Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

This week's selection is Christopher Lasch's "The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy." Published in 1994, the title of Lasch's work consciously inverts the title of José Ortega y Gasset’s classic from 1930, "The Revolt of the Masses," written as a warning about mass society. Lasch's argument was that the problem wasn't the masses rising up; rather it was the elites turning their backs on democracy.

Writing in the aftermath of World War I and the collapse of the old European order, Ortega had argued that modern society had empowered "the masses", and that the masses were mediocre, anti-intellectual and hostile to excellence and leadership. Ortega claimed that civilization depends on a cultivated minority guiding society, because the average person is not capable of serious political, cultural or moral leadership.

Lasch flipped Ortega on his head: The problem today isn't the revolt of the masses. It’s the revolt of the elites—their abandonment of democratic responsibility. Elites had seceded from the common life of the nation. The masses are often more attached to traditions of family, community and democracy than the elites are. The new elites treat ordinary people with contempt. Democracy is failing not because of ignorant masses but because of a cosmopolitan elite that owes no loyalty to nation or community.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in a liberal, intellectual family, Lasch was initially influenced by the writings of Herbert Marcuse and C. Wright Mills. Early in his career he was identified as one of the leading figures of the New Left. Over time, though, he became highly critical of modern liberalism, his writings mixing ideas from the left and the right in idiosyncratic ways that today no longer seem so unusual.

"The Revolt of the Elites" caps a trilogy of cultural-political critiques. "The Culture of Narcissism" (1979) described an America characterized by personal emptiness and social atomization. "The True and Only Heaven" (1991) provided a sweeping attack on the ideology of Progress and a defense of populist traditions.

In "The Revolt of the Elites," Lasch argued that today’s elites are highly mobile, meritocratic and self-defined by achievement. They live in global cities, move easily across borders and detach themselves from national loyalties or civic responsibilities. Traditional elites on the other hand—however flawed—had a sense of noblesse oblige. Not so today's elites.
“The new meritocracy," according to Lasch, "prides itself on its freedom from inherited obligations.”

Lasch argued that democracy depends on a sense of shared fate between classes and between individuals and their communities. When elites detach themselves, democracy dies—because public life becomes hollow, and only private avarice remains. Elites celebrate "diversity" because it shields them from real critique. Real differences—economic power, class, control of institutions—are papered over by focusing obsessively on racial, ethnic and cultural differences.

Today's elites hold ordinary people in contempt. Ordinary people are seen as backward, racist, parochial, clinging to religion family, and community. Elites view democracy itself--government by such people--as suspect.

Writing in the heyday of Bill Clinton and the much-vaunted Third Way, Lasch brilliantly foresaw the rise of a disconnected global elite as well as the rebellions (Trump, Brexit, the Yellow Vests, Le Pen, Orbán, AFD) its rule would inevitable trigger. Lasch's critique of empty but noxious concepts such as "diversity" as a tool of elite power is sharp and remains highly relevant.

More than 30 years after its publication, "The Revolt of the Elites" remains a devastating cultural and political critique, showing how meritocracy, globalization and technocracy have hollowed out real democracy. Today, Lasch's insights seem even more prescient than they were at the time of writing.