Critical Thinking: A Tale of Many Elitisms - Part 2: The Plutocratic Elite

“What is the chief end of man? -- to get rich. In what way? --dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must. Who is God, the one only and true? Money is God. God and Greenbacks and Stock--father, son, and the ghost of same--three persons in one; these are the true and only God, mighty and supreme...”

Mark Twain, "The Revised Catechism" 9/27/1871[i]

After a brief exploration of religious elitism, we turn our attention to plutocratic elitism, a form of elitism very familiar to American and Western European readers. At the time of this writing, this form of elitism is at the height of its power in American society. In essence, plutocratic elitists believe that the wealthy have a right to control policy in their own interest, because their profit-seeking activities promote economic growth.

Throughout history, rulers have almost always been or become wealthy, mostly through plunder or extortion. Plutocratic elitism is a relatively modern trend, which is distinguished by the fact that a wealthy elite believe they are entitled to political power because of their wealth.

Many conservative parties implicitly or explicitly embrace plutocratic elitism. The philosophical roots of this form of elitism are to be found in post-industrial revolution social theories by Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner and Ayn Rand. These theories are fatally flawed, as we shall see later, and currently they are being forced upon a partially unaware populace by a powerful and manipulative elite.

In modern American society, plutocratic elitism enjoys a measure of legal protection through the 2010 “Citizens United” Supreme Court ruling[ii], which allowed unlimited spending by corporations, trade unions and other entities such as super-PACs in support of political positions, provided that funds are not directly contributed to a candidate’s campaign. This ruling was based on the questionable principle that money is speech, and as such it is protected by the American Constitution.

If money is speech, it follows that those who have the most money, i.e., the plutocratic elite, have a right to use their money to promote specific political causes. In most cases, these political causes will benefit the plutocrats who pay to promote them. As a result, plutocrats will get even wealthier and have more money to spend on political causes, setting off a positive feedback cycle of increasing inequality. The Citizens United ruling has made the American political process unprecedentedly subordinate to money, thereby establishing the United States as a de facto plutocracy.

Super-PACS created in the aftermath of that ruling devote enormous sums of money to political campaigns, basically turning every election in the US into a fundraising arms race. Conservative lawmakers have blocked laws requiring transparency in the disclosure of funding sources, essentially allowing anonymous plutocrats to purchase influence.

One especially effective group is ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council[iii]. ALEC is a self-described “nonprofit” organization which writes “model” legislation favorable to wealthy donors and promotes its implementation at the state level by legislators whose campaigns are funded by these donors. This group also blocks regulations and other legislation contrary to the short-term interests of the donors. Although it is legally a nonprofit group, ALEC indirectly increases the profits of its donors through favorable legislation. This is an elaborate way of saying that this group buys influence over the legislative process, exploiting a legalized form of corruption.

There is empirical evidence of the increased success of plutocratic elitism in the U.S. Income inequality has steadily worsened in the US since its post-World War 2 Golden Age. A thoughtful paper by Nicholas Fitz which appeared in Scientific American in March 2015[iv] summarizes data and perceptions on income inequality in the US. Polls indicate that the average American agrees that a company CEO should be compensated proportionately to his or her responsibilities, and indicate an ideal ratio of 7:1 between CEO and employee salaries. Americans grossly underestimate the real compensation ratio, believing it to be around 30:1. The actual figure in 2015 was 354:1. American CEOs are paid far more than their equally capable counterparts in Europe and Asia, mostly as a result of an uncontrolled compensation arms race. At the same time, the bottom 40% of American households control only 0.3% of the national wealth. A single family, the Waltons, controls as much wealth 42% of the population. The article lists two likely reasons why this state of affairs does not cause widespread concern and resentment. First, most Americans simply do not realize how unequal the wealth distribution is, and grossly underestimate the actual figures. Second, they overestimate their own chances of upward mobility. About 60% of Americans continue to believe that simply through hard work they can achieve wealth. They are willing to tolerate the existence of an extravagantly wealthy elite because they grossly overestimate their own probability of joining that elite. Interestingly, poorer, conservative Americans overestimate their own upward mobility more than liberal, wealthier Americans. The US is currently the most unequal Western country, and has significantly less upward mobility than less conservative Europe or Canada[v]. Americans keep buying tickets for the American Dream lottery hoping to strike it rich, because too many among them don’t have an accurate sense of how unlikely they are to do so. Of course, a few people will always hit the jackpot. But most never will, and their life circumstances will be dictated by those of their parents, just as they were in Dickensian England and in other 19^th century European countries. Plutocratic elitists are on a winning streak, at least until a larger fraction of the population will realize that they are being fed a steady diet of illusions. The remarkable following gathered by Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 campaign may signal the beginning of the end of that winning streak, which is inevitable for reasons that we’ll explore below.

