"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."
— Edward Dowling, Editor and Priest, Chicago Daily News, July 28, 1941
Why Do People Accept Rule by Elites?
Some 250 years ago, David Hume inquired into "...the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, the implicit submission with which men resign..." their fate to the few who rule over them. Hume noted that in terms of raw strength, "force is always on the side of the governed." What is it, one might wonder, that prevents the many from rising up and taking power themselves? Hume concluded that it is ultimately "on opinion only that government is founded." {1} Rule by the few rests, therefore, on managing the opinions of the many.
A look at modern society shows that little has changed. For the ruling establishment to be accepted by the masses as society's legitimate leadership, it's necessary to impose a certain mode of thought on the population. In adopting this mode of thought, or "social doctrine," a citizen agrees to a set of power relationships, and accepts the society's core institutional structures as legitimate. The doctrine itself is usually unspoken of, and unchallenged. It operates at an unconscious (or at least, unexamined) level, automatically & reflexively, most of the time. Accepting it is what we call socialization -- or "indoctrination."
Because social stability (ie, continued rule by elites) depends so critically on mass acceptance of the doctrine, society is extremely sensitive and resistant to any examination of the doctrine's constituent ideas. Such subjects -- and lines of thought leading too close to such subjects -- are practically taboo.
Elites and the "Ruling Ideas"
What is the "ruling establishment?" The Establishment is a layer at the very top of the social pyramid, roughly the richest and most influential half-percent or so of the population. It consists of the upper echelons of the corporate world, the top military brass, powerful elected officials, high-level career bureaucrats, and influential members of the press and academia.
Though in many ways a diverse group, the Establishment as a whole has definite interests which bind all its members, and which often conflict with those of the rest of the population. The "social doctrine" mentioned above (also referred to as "The Dominant Paradigm" on a witty bumpersticker, as Michael Parenti notes {2}) amounts to a worldview legitimizing society's hierarchical structure. It's a special prism which, when you look through it, makes it seem plausible that elite rule is "natural" and justified.
Marx observed that "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." In feudal times, these "ruling ideas" included the divine right of kings. In our time, they include similar props for the prevailing power structure. The notion that we live and work in a merit-based system is one such idea. The notions that justice is a foundational element of our society ("We are a society of laws, not men"); and that we have a "democracy," are others. A very important one is that our society is organized as it is, because this "maximizes production" and is "most efficient."
It's crucial of course that the ruling ideas comprising our social doctrine are supposed to be held by everyone, regardless of whether you're a ruling class member or not. Indeed, that's precisely their utility, so far as social stability is concerned: if most non-elites rejected the ideology, the few would no longer be able to dominate the many.
Capitalism and the Social Doctrine
What is the relation between capitalism and our social doctrine? According to the doctrine itself, we have a capitalist economic system because it leads to the greatest good for the greatest number of people, by virtue of its dynamism and efficiency. In reality, we have it because it allows a relatively small number of people to amass unlimited wealth.
This last is an example of how the doctrine itself serves the ideological needs of the underlying economic system. If it were publicly proclaimed that we have capitalism because it permits a few people to become infinitely rich at the expense of everyone else, it would likely be poorly-received by the masses. They might get angry and revolt. It is therefore politic to implant the idea that the whole scheme is merit-based; that the rich enjoy their wealth only because of their contributions to the greater good; and that everyone is better off because of it.
Is it an accident that the social doctrine so conveniently serves the ideological needs of the economic system? Not hardly. Marx provided penetrating insight into the relationship between the doctrine (ie, the ideology) and the needs of the underlying economic system:
In other words, much of our consciousness -- our way of thinking about the world, including our social, intellectual, legal and political ideas -- ultimately arises from, and is shaped by, our "mode of production" -- by the economic system. Under capitalism, there's great pressure to think like a citizen in a capitalist society is "supposed" to think. Under feudalism, it's easy to imagine that one was likewise pressured to conform to the ideology of that era.In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations...namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness...{3}
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