Angelo Codevilla, who died recently, was an eloquent essayist. A favorite of many people is his 2010 essay on America’s Ruling Class.
while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate — most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics.
Later,
Supposedly, modern society became so complex and productive, the technical skills to run it so rare, that it called forth a new class of highly educated officials and cooperators in an ever less private sector. . .In fact, our ruling class grew and set itself apart from the rest of us by its connection with ever bigger government, and above all by a certain attitude.
I think that this is actually true. Our lives have become way more complex. In the past, people understood how their tools worked and they could fix things that were broken. A farmer in 1800 probably could fix almost anything on the farm that broke. As recently as the 1950s, many people with no formal training in auto mechanics could fix cars.
Today, I think we are reliant on experts to a much greater extent than ever before. But the relationship between knowledge and power is out of kilter: people with too little knowledge have too much power.
The farmer in 1800, in the US at least, had a tools and techniques near a millennia old
“The man who in the year 1800 ventured to hope for a new era in the coming century, could lay his hand on no statistics that silenced doubt. The machinery of production showed no radical difference from that familiar to ages long past. The Saxon farmer of the eighth century enjoyed most of the comforts known to Saxon farmers in the eighteenth. THe eorls and ceorls of Offa and Ecgbert could not read or write, and did not receive a weekly newspaper with such information as newspapers in that age could supply; yet neither their houses, their clothing, their food and drink, their agricultural tools and methods, their stock, nor their habits were so greatly altered or improved by time that they would have found much difficulty in accommodating their lives to that of their descendants in the eighteenth century. In this respect America was backward. Fifty or a hundred miles inland more than half the houses were log-cabins, which might or might not enjoy the luxury of a glass window. Throughout the South and West houses shoed little attempt at luxury; but even in New England the ordinary farmhouse was hardly so well built, so spacious, or so warm as that of a well-to-do contemporary of Charlemagne. The cloth which the farmer’s family wore was still homespun. ”
–History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson, Henry Adams
The First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, Part I, Chapter 1
The farmer today can repair much of his equipment, even the electronics, but is increasingly prevented from this by the equipment seller. John Deere is one of the worst when it comes to right to repair.
It was farmers that integrated GPS into their fertilizer and seeding processes first then the tech became commercial.
Of course, today much of the capability of products is disappearing into the processor chips so it is near impossible to debug without access to what the corporations now keep secret. But power and grounds, inputs and outputs can still be tested even if the solution is replace the board or abandon complex features for basic functionality via by-pass wiring.
But today’s average liberal arts graduate lives in a world that might as well be run by magic as far as they are able discern. In the past, just to get to school required some interaction with the world of doing useful things, hitching horses, building a fire, avoiding the dangers along a wooded trail or road. Many enter college never even having driven a car on a well-maintained road or unable to operate a can opener.
As was said, it’s not so much what they don’t know, but what they “know” that isn’t true.
RIP.
He will be missed.
Thank you for the link. Seems consistent with Christopher Lasch’s Revolt of the Elites, Fred Siegel’s Revolt Against the Masses and Dominic Cummings Regime Change #2 substack from Saturday. Of course the latter’s notion that there is someone with the knowledge to force the bureaucracy into submission is about as far fetched as Dr Kling’s notion that there are people with special knowledge who should be running things rather than the ignorami we are stuck with now populating the bureaucracies. Personally don’t see the point in trading ignorant tyrants for tyrants with delusions of competence. The competently governed nations of the world are those with the least tyranny. The essay to read to sort this out is Richard Overton’s “An Arrow Against All Tyrants” from 1646 (predating Locke’s Two Treatises by 40 years). In a nutshell:
“And have a care of the temporary sagacity of the new sect of opportunity politician, whereof we have got at least two or three too many.”
I think many smart people could still figure out how to fix their refrigerators if they cared to put their time into it. As for computers and smart phones, government sanctioned ‘experts’ have no idea how they work, either.
You date technological complexity to the post-1950’s world. But consider that progressive calls for ‘scientific governance’ (i.e. the current degraded regime of incompetent, oligarchical ‘experts’) date to the 1910’s-20s-30s (the stone age?). So I don’t believe the two phenomena (of tech complexity and fake expert-based governance) are really coterminous at all.
I know two people, now in their late 60s, who were fixing cars with no formal training in the early 1970s.
Angelo Codevilla was one of the most eloquent voices of right-wing populism.
Kling has had sympathies and hostilities towards right-wing populism. His appreciate of Codevilla falls into the former category.
(Arnold) could you clarify what you’re agreeing with?
The ellipsis here is downright misleading.
Codevilla is actually saying that the technological explanation for the development of the “political ruling class” is a bunch of schlock. Instead, it’s due to the political class’ “connection with ever bigger government, and above all by a certain attitude.”
I agree with Codevilla (because the other sorts of technological change are moot… the technology of government is fundamentally a hundred years old or more, depending on how you’d care to define it). But I can’t figure out your view from what you wrote.
I think that the complexity of modern society helps motivate the need for more governance, some of which will come from private institutions and some of which will come from government. But the temptation of technocrats to become an arrogant ruling class is also there, and it makes technocratic government very dubious.