The Illusion of Populism
A Foolish Game of Smoke and Mirrors
Introduction
The prevailing view of the modern world, which we refer to as “popular sovereignty”, asserts that the “people” are the source of all political legitimacy. Therefore, changes in political leadership and even institutions must come from the masses.
As we will see, this political formula flies directly in the face of the cold reality of politics. Unless we come to terms with this reality, we monarchists will be no more wise than our opponents, who blissfully immerse themselves in this illusion.
To fullfill our mission, we must understand the nature of power. And to do that, we must understand the how elites rise and fall.
Elite Theory
According to the Italian school of elitism, this theory starts with the premise that an organized minority will always prevail over the disorganized majority. This is demonstrated not only in organizations—political, social, economic, etc—but also in the governing of society. Therefore, political change is always top-down, never bottom-up. Chance would only occur if the ruling elites change course or are uprooted by counter-elites. This is Elite Theory.
Gaetano Mosca, a prominent thinker in the Italian school of elitism, perfectly summarizes this theory in the following quote:
“[T]he dominion of an organized minority, obeying a single impulse, over the unorganized majority is inevitable. The power of any minority is inevitable as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minority. A hundred men acting uniformly in concert, with a common understanding, will triumph over a thousand men who are not in accord and can therefore be dealt with one by one. Meanwhile it will be easier for the former to act in concert and have a mutual understanding simply because they are a hundred and not a thousand.”1
This is true in all forms of government, including monarchy.
Legally, even when the monarch has autocratic power, it is only in de jure terms. In de facto terms, it resides in those who surround him or her. Like every other head of state, the monarch's ability to wield any legal power is not only contingent upon the law, but also on the cooperation, competence, and morals of the ruling class. In the case of autocratic and feudal monarchies, the ruling class would be the royal court and the nobility. For constitutional monarchies, it would be the royal court and the parliament (though in many cases, the latter holds most of the power).
Just as there are means—legel or otherwise—to remove presidents and prime ministers, the same can be said for monarchs, hereditary or elected. In fact there is no reason to think that the removal of a herediary monarch would be any more difficult than that of elected one. This could be done either by pressuring the monarch to resign (like Edward VIII) or simply by removing them with force (examples include Roman emperors like Nero and medieval kings like Richard II of England).
The monarch's dependency upon the ruling class is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can restrict or even lead to the removal of bad sovereigns. But on the other hand, the same could happen to good ones.
This is the true danger of monarchy. The risk of poor leadership and the abuse of power lie not solely in the one who sits on the throne, but primarily in those who flank it. Therefore, a monarchy is only as good as its ruling class, which in turn is only as good as the culture its members were raised in. The qualities of the sovereign, or the lack thereof, is at most a supplementary factor.
Whenever the misuse and abuse of monarchical authority are brought up, remember this: They always stem from beside the throne, not from it, because that is where true power lies. How this power would be used is contingent upon law and cultural values.
“But what about elected officials?” one might ask, “Aren't they dependent on the consent of the masses?”. Mosca argued otherwise. In his book The Ruling Class, he explained that, “In elections, as in all other manifestations of social life, those who have the will and, especially, the moral, intellectual and material means to force their will upon others take the lead over the others and command them.”2
The means to force one's will upon others, both in organization and in statesmanship, is beyond the capacity of the masses. This is due to what Robert Michels called “the organic weakness of the mass”. In his book Political Parties, he said, “[W]hen deprived of the leaders in time of action, they abandon the field of battle in disordered flight … and are useless until new captains arise capable of replacing those that have been lost.”3
There is a multitude of historical events in which this organic weakness reveals itself. To name only a few instances, one could look at the July Days of 1917, the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, the Yellow Vest movement which began on 17 November 2018, the Washington DC inaugural riots of January 2017, the Capitol Hill riot of 6 January 2021, and the Canadian convoy protest (22 January – 23 February 2022). Did any of these spontaneous uprisings of the masses achieve any of their objectives? Did a single one of them make any dent in the ruling elites they protested against?
The fact that the belief in popular sovereignty, this secular opium of the masses, still holds sway over society speaks volumes of its potency. Moreover, it is as dangerous as it is potent.
Proponents of Elite Theory have went as far as to say that the “democratic principle” is not only false, but destructively so. As Neema Parvini put it, this myth fails to act as “a source of moral unity”. In his book The Populist Delusion, he said that “it acts as a constant source of class resentment so that the unity of ruler and ruled, which can be so powerful, never fully comes about.”4
This brings us back to the sacred union Hani described. When it comes to fostering and preserving moral unity between ruler and ruled, monarchy succeeds whereas republicanism woefully fails. Elite theory confirms this.