Why are the philosophical underpinnings of plutocratic elitism fatally flawed? Basically, the ideology that justifies this form of elitism is so called “Social Darwinism”. This theory maintains that in a competitive economy a sort of natural selection occurs in which “the fittest” i.e., the most capable individuals, gather more wealth than the others. In other words, the wealthy deserve to be wealth because they are superior individuals, whereas the poor deserve to be poor because they are either incapable of achieving wealth or too lazy to do so. To be sure, every complex character including avarice will show a distribution of values in any population. However, the analogy with Darwinism is completely inaccurate. Like other unscientific social philosophies including Marxism, “social Darwinism” does not take into account the basic biology of H. sapiens, and treats humans as abstract, pliable entities to which different thinkers ascribe different ranges of behavior based on their own personal preferences.

In biological evolution, natural selection plays no favorites. Someone born with a crippling genetic disease will develop that disease, and his reproductive fitness will be affected by his genome irrespective of how well connected his parents are. He may get better care, but ultimately his genome will determine his fate. In biology, chances of reproduction depend on the interaction between environment and genomes. A genome more adaptive to certain environmental conditions will have a higher probability of spreading in that environment. In human society, life circumstances stack the deck in favor of the progeny of wealthy individuals irrespective of their genetic fitness. In other words, children born to privileged parents will inherit wealth irrespective of how able they would be to accumulate that wealth on their own. This is not only inconsistent with natural selection but contrary to it. Inherited wealth can allow otherwise mediocre individuals opportunities to accumulate more wealth simply by investing what they inherit and leaving investment choices to experts. Complex characters like exceptional talent in business, science, sports or the arts are the product of large sets of genes and epigenetic circumstances affecting the expression of these genes. Because of the constant mixing of genes due to sexual reproduction, chromosomal crossing over and recombination, and because of the fact that no two people have completely identical life experience, the probability that the entire package of genes and epigenetic modifications responsible for exceptional talent will be passed along to the next generation is vanishingly small. This is the well-known phenomenon of regression to the mean. Neither one of Albert Einstein’s sons was as talented a scientist as their famous father. Some of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 20 children were good musicians, but none were as exceptionally talented as their father. Christina Onassis was not nearly the businessperson that Aristotle was. Diego Maradona’s son is a mediocre soccer player. The only way to stabilize a certain gene combination in the population is to maintain relentless selective pressure. In economic terms, this would happen only if we abolished inheritance altogether. If at every generation everyone started with an equal sum of money and identical opportunities for education, and if only people who achieve superior wealth on their own in a level playing field were allowed to have children, we could conceivably breed a race of super-businesspeople, like the Ferengi of the Star Trek universe. This is how real Darwinism works. However, as mammals we are compelled to take care of our children and stack the deck in their favor. As long as that is allowed, social Darwinism will remain no more than an elaborate excuse for selfishness. By allowing the accumulation of privilege in families through inheritance, capital gains and low taxes, social “Darwinism” is essentially anti-meritocratic, and is actually the antithesis of real Darwinism.

