Ep 11 – The Endangered West

[0:00:05 Speaker 1] In November 2016 John Higley, professor emeritus of government and sociology, published his latest spoke the Endangered West. Myopic Elites and fragile Social Orders in a Threatening World. Welcome back to the connector, where we bring together innovative, groundbreaking and collaborative research inside the U. T. Austin political science universe. I’m your host, Stewart Tender. In this episode, we have a conversation with Professor Higley about the ideas explored in his boat, a discussion held in the context of the post 2016 American presidential election, which left many citizens and observers questioning the strength of American liberal democratic institutions. Does liberal democracy have a future? That is a question John Hinckley has grappled with most of his career, and the endangered West is his latest take on some of the basic challenges threatening liberal democratic societies across Western civilization. How will the world deal with the inherent insecurity of bureaucratic and service work distinguishing post industrial societies? Can large scale organization survive in a world where individuals routinely undertake defensive actions to protect the precarious positions in the social order? Will liberal societies be capable of managing those growing segments of the population effectively living outside the social order. And will they be capable of managing the demagogic politics, characterizing contemporary post industrial societies, politics that deliberately mobilize populations against each other? In his book, Higley does not merely raise questions but also diagnosis the problem and offers potential ways forward. At root. Elites have failed to recognize the problems caused by insecure employment and the division of their societies into insider and outsider camps. They have consequently been un realistically optimistic and complacent and find themselves now faced by increasingly fractious, divided societies, which face grave threats from international forces to and what is more, Elites are unwilling or unable to consider the possibility that there are no permanent solutions to the problems they face, but rather than they must merely hold on and do the best they can. Interestingly, this leads to policy ideas that cut across the political spectrum from ideas about tougher immigration policies that many on the American left might find abhorrent. Two suggestions of a universal guaranteed income that might sound wretched. Too many free market conservatives. We also discussed some institutional problems, pathologies of democracy itself, you might say to Higley. We see now a process of democracy turning on itself of democracy, turning against hallmarks of liberal politics, such a civility and honesty and without institutional reform, the survival of liberal political institutions could be threatened. The ability of elites toe act autonomously is under attack across large scale organisations, an attack led by insecure workers handcuffing decision makers and potentially curtailing elite’s ability to stem the tide. So can the West survive? I hope you will listen and judge for yourself. Well, we’re here

[0:03:27 Speaker 2] today with John Hinckley. John, why don’t you just introduce yourself and tell us who you are?

[0:03:33 Speaker 3] Well, I’ve been on the U T faculty in the government department and the sociology department for I guess, the last 30 years before which I was at the Australian National University in Canberra. Ah, go. I am in American and Ah, here at UT I’ve been doing various things teaching comparative politics principally and comparative political sociology and I have been involved in a lot of work on Australia and New Zealand. I ran a center for Australian New Zealand studies here, and ah, four years ago I retired at that point Ah, having been share of the Government Department for a while and basically paid my dues. Ah, I decided that I would sit back and try and write a kind of last set of reflections on what I’ve learned over the years and political science, political, sociology and more particularly where the West seems to be headed and for that matter of the world on. And so this is, ah, sort of capstone. Ah, set of reflections on those sorts of subjects.

[0:04:43 Speaker 2] So the book you’re talking about is called the Endangered West and

[0:04:47 Speaker 1] you

[0:04:48 Speaker 2] write probably 3/4 of post industrial adult populations escape the historically normal requirement to satisfy themselves and others that they’re doing part of societies needed work. This is at base why post industrial social orders are fragile and tenuous.

