goodwin today welcomes the deal to deport immigrants to Rwanda and draws Tory attention to the "importance of cultural issues". His example shows how excessive obsession with the "new elite", with too little insight into the real sources of social and economic power, leads to policies that old Goodwin would describe as "toxic".
(The Guardian; Peščanik.net; translation: Đ. Tomić)
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