Plutocratic elitism based on social "Darwinism" is simply a rehashing of Old World aristocratic notions, whereby direct descendants of kings, emperors or nobles were assumed to be rightfully part of an elite because of exceptional qualities inherited from their direct ancestors. This was a widespread misconception in the pre-genetic era, but it has no biological basis. Assuming non-consanguineous mating, even after a mere 3 generations a descendant contains a random sample of a direct ancestor’s DNA making up only 12.5% of his DNA. After 5 or 6 generations, this fraction becomes essentially meaningless. Our genes get quickly diluted into the great river of human DNA, and individual characters are transmitted to distant descendants. To illustrate this fact, we’ll use a familiar example. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke go to great lengths to outline the genealogy of Jesus. These genealogies are likely arbitrary reconstructions meant to place Jesus in a direct line of descent from David. Luke lists 42 generations between David and Jesus, Matthew 28. Assuming for a moment that these pedigrees were real, Jesus would have inherited a fraction of David’s DNA equal to 2^-28 or 2^-42. Given that the total DNA content of a human genome is about 3⁹ nucleotides, this is equivalent to saying that Jesus would have inherited less than 1 nucleotide according to Luke and about 11 nucleotides according to Matthew (which is far less than even the smallest gene). In other words, genetically Jesus was as related to David than I am to Homer, direct descent notwithstanding. Any special qualities David possessed would have never been transmitted to Jesus through genetic inheritance. The same is true of any human families. To allow individual families to accumulate extravagant wealth because of the talent of a distant ancestor does not reward or select any special qualities or merits. In fact, it subtracts resources from other especially talented individuals that may arise in the population, thereby reducing their opportunities to develop their talents. There is no Darwinism at all in social “Darwinism”

Real Darwinian evolution does have an effect on human society. Evolution has molded human nature, and biology restricts the range of social behaviors and stable societal arrangements available to humans. We are mammals and we are a social species, like our great ape cousins as well as dogs, horses, wolves, dolphins or orcas. This means that we are programmed to take care of our young, which contain approximately 50% of our DNA, and to extend this empathy to other relatives in measure roughly correspondent to the amount of DNA we share. In addition to that, it also means that we are programmed to belong to a cooperative group, as cooperation enhanced our ancestors’ chances of survival. Within our group, we are programmed to appropriate resources as much as possible, but not to the point of disrupting group cohesion. Positive social interaction is necessary for normal humans to maintain their sanity. This is why isolation cells are a form of torture. We are not eusocial insects like ants or honeybees, which function as completely altruistic colonies where individuals are expendable, but we are not individualistic predators like sharks. To paraphrase Edward O. Wilson in “On Human Nature”, a rational ant would find the concept of individual rights intrinsically evil. Similarly, a rational shark would find the concept of empathy and cooperation incomprehensible. Humans live between these two extremes. They are perennially engaged in a constant Prisoner’s dilemma, teetering between “cooperation” and “defection”, between empathy and selfishness. Ideologically-driven attempts to construct political philosophies that ignore either of these drives are unscientific and doomed to failure. “Social Darwinism” and its derivatives postulate a hyper-individualistic society devoid of empathy, where individual gain is the only engine of progress, sharing is anathema and cooperation towards a common good is precarious at best. Had humans been only capable of producing such a society, they would not have survived as a species. They evolved to be highly social because social cooperation helped them survive. The scientific literature has quantified the evolutionary advantage deriving from cooperation and documented non-kin cooperative behavior in human and animal societies (see for example [vi],[vii],[viii]). A tribe made up of selfish “Social Darwinists” would have been unable to hunt cooperatively, and would have been readily wiped out by more cohesive enemy tribes. Membership in a social group requires altruistic behavior as the price for the advantages conferred by cooperation. Hence, freeloaders are vilified and punished in primitive human societies. In modern society, tax cheats are the equivalent of primitive freeloaders.

On the other hand, the Marxist theories popular in the 20^th century postulated, based on Hegelian philosophy and an economic analysis of early industrial England, that humans would reach a final Nirvana, the classless society, in which all means of production are collectively owned and humans essentially turn into a eusocial species like ants or honeybees. As much as this sounds idyllic in theory, such a society is biologically impossible to present-day humans as a species. Some individuals may be able to function in that fashion, but all it would take is a few “defectors” to wreck the Nirvana. In real life, Marxism has generated totalitarian societies where the plutocratic elite was simply replaced by a political-bureaucratic elite. In every communist society, some people were always “more equal” than others, and human nature was not appreciably changed by living in such societies for generation. In fact, people in Russia and China promptly reverted to their selfish ways once the constraints of communist policies were removed.

