The Los Angeles Lakers' selection of Lebron "Bronny" James Jr. in the NBA Draft last week reminded us that nepotism is alive and kicking. The best player of the past twenty years gave his son, an unremarkable college basketball player, a remarkable first job. Such an action would have been impossible for James Sr's parents, and so such an act demonstrated that the James family are members of some elite, even if it lacks the shields and signet rings of the older European aristocracy.
Lebron James drinks the wine of the American Dream vineyard. Though born poor, he was, more importantly, born into a society that rewarded his blend of physical giftedness and hard work. Lebron the elite talent became Lebron the elite performer and has become Lebron, member of the American elite. He has the social and economic clout necessary to set up schools, purchase Los Angeles mansions and have people sit up when he comments on social issues, such as the NFL national anthem protests. The James estate is one of thousands of private American empires, occupying the space of the jettisoned British one.
Thomas Paine's Common Sense, one of the blueprints for the mission to see the British Empire expunged from the New World, was the most popular piece of separatist literature at the time of the American War of Independence. Its foremost attack is against hereditary monarchy, and by way of illustrating 1 Samuel and taking equality and consent of the governed as given conditions, he offers a simple rejection of the way that British society was organised. From a monarch flows an aristocracy, and so by severing the head, the new American nation was one free from the dukes, marquesses and earls found in the land of their forefathers. The idea that "all men are created equal" was echoed in the Declaration of Independence and subsequently achieved doctrinal status in American politics and culture. They were Lincoln's words at Gettysburg in 1863 and they were Dr. King's words at the Lincoln Memorial one hundred years later; in every age, equality was in the ether.
Although enthusiastic, albeit gradual, in the reshaping of the public sphere to reflect egalitarian values, Americans have always resisted such changes in the private sphere. The United States' economic quality is well-documented, with the top 1% of American households holding 30.4% of American wealth, as compared to 2.5% for the bottom half. To the Marxist, this is evidence that History, as an overarching narrative, is not yet over. Just as official political distinctions between classes of men have been abolished, economic ones must follow. Irrespective, however, of the long-term viability of capitalism, it is true that in the United States, and other developed capitalist economies like it, money currently confers power. Everyone agrees that there is an elite, most would agree that many members of such an elite are significantly more wealthy than others, but few can ascertain what exactly constitutes the elite.
Matt Goodwin of the University of Kent thinks he has a model of what the British elite increasingly looks like. While he accepts the existence of the traditionally defined and decried British elite, characterised by their old school ties and country homes, his work is focussed on what he considers to be the emergence of a "New Elite." The New Elite is characterised by their education at Britain's most selective universities, their residency in major cities and university towns, and, most objectionably to Goodwin, their imposition of their left-liberal politics on the public by way of their cultural and knowledge sector professions.
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| Matt Goodwin |
Alluding to higher education attainment in descriptions of an elite is not new. Sociologists of class in deindustrialising, information economies have frequently emphasised the emerging election of a cognitive elite. Much of Charles Murray's work, including his most controversial book The Bell Curve, starts from the position that American society is being stratified along the lines of intelligence. Those with the most intellectual horsepower gain admission to the best universities, enter the vaunted professions, and leave the rest of the country behind. Goodwin only differs in that he paints the new elite as a uniformly progressive cohort, primarily concerned with political activism as opposed to building private fortunes.
In attempting to model Britain according to American understandings of an "emerging elite", Goodwin does not account for the economic differences between the two countries. When Charles Murray writes of an "unelected elite" (he gives the examples of New York Times journalists, Hollywood directors, and senior corporate executives), he can comfortably assume that such people will be, by birth and upbringing, Americans. The United States, for all the talk of its supposed decline, remains an economic behemoth. America's taxpayer-funded universities, therefore, do not auction places to the highest international bidders, as the University of York has admitted to doing. American directors know that their films will be watched across the United States, and that international audiences will be clamouring to have the same work on their screens. British businessmen who try to bring Hollywood to Buckinghamshire, by contrast, are stymied by planning reform. As Britain loses economic and cultural influence, the notion of a "British elite" makes decreasing sense. Just as the Industrial Revolution meant a burgeoning British bourgeoisie, Britain's economic decline will mean the death of that class.
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| From Statista/ GDP per capita, PPP-adjusted |
Those who write opinion pieces celebrating the exodus of Britain's millionaire class will despair once they see the cohort due to replace them. Britain, without a drastic change of course, will find its culture irreversibly vandalised and its government irreversibly vassalised.
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