[0:05:07 Speaker 3] Well, it’s This is enormously complicated subject, and it needs to be treated with with considerable caution. My thesis, broadly put, is that, um, the nature of work in post industrial societies is extremely tenuous, extremely insecure. Ah, and this goes for all components of the workforce or very nearly all components, the manufacturing sector, which you just referred to, which is now a good deal. Less than 20% of the workforce is insecure, obviously because of globalization and technological change things that you alluded to the agricultural artisan section of the workforce mitt, which is maybe at the most 10% of whom maybe 2% 3% are actually farmers. Ah is also in a tenuous situation Ah, due to price changes due to international competition due to the uncertain need for lots of artifacts that artisans have historically produced and the ability to replace a lot of their handcrafts with, ah, automated processes that produce the same products without the artisans actually doing very much of anything. But the most important aspect of post industrial landscape is this enormous bureaucratic and service workforce component, probably comprising something like 75% maybe even 80% depending on exactly how you measure it of the American workforce, the UK workforce, the Scandinavian workforces, increasingly the German workforce and so on. And I’m very much concerned in this book with nature of bureaucratic and service work. Ah, which I tend to portray as inherently intangible work in terms of what it produces. That is to say that the bureaucratic and service worker for convenience, sick we could stay. The white collar worker is engaged in an activity where it’s very unclear even to the worker, him or herself. Exactly how effective have productive he or she has been. He or she is involved in a tremendous interaction with all kinds of social strangers that the bureaucratic and service worker or service worker is trying to manipulate and is being manipulated by these social strangers, him or herself. Ah, and this, ah lends a kind of intangible iti to the whole process of bureaucratic and service work. I go into this in much greater detail in the book and merely to summarize that year makes it sound like it’s just another passing platitudinous treatment of white collar work. I’d like to think that I’m able to show in the book released Persuade readers that one of our main problems is the insecurity, the intangible ity off bureaucratic and service work which is by far and away the most characteristic kind of work produced in post industrial societies. And so I think that when we look at the kind of social orders off post industrial societies, we have first and foremost to pay attention to this intangible ITI and insecurity of work, but particularly of bureaucratic and service work. Ah, and I argue that though Ah, most people performing these kinds of work manufacturing workers, artisans, still farmers, ah, bureaucrats and service workers are still in the social order. Still inside the social order. They feel themselves to be very precariously located in the social order, and they engage in all sorts of defensive mechanisms and defensive actions to protect their insecure status ease. And that this is over time threatening the, um, viability of large scale organization that the risk is that these defensive actions aimed at guarding the workers ah insecure situation could lead to a kind of paralysis, or at least a semi paralysis of large scale organization. And were that to occur, a retrogression in ah standards of living ah, in the post industrial societies would inevitably follow. There’s one other aspect of this that I would very quickly allude to, and that is that there are, of course, lots of people in the post industrial society who don’t have even insecure work who are essentially outside the workforces of post industrial societies. These people belonged disproportionately to, ah, disadvantaged and often discriminated against minority groups, migrant communities and the like. But how for whatever reason, they’ve been pushed out of the social order. They are not responding to any serious calls for needed work, needed labor. They are unneeded. They are essentially surplus persons. And I think that this this group which is growing in size, constitutes a kind of outsider camp in post industrial societies which increasingly clashes with the insider camp that I was just referring to of those who are employed, however insecurely ah, and bureaucratic service, manufacturing and ah, artists in an agricultural work. There’s a basic division in post industrial societies between these insiders and the outsiders. And politics in the society increasingly has to be seen as aimed at mobilizing various segments of these insider and outsider camps, often against each other. Ah, and that’s a dynamic in the politics of post industrial societies that I think needs to have much more attention paid to it. Let me conclude this by saying that we’re here talking about bottom up aspects of post industrial societies in their politics, not top down aspects, the top down aspect. There’s a whole nother story of elites and the what I said think of as the myopic character of the leech in postindustrial Western societies. But that’s a Saia, the other part of this whole story. Right now we’re just talking about the bottom up part.

[0:12:18 Speaker 2] Yeah, I mean, I will say that I personally, you know, found your treatment of insiders and outsiders quite persuasive reading through the book and let me go on to say I mean, I think the real danger it’s that insecure aspect of the insider segment of the population. Correct the people that are on the inside of the social order, but only tenuously and and sort of constantly at risk of kind of falling into that outside. Can’t with no real hope of moving confidently into a secure segment of the insider camp. And if we could use that to move. So if we go top down, I mean, this is sort of where the action is both in terms of being manipulated from above and in terms of putting pressure on elites and trying to in any number of ways, um, restrict or demand action among elites that could hamper ah leaders ability to take decisions that are necessary for organizations and societies to survive and thrive. Is that consistent with kind of what you’re saying is

