The Political Class
Origins, Purpose, Crisis and Critique
Morning Comrades.
As a heads up, I am pre-writing much, if not most of these dispatches for the next few weeks as my partners in our kitchen and food truck are taking a much deserved vacation, which also means I’ll be there most days and most likely will not find time to write these on the day as I usually do. Obviously, if a topic deserves immediate attention that will happen. For shit-posts, hot takes and immediate responses twitter and IG will most likely be a better spot to find me.
Monday’s email didn’t give me much rest, as so often, when I vent rage in these emails my brain usually keeps ticking and it had me thinking about politicians in particular, specifically, the political class that has become so incredibly homogenous over the last 40 years, but increasingly so since 2005/10.
Why again is this important in the our daily, actual struggle against oppression? Like most analysis it hopefully breaks up the artificial smokescreen created by the ruling class that is used to divide and distract the working classes, for one, and secondly, as RATM so aptly put it: Know Your Enemy. Knowing and understanding your adversary not only helps you avert said distractions but furthermore allows you to agitate, organize, educate and create actively, not reactionary.
With that, and when speaking about the “political class”, a few notes. I am most definitely speaking about said class here, the Global North West. Additionally, much of my understanding comes from both Italian political theorist Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941) and specifically, Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864 – 1920), a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society.1
So what is the political class and why is it important to understand what is, or rather, who they are and who they work and why?
The Political class is a concept in comparative political science come reality by the mid 1970s roughly. It refers to the relatively small group of people that are highly aware and active in politics, not due to an ideological impulse, for example, public service and the betterment of society at larger but rather due to an understanding of ruling as a hereditary and class right and furthermore, one, from whom the national leadership is largely drawn. As Max Weber noted, they not only live "for politics"—like the old notables used to—but make their careers "off politics" as policy specialists and experts on specific fields of public administration. Mosca approached the study of the political class by examining the mechanisms of reproduction and renewal of the ruling class; the characteristics of politicians; and the different forms of organisation developed in their wielding of power.
Elected legislatures may become dominated by subject-matter specialists, aided by permanent staffs, who become a political class and this is where we are at today. Obviously, there are geo-political differences in regards to infrastructure, the UK has its Eton and Oxbridge infrastructure, the US its Ivy School System as most popular examples, but these infrastructures that breed and teach said political class exist throughout every nation in the GNW2 but their underlying purpose is all the same: exclusion of anyone outside of their class relations and more importantly, raising people to see the world and its structural functions as just that. A machine and machinery that exists to uphold the hierarchical world order of capitalism.
No, this is not a conspiracy theory just reality, and if anything, nothing more than an elaborate continuation of feudalistic structuring of societies and therein lies the obvious problem, we’ll get to their own crisis shortly. As noted the structural roots lie in the feudalistic concept of power, hereditary, god-given, omnipotence through force. Fast forward to a post WW2 world, the political class was, and continues to be maintained through elitist schools, subsequent think tanks and so on, plainly put, you have to be rich and off the right background to get in, let alone succeed in it. One could just leave it at that and say, yeah, being ruled by a bunch of self-involved, removed from reality sycophants is recipe for disaster, one that we are all clearly feeling at this point and truthfully, it is more than ok to just leave it at that.
Dipping into it a little deeper though, it is important to note that the political class3 rests and works on an ideological understanding of the world that is entirely inhumane and immoral. Especially with the rise of the neoliberal ideological in praxis starting with Reagan and Thatcher, an idea took shape in which the financial affairs of the ruling classes were to be managed according to capitalist principles4 and more importantly, that the affairs of the producing element necessary for the continuing growth in profits, that's you and me, also had to be managed. This is a crucial point and one that is also the key component to its crisis and one that relates entirely to Monday's rant: We, as the working class, in their ideology, are nothing but lines in an excel sheet that need to be managed with the only goals being: continued profits at all costs and relative social complacency, not peace, to not disrupt said growth in the mid to long term.
Essentially, their ideology is based on the notion that we are far too stupid to understand the complexities of their systems and thus cannot be trusted to run the affairs of society, which is the inherent undemocratic root of our problems, since every time, “we” decide that enough is enough, fascism, in all its violent deadly forms is employed to ensure to placate working class. Furthermore, their ideology persists in a non-existing reality that one has to learn technical solutions to technical problems, whereas a healthy, functioning and sustainable society is anything but a technical problem. This became ultimately clear after 2008 with Obama as well as the subsequent other Western leaders post the financial criss of that year. That current crop of the political class had and still continues to have no real political ideology, other than hopes and dreams, or vibes and showed their true hand in dealing with said crisis. The crisis was managed according to the needs of the capitalist class and not in accordance with an ideology based on the betterment of society at large. This crisis pertains until today and the root of the problem is and will remain the fact that we have endured a management by the political class not according to the needs of society but that of money.
As always, it doesn’t have to be that way and every lived system we experience is nothing more than ideas forced into reality through political will. Considering the fact that most of us, I would wager, would like to live in a functioning democracy, these systems can not only be unmade but better ones installed immediately. It is merely a question of political will and we know from which that derives.
Yours, warmly,
V.
The three-component theory of stratification, More widely known as Weberian stratification or the three class system, was developed by Max Weber with class, status and party as distinct ideal types. Weber developed a multidimensional approach to social stratification that reflects the interplay among wealth, prestige and power.
Weber argued that power can take a variety of forms. A person's power can be shown in the social order through their status, in the economic order through their class, and in the political order through their party. Thus, class, status and party are each aspects of the distribution of power within a community.
Class, status and power have not only a great deal of effect within their individual areas but also a great deal of influence over the other areas.
Wealth: includes property such as buildings, lands, farms, houses, factories and as well as other assets – Economic Situation
Prestige: the respect with which a person or status position is regarded by others – Status Situation
Power: the ability of people or groups to achieve their goals despite opposition from others – Parties
According to Weber, there are two basic dimensions of power: the possession of power and the exercising of power.
As often as I use this damn term, I am going to abbreviate it to GNW from now on
To be clear, the elected politicians we see on TV etc make up the absolute minority here and we have to include the scores of civil servants, think tanks, the mainstream media and more
Again, herein lies the actual problem as neoliberal fiscal policy is deeply rooted in an imaginary system not bound to factual economic reason but whatever Wall Street and Co, globally, sold to said Political Class to be in their interest and not ours.
Let me tell you, as someone who spent the last year in Oxford, very close to the policy world there, there’s a lot to appreciate in this piece. Thanks man.