Ancient religions have a more realistic picture of human nature than either right-wing or left-wing political philosophers. Ancient Greek religion included the concept of original sin, an innate selfishness residing in human nature. This concept is a good metaphor for our genetically hardwired selfishness, and was later borrowed by Christianity. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all recognize that humans are capable of both sin and redemption, of abject selfishness and sublime selflessness. These religions condemn hyper-individualistic behavior and prescribe beneficence, offering divine rewards to individuals who practice in-group altruism. Christianity even encourages out-group altruism. Virtually every religion humans have created sanctifies and rewards dedication to a group larger than the self, in some cases to the point of self-immolation, and reviles selfishness. These ancient myths and religious prescriptions had survival value, in that they discouraged behavior disruptive of social cooperation. The Ten Commandments are a prime example of that. Prohibitions against murder, stealing, dishonesty, adultery and coveting discourage selfish and antisocial behaviors. Obligations to follow common rituals and to avoid blasphemy reinforce conformity and cooperation.

Clearly, there is a wide range of human phenotypes when it comes to capacity for empathy. Mother Theresa and infamous profiteer Martin Shkreli are both H. sapiens, at the two extremes of this distribution. It is possible and even likely that individuals are born and can be raised more or less empathic due to genetic and epigenetic factors. However, it is a constant of human societies that tolerance for selfishness is limited. A society in which a small group of individuals hoards an increasingly large share of resources is inherently unstable. The innate tendency of humans to punish antisocial behavior and reward cooperation would predict that a society dominated by a plutocratic elite becomes increasingly polarized, as the elite attempts to gain and retain control of an ever-increasing share of common resources through propaganda and repression while the dispossessed majority becomes increasingly resentful of the elite, skeptical of their promises and disenchanted about its future. Eventually, the dispossessed majority becomes ripe for demagogues of all stripes promising dramatic change. These usually turn out to be just aspiring dictators. The increasing polarization of American society is consistent with this prediction.

Historically, when a breaking point is reached where the dispossessed majority rebels against the plutocratic elite, social unrest and revolution become more likely. The French and Russian Revolutions, and a host of other bloody or bloodless revolutions in deeply unequal developing countries, are examples of what happens when populations driven into abject poverty become resentful of their elites.

Biology establishes that “Social Darwinism” is as unscientific, unrealistic and dystopian as communism, and that “survival of the fittest” neither explains nor justifies the existence of plutocratic elites that amass enormous wealth through inheritance and low taxes. The last remaining question is whether a wealthy elite, even assuming it truly consists of individuals high talented in the field of wealth accumulation, is ideally qualified to lead a democracy. This case has been made in US politics, based on a flawed analogy between businesses and countries.

That question was answered by Plato 23 centuries ago in his memorable dialogue “Republic” (Polytheia)[ix]. I have nothing to add to what one of the greatest minds humanity ever produced had to say, other than briefly summarizing his thought. Plato, speaking through his teacher Socrates, states that the merchant (business) elite is the least qualified segment of society to hold power, being too concerned with filling its own belly and not sufficiently concerned with the common good. In other words, those who excel in business are motivated by short term greed, which is in conflict with the best interests of society as a whole. Running a business is an exercise in maximizing the short term profits of that business at the expense of everything else (competing businesses, customers, workers, the environment and society). A country contains multiple constituencies with disparate and conflicting interests which must be balanced, and it also needs to manage multiple international relationships without resorting to conflict unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Uncontrolled plutocratic elitism which is not held in check by self-corrective mechanisms allowing for reasonable wealth redistribution carries within it the seed of its own demise. In future posts, we will explore meritocratic elitism, briefly touch on racial and military elitism and finally discuss the relationship between different forms of elitism.