[0:13:34 Speaker 3] yes, it’s part of the story. At least I think it’s important to say that Ah, up until now at least, Elites in the Western societies, by enlarge and of course, of generalizing about quite disparage groups in each society. When nevertheless, for the sake of argument, elites in Western societies have failed to recognize this problem of insecure employment and of ah, division between an outsider campaign, an insider camp. They have largely failed to recognize that, and this is partly because elites and Western societies have for a very long time been essentially optimistic, a little complacent. Ah, that things will work themselves out, that we can deal with these sorts of problems with retraining. With job Ah, job programs, um, we can taxation measures and so on that these are eminently soluble problems. And what I’m arguing in this book is that that’s on my own myopic view off the post industrial landscape. It’s a product of many decades. Indeed, one could say, virtually a century or more of elite optimism, which now, in a post industrial circumstances, is no longer plausible or warranted. Outlook on on society elites have been overly optimistic, overly myopic in that regard for a very long time. And they have failed to see what is happening in the post industrial society, which is not something that happened yesterday. Ah, in a country like the United States, but which has been emerging developing for at least 50 years since the mid 19 seventies at the latest. Ah, and yet elites. Though they have been presiding over an increasingly fractious and divided ah society where work is increasingly precarious, lots of people don’t have any work at all and then never going to have any work. Elites have largely ignored the question or ah, complacently assume that, well, this is just a matter of finding the right policy or set of policies to solve these problems. Just as historically, we stumbled through, uh, all sorts of crises and all sorts of difficulties In modern Western history. We found answers. Ah, and so, too. We will now find answers to this problem. And I guess I’m arguing in this book that there are no answers. There are no policies at least known known policies which are going to solve these insider outsider problems. Ah, and elites are extremely reluctant to contemplate Ah, that scenario that there are no answers. Ah, and that therefore post industrial societies operated still by elites. They always will be because you can’t get rid of the elites are going to have to ah, undertake a kind of holding operation, as I call it Ah, which is not going toe have salvation as its end point. Rather, it’s going toe have, ah husbanding of what Western societies have so far achieved. And by that I mean over many hundreds of years, the civil liberties they have the representative political systems. They have numerous other aspects of civility. Ah, and they’re going to have to try and husband these things as best they can in the face of these problems. This ignores, of course, that the world outside the West is loaded with the even greater problems impinge ing on the west. And so it’s also in faces non Western pressures that this holding operation is going to have to be conducted. But as I say to finish, your elites are extremely reluctant to think along this line. And if my book makes any, um, contribution, it would be to a plea. Two. You must get rid of this unwarranted optimization which was warranted. Historically, things were going along. Progress is occurring over some hundreds of years. But the situation inside and outside western societies has now changed definitively and so that the optimism that pervaded ah elite thinking and broadly speaking the thinking of educated western publics for so long is now kind of counterproductive phenomenon that is to say, it leads to actions and hope for solutions that have really no possibility of working. Ah, elites have to recognize this fundamental change in the circumstances of Western societies and of the elites themselves.

[0:18:49 Speaker 2] You mention this holding operation, Can we talk more about that? What does that look like in practice to say that, um that we need a holding operation. You know, you’ve talked about different things, whether it’s, ah, jobs focused on environmental needs or whether it is accepting ah, certain curtailing of some civil liberties. And there’s a combination of things that kind of go into this holding pattern. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what it what it

[0:19:20 Speaker 3] Yeah, well, the main reason why the West has to undertake a conscious holding operation for at least the next one or two generations is not so much because of internal problems, though they are certainly serious, but rather because of the situation of the rest of the world. Ah, the West is under attack on I don’t mean that in some flippant way. Ah, it’s under attack mainly because it has been successful and the rest of the world or much of the rest of the world. Let me qualify is discovering that it’s not going to be successful the rest of the world. And so you have a situation where development, which has been the undergirding of Western foreign policy for at least 0/2 century development, is in a very shaky condition. In much of the world we have failed and failing states. We have endemic corruption and many non Western societies, if not most of them. Ah, we have politicians who are not acting in the interests of their populations, but rather entirely in the interests of themselves and their cronies. There’s lots of other ailments. We have the environmental problem. Ah, that’s impinge ing on the non Western societies even more than it is on Western societies. And we have swollen populations, populations that have doubled, tripled in size during past the half century and continue to swell. The Nigerian population is headed toward Ah well, the estimates very. But some people have said, could he end up at a 1,000,000,000? Ah before the end of this century? The African population, sub Saharan African population has tripled since ah, the independence of sub Saharan African societies back in the 19 sixties. Ah, and there’s every indication that this ah swelling of African populations is going to continue. It’s the case that fertility rates are leveling off, even in some places declining outside the west. But we have such enormous populations a ah world population projected to be 10 billion people by 2050. And that’s a confident projection, not just guesswork. Ah, that the question of how to absorb these enormously large populations in needed work in an age of technology is a question that probably doesn’t lend itself to a confident answer. There is no way. Consequently, we have this migration crisis, which in my view, is probably still in its infancy. It’s going to only increase the effort of the desperate effort of millions of people to flee, Ah, societies that are not working outside the West that they’re not working in the sense that ah, social orders are crumbling, crime is spreading. Um, and all manner of other ills are taking hold. But they’re not working also in the sense that they cannot provide work for anything like the number of people that actually want work in these non Western societies. And so what we have is flight from joblessness and poverty and all other disasters to the West, people are rationally trying to save themselves and given the population numbers and that are involved and projected, this flight or this attempted flight to the West is only going to increase. All of which comes back to the point that in this regard, particularly the West is going to have to undertake a holding operation. What will this involve? These ar vi, the countries outside or societies outside the West probably efforts to cordon off the West. I have no illusions that the West can be thoroughly cordoned off. Ah, but that efforts in this direction are going to take hold and be pursued, is unquestionably ah in the cards. And in fact, it’s already, of course, occurring. Except that it’s so far hasn’t really made a dent in the migration of magnitudes. Ah, this is what Trump is on about cordoning off the United States. It’s what the more right wing populist factions in Europe are on about cordoning off the European societies, reinstituting borders. Ah, and generally cracking down on illegal migration and even, probably largely curtailing legal migration. Ah, and this is something that’s in its infancy. But it’s part of a holding operation, very unpleasant to contemplate, filled with agonising moral, um, choices Ah, and dilemmas that Westerners, both elite and otherwise, are going to have to grapple with and really are distasteful. But I see no alternative to not mount a holding operation in this particular regard is probably to, ah, condemn the Western societies to a fate like that of the Roman Empire. Back in 2000 years ago, when people from outside the Empire seeking a better life than they had outside the Empire simply came in an enormous numbers, overran the Empire and destroyed it. Ah, and something like that is, ah, possible scenario for the West. If, without a holding operation internally, ah, holding operation is going to have to, um, involve recognizing that this Inter that this insider outsider cleavage eyes not soluble with known policies and that in particular, the outsiders air going to have to be tolerated. They’re going to have to be subsidized. They probably are going to have to be given, ah, guaranteed incomes of one sort or another, though there will be no work for them to do otherwise. You have a ah condition of gross disorder, potentially and, ah, a policing job of monumental scope to keep unemployed, impoverished outsiders in the western countries from killing off everybody. Ah, I exaggerate, of course, but I just want to from indulging in mayhem that would be fatal. Ah, blow against Western values and civil liberties and the, uh, standards of living that the western populations, by and large enjoy it in time. So that’s a holding operation internally recognized. There are no solutions and that yet you have to ah somehow ameliorate. Ah, the condition of outsiders in particular. At the same time, you have to do something about the insecurity of insiders. Oh, and in the book, I try and discuss how ah, that might be dealt with as well. Better stop there.

[0:27:07 Speaker 2] We’re starting to get into, Ah, increasingly interesting territory, and and it’s difficult to know exactly how to dig deeper, right? I mean, one of the reasons the elitist perspective hasn’t always caught on is because you’re sort of in the business of telling people things they don’t want to hear, that there are no answers, that there is no salvation at the end of the road. And what’s in that type of thinking for anybody who wants toe, either get a political following or just sort of rally the human morale without going too far into kind of, ah, history of political thought, It seems, because of the the sort of harsh realities that any lead perspective lays out. Um, they’ve often either being co opted by the far right of the political spectrum. Or some of the policy proposals have seemed. Teoh overlap with things that air trumpeted by nationalist populist racist movements on the right. And we see a little bit of that here, and I want to give you the opportunity to talk a little bit more about it, because that’s one of the things that’s been so emotional and so alarming for so many people about this election is, you know, on the one hand, stoking kind of nativist political leanings within the population. On the one hand, a sort of overlooking the fact that many of the policies on the ground to date haven’t been all that different from some of the things being said publicly, right? I mean, there’s already been large sections of wall that were built a long time ago. There been millions of undocumented immigrants deported over the last eight years. And then just what you’re saying is that, you know, there’s sort of an existential need to deal with the fact that 3/4 of the globe once in and how do you accommodate that reality with liberal thought? Why should you not be dismissed as as a kook? I remember a long time ago you said in a class that that this was something you were up against, right? And that the casuals there was gonna walk in and sort of dismiss. This is just fascism or something like that. But it’s not. But maybe you could help us understand why.

[0:29:49 Speaker 3] Yeah, well, you have, ah, your finger on a very difficult subject. Which is? How does a society, and particularly set of elites operate when they have nothing good to sell. Ah, in a democratic context. Ah, after all, um, politics in democracies at least, is a competition between people on the one side selling one thing and people on the other side selling another thing. And those sales are supposed to lead to Valhalla to ah, happiness forever after Ah, in that regard also, just insert parenthetically here. I tend to regard or suspect that Trump in so far as he actually believes any much of what he says, which is an open question. But to the extent that he does, he’s one of the last optimists. If you take him at his word, he apparently sinks. That was magic waving with his wand. Ah, most of the problems that he decries can be easily solved. It’s just a matter of having him and a few other people Ah, come in and clear away the debris and enact the right policies, whatever they might be. And these problems will, at least if not be solved, they will be greatly ameliorated. So he and that sense Trump is an optimist. And I would say on the other side of the American political fence. Bernie Sanders is similarly optimistic. All we gotta do is have a revolution, a political revolution. Ah, bring to power the right kinds of people myself and a few others. Ah, institute a social democracy in the United States and presto ah! Most of our problems Wall Street, environmental pollution and many other things that he decries will again, if not be solved, at least be greatly ameliorated. So social democracy is the wave of the future, and it’s just up to the American public t to accept that this is ah kind of solution that’s not entirely utopian, he says. But of course, it ISS at utopian ah, social democracies in Western Europe of the sort that he wants. The Bernie Sanders Wants Stand Institute in the United States have been no more successful at solving the problems of work, and insiders and outsiders then have has this non social democracy called the United States of America. These problems are much more fundamental than panaceas, like social democracy or panaceas like drain the swamp Ah, that Trump has been promoting, can possibly deal with Okay, that was a long interjection. We are suffering probably back to the original question. How do you sell non solutions? How do you sell bad things, or at least things that a good deal less hopeful than has been on sale for a long, long time? In the Western societies? I don’t have a clear and definitive answer to the question. I tend to sink that we’re gonna have to ah, in one way or another, see that we’ve been suffering for at least 50 or 60 years from a kind of sir fight of democracy. That is to say that we have opened up with such enthusiasm as many processes as possible to democratic influence that we have gone beyond a point of not a point of no return gonna be gone beyond a point where democracy is turning on itself. Someone, I think has remarked, What we’re watching right now is democracy in the form of mass electorates rising up against the liberal aspects of liberal democracies. In other words, mass publics and frustrated and aggrieved for reasons that we’ve already been talking about in this conversation are attacking ah, the liberal aspects of liberal Democratic, uh, political systems and threatening those liberal aspect civil liberties. All sorts of aspects of representative politics, codes of political restraint whereby people don’t get down in the gutter and hurl outright lies and fault falsehoods against each other. But rather the political discourse has a certain civility, a certain basic honesty. Anyway, this is all under attack. Eso It’s democracy in the in its mass sense, attacking, if you will. Ah, liberal ism. Ah, and it’s elitist sense. Now I don’t use liberalism in the conventional American media of the term, but I use it in the classic sense of Republican Republic that is a self respecting, restrained entity under liberal procedures and these air now under attack. So why what I’m saying this I’m saying we have a kind of sir fight of, ah, democracy and probably in order to, um, sell the not so good news that has to be sold in the future. This democracy is going to have to, sir, Fight of democracy is gonna have to be ah eliminated, not democracy itself. But the sir fight. So we need to first and foremost, for example, deal with the primary election system which is directly responsible for a lot off the hyperbole and they lying and ah, nonsense that has characterized increasingly American elections for quite a few electoral cycles now. Ah, and also characterized, for example, the UK referendum on leaving the EU outright. Lies hurled at ah by both sides really hurled at each other. Ah, confused electorate. But an electorate that had the power to the side because of a surfeit of democracy and that in the UK situation Visa vee Ah, referendum. Do you or do you not? Yes or no? I want to stay in the EU. Average citizen, of course, has no conception of what eyes involved? None. Ah, and yet the average citizen is called want say yea or nay. The country should continue in this heinous ah organization called the European Union. Or it should just get out and go its own way with national sovereignty and a return of all the good things in life. Well, I guess I’ll vote against it says the average system. Ah, and there went, uh, Brexit. One of my concerns is this, Sir, fight of democracy made much worse in the United States, of course, by our institutional structure and antiquated 18th century set of institutions with no possibility really of changing them and made worse by no checks on the use of money in politics, where we just have a flood of money and no way of controlling that flood whatsoever. This is largely unknown in any other Western democracy, this kind of situation, and it may be fatal to the United States and the medium to longer term people. Really? Now start to think I mean serious, serious observers. Frank Uchiyama, for example, in his latest book, start to fear that Ah, the U. S. As institutionally constituted at the moment is not viable. It cannot go on in this fashion, and I worry a lot about that being an American. But as I say, these problems that the U. S is confronting are also problems that all other Western societies are confronting. It’s just that the U. S circumstances, American exceptionalism, the American experience of hegemonic power during the 20th century and so on so forth leave Americans Ah, even more off guard than other Westerners are for a future that doesn’t have too much good news.

[0:38:32 Speaker 1] So I think that this speaks a little bit. You’re getting Teoh one of your other

[0:38:37 Speaker 2] themes, which is the the need for that leads toe have sufficient autonomy toe act. Whether that’s politically hampered by ever increasing institutions of democracy, opening up decision, making the plebiscites and things of that nature. Or you also talk about this in the context of organizations and demands for transparency that ultimately served to just constrain the elites in from acting in in ways that would perhaps benefit the organization and perhaps crippling the I want to see. I think I know I wrote down. It says here, right organizationally leaves in post industrial societies must find ways to preserve the essence of their decision making powers and latitudes. I think you wrote that about organizations. Specifically, I think you have quite a long piece on sort of the academy, and what happens may be drawn from your own experience working within universities. But I think you mean that politically as well. Maybe you could talk a little bit about elite autonomy and the need for lead to be able to make decisions.

[0:39:52 Speaker 3] It’s not just the problem of transparency or let me put it this other way. The problem. I argue in the book that in large scale organisations, whether running the gamut from universities on one extreme to militaries on the other extreme, with all kinds of organizations of a large sort in between but higher, all of them hierarchically structured. Ah, the problem is that is this problem of work, that you have lots of people in these organizations who are basically insecure. Ah, and you have them therefore acting quite rationally, to defend the positions they have or to a fine ways of improving their positions by ah handcuffing elites, elite decision makers in these organizations. And so you have an assault on elite autonomy, which is a rational ah, behavior for people who are insecure. Uh, not only do they want to, ah curtail the right of ah elite decision makers in an organization to ah reassign their tasks. Ah Teoh insist on certain proprieties and behavior and not allow it just anything to go. But those are all sort of minor things. But they also onto ah especially in personnel decisions. Ah, have a right of appeal judicial appeal. If the decision goes against me and my immediate coworkers, we are going to court to ah get that decision reversed. Ah, you also have the whistleblower phenomenon. Ah widely applauded Really? Ah, the whole kind of wiki leaks situation writ large in organizational contexts that ah, people have a virtual duty to hack into the ah computer systems of their bosses, including the top bosses, and reveal how nefarious Ah, these decision processes are because they go against us. The ordinary workers in the association, the organization, uh, etcetera, etcetera. You could keep going on in that vein. But the main point is that, uh, you have an attack on ah, elite autonomy decision making autonomy in most large scale organisations today in Western societies. Again, the U. S is in no sense unusual in this. You look at the eastern you look it Ah, Western European societies and the assault is even greater there than it has been in the United States. So because well, for all sorts of reasons that I won’t get into and s o the question of elite autonomy has to be faced more directly than it has been so far faced. Right now. Ah, in the samoud of anti elitism and this certainty that all elite decision makers are by definition, the various people engaged in nefarious activities. Ah, in this mood that we have right now of anti elitism, the organization’s stumble from in one level of ineffective ness to yet another level. Ah, and the danger at some point in the not so distant future of paralysis or semi paralysis in organizational functioning cannot be dismissed. Um, so this is another aspect of the analysis of elites and non elites in the post industrial setting.

[0:43:44 Speaker 1] It brings to

[0:43:45 Speaker 2] mind, I think, something that that maybe goes to just the the root of the root of just the classical debate, say, between capitalism and socialism and that you kind of continue to draw for me, that is to say that things progress through personal ambition. E. I mean, you have bits about this in the book that, um, the need to take seriously. The individuals need to take actions in that individual interests and to my remote, those and, um, and the very personal nature of political decisions right, that there’s no way to separate what happens politically from the benefit or harm that will crew to the individuals making the decisions. Have I mis read that, or is there

[0:44:35 Speaker 3] well, I certainly take it as axiomatic that elites in particular, are self interested. Ah, one hopes that, uh, if they are, if he leads, are also secure that they’ll rise above immediate self interest. They’ll still serve their immediate self interest. But those would be some latitude left over for them to serve the public interest as well, because they are beyond the servicing, serving of their immediate self interest, relatively benevolent, their careers have been successful. Ah, they are in relatively secure positions. Ah, and there’s no reason why they can’t think of the interests of society as well as their own immediate personal interests. But for sure, elites are always immediately self interested, and they’re never going to act in ways that are suicidal for their own self interests There, maybe the occasional dramatic exception. But it’s just a exception. They’re never putting gun to head and pulling the trigger, so we’re hoping for. But it’s essential to recognize that for a leads to B benevolent and not predacious, they have to be relatively secure if they’re under assault for every Twitter feed that they engage in for every time they go toe toilet or something or other. Ah, they are not going to be very benevolent. They’re going to become very predacious and usually leads have ways of making Pradaxa t pretty violent and pretty effective, if worse, if push comes to shove. So ah, to lacerate elites in the way that ah, the press and the media Ah, and you many average individuals doing all these Western societies. The last already leads is to ah, slap yourself in the face. The last thing you want is insecure elite. Which is not to say that you go to the other extreme, that elites have some sort of divine right of rule that once you reach an elite position, you shouldn’t be under any scrutiny and so on. It’s over, that is course not so Ah, but that they are as nasty and evil as the current rhetoric would have. It is, ah, counterproductive approach.

[0:47:01 Speaker 2] If we can kind of go to the big question, right? And that is to say, if we talk about really the end right in terms of our worst case scenario, which would which would be I one of either two things one would just be the total kind of Ah, I guess collapse. Right. You know, um, just complete wiping out of society as we know it or the rise of just a completely different political order. The rise of an authoritarian regime in the United States in across the West. More, more broadly. And certainly this whole exercise is about measures we can take to avoid both of those things that you mentioned in the book. That historically, if I recall correctly totalitarian ism Onley rises after major social convulsion. So it isn’t that the popular discourse now is kind of one of creeping authoritarianism, that sort of one day we’re gonna wake up and we’re gonna be a living under authoritarian regime, and we didn’t properly see it coming. And I read your peace a little bit differently in saying that you really need a major social compulsion that that can’t go unnoticed before this type of regime has risen. But then, of course, saying that if elites don’t wake up and become less optimistic than that type of social convulsion becomes more possible, can you Can you say something?

[0:48:37 Speaker 3] Yeah, well, I I think that first of all, we put the apocalypse to the side and may occur, but send us a postcard because we won’t be around to assess it. Ah, so on authoritarianism. Ah, there is really no case. Ah, in the West, at least of an elite, a national elite that has achieved a kind of comes underlying consensus, a kind of political restraint, sort of. You scratch my back off, scratch your back unity. There’s not a case in the Western societies of such an elite ever coming apart and accordingly of the regime, this usually stable democratic regime that it operates becoming unstable. But we can’t because it’s never happened in the West. We can’t be sure that it won’t happen in the future, obviously, and one worries about these tendencies toward polarization, fragmentation, other such words at the elite level, unless concerned about the mass level in this regard at the elite level Ah, which would be, uh, potentially fatal for stable democracy, I argue. And I’ve always argued over the last 50 years that the Sina qua unknown off stable democracy is a kind of consensual united elite national elite. And if you don’t have that kind of elite ah, you have the main support for stable democracy are removed. And so a question for me is, Are we watching a gradual process of of concern. Elite consensus An elite unity in Western contexts. Ah, coming apart, dissipating. I’m not convinced that we are. There’s no question that things are at a low pass and that all this invective that we’ve been treated to most recently in this American election is a possible sign of ah, falling apart of consensus and unity among the American national elite. But I’m not convinced that it’s happening with respect to totalitarian ism. That’s a whole different kind of world of regime world. I mean, totalitarian ism, at least historically, has occurred almost solely in the wake of ah, basic revolutions off social revolutions of enormous magnitude. The Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, even the English Civil Wars led briefly to, ah, kind of totalitarian, momentary, totalitarian Ah, situation under Cromwell, as long he was Lord protector. No, I think really You’d have to say it was a military dictatorship. Wittingly, however, that may be revolutions off. The Russian and French magnitudes have produced ah, totalitarian regimes. Ah, or at least certainly in the Russian case. And in the French case, it didn’t produce so much totalitarian ism as it ah shunted to the side. Ah whole elite structure of 18th century France and replaced it with Napoleon and ah ah, the armies. Ah, that then conquered all of Europe. Anyway, I’m wandering here, and I and I want to be get back to the question of ah, whether or not we’re watching the disintegration of United Elites in the West And I don’t think so. I think that we have these problems, but that the problems will prove to be transient, that the elites will recognize that, ah, their underlying consensus, their underlying subscription to restraint in politics is essential, and they will somehow bolster that commitment. Eso I remain agnostic at the least about this apparition of ah divided elite, really deeply divided elite and, correspondingly, therefore an unstable though still possibly democratic. Probably Pluto’s Democratic maybe Demag Odjick Democratic. Ah says, Ah, regime. I still remain to be persuaded that that’s in the cards.

[0:53:16 Speaker 2] Okay, you might be criticized for peddling your own brand of optimism. You could almost read. It is saying that Ah, if he leaves where toe toe, wake up and be more self aware and be more understanding of the the world they’re operating in than that could be the path to survival for Yeah, but it’s not

[0:53:39 Speaker 3] gonna be so salvation. It’s not going to be any kind of utopian utopia on Earth. It’s a situation they’re surviving, I agree on. If you want to call, survive surviving optimism. Well, that’s your privilege. I regard ah, other things as optimistic. But surviving is at least ah, what we need to think about it. I think

[0:54:08 Speaker 1] there are no answers. There are no policies, at least no known policies. John Hinckley has never been criticized for painting too rosy a picture of the challenges in front of us. Quite to the contrary, His career has been distinguished by his prudent assessment of political possibilities. In the closing sentence of the endangered West, Higley writes, elites and other influential Westerners must issue the apocalyptic belief commonly associated with a communal standard that somehow improvement necessarily follows the acting out of political and social conflict. It does not whatever you have drawn from this episode, or perhaps even an in depth reading of Bigley’s work. Perhaps you can agree that there is something instructive, perhaps even worthwhile, in the suggestion that we need to think more seriously about what we are ultimately interested to accomplish and how we might go about getting there. John Hinckley’s book The Endangered West was released last year by Transaction Publishers. His previously authored books, including Elitism, reissued by Rat Lige in 2012. An Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy, published in 2006. He currently serves as senior editor for the forthcoming Paul Grave Handbook of Political Elites. Thanks again for listening to leave feedback, you can find me at Gove dad utexas dot edu