Of course, Elite Theory is not necessarily an argument for autocratic rule. Rather, it is more appropiately used as an argument against the myth of populism. The notion that the masses could ever gain the cohesion and coordination needed to replace its rulers defies the very nature of politics and organization. If democratic procedures are to be kept in place, they ought to be treated not as a means for bottom-up change, but as self-correcting mechanisms within the wider framework. Elections and referendums should be used to ensure healthy competition between elites and counter-elites.
The Circulation of Elites
Anyone who has even the slightest inkling of history knows that the rise and fall of regimes and nations is an inevitable cycle. This cycle, the circulation of elites, is one of the iron-clad laws of power. All ruling classes are subject to it no matter how powerful they may seem.
Touching on this subject, Mosca provided a dynamic theory of regime change:
“As soon as there is a shift in the balance of political forces […] then the manner in which the ruling class is constituted changes also. If a new course of wealth develops in a society, if a practical importance of knowledge grows, if an old religion declines or a new one is born, if a new current of ideals spreads, then, simultaneously, far-reaching dislocations occur in the ruling class.”5
Providing a more exact model, Bertrand de Jouvenel presents the “high-low middle mechanism”. Describing this mechanism as “the patron theory of power”, Parvini explained it as follows:
“[T]he high—the central power—makes an appeal of liberation and guarantee of security to the low who are being 'oppressed' by the middle. By patronising the low, the high thus starts to drain away the power of the middle, thus accruing more power to itself. … Jouvenel tends to use the terms 'Power', 'aristocracy' and 'the common people' to define his three categories.6 … The key point to grasp is that to count as 'aristocratic' or 'subsidiary', Power must perceive a cell as a rival. … Power seeks to destroy the rival powers in the subsidiaries by patronising clients.”7
On the other hand, there are times in which the subsidiaries prevail over the centre instead of the other way around. Jouvenel explained this development as thus:
“When it falls into weak hands, which give aristocratic resistance the chance to organize itself, the state's revolutionary nature becomes for the time being effaced.
This happens either because the forces of aristocracy oppose to the now enfeebled statocratic onslaught a barrier capable of checking it, or, more frequently, because they put a guard on their assailant, by laying hands on the apparatus which endangers them; they guarantee their own survival by installing themselves in the seat of government. This is exactly what did happen in the two epochs when the ideas of Montesquieu and Marx took shape.”8
In his book Nemesis, the two developments of the Jouvellian model is laid out clearly and concisely by C.A. Bond. However, he also makes the argument that while a power centre needs the periphery, the periphery by itself is a non-factor. The masses are just that, peripheral:
“At times, it is … Power which aligns itself with the periphery as a means to strengthen itself and weaken the subsidiary power centres; at other times, it is the subidiary power centres which engage with the periphery to undermine and overtake the primary Power. Whatever section is aligning with this periphery, it should be noted that without this alliance between a power centre and the periphery, the periphery is itself basically irrelevant. Without the assistance of a centre of power, any action by the periphery is, by virtue of lacking institutional embodiment and political protection, at best sporadic and ineffective. A popular protest, rebellion, or any other form of dissenting action by the periphery, if it has no support from an element in the power structure, will quickly fade into irrelevance; if it does hae this support, it will find itself supplied with resources, exposure, protection, and institutional embodiment.”9
Now, to determine whether a state is functional or dysfunctional, one must observe how it reacts to the circulation of elites. If the political system resists the cycle in favor of a particular class, it is dysfunctional.
As previously explained, monarchy is both an institution in which the incumbent elites operate and a sacred union which encompasses all of society. Becuase of its sacred union, monarchy does not require any particular ruling class to remain in place. In fact, monarchies that are successful are ones which allow the circulation of elites to run its course. While not all monarchies were functional, they are, by this metric, the most functional as a general rule.
More so than any other political system, monarchies have cycled thorugh many kinds of elites. Dynasties, nobles, plutocrats, praetorian warriors, clergies, bureaucrats, and politicians.10 They all came and went. And yet the institution, the sacred union, remained. This is transcendental politics in its purest and most enduring form.
This is what we monarchists strive for. As mentioned in the preamble, we strive not for a utopia, but for a system which is the most natural to mankind—and therefore—the most stable and durable. We strive not for our own interests, but for those who will come long after we are gone. We strive not for any particular elite, but for something above and beyond all elites. We strive for a sacred, transcendental continuity in the never-ending circulation of elites, one that only a monarchy can provide.
Conclusion
If monarchism is to prevail in the end, its defenders must learn to take advantage of the circulation of elites. And to that end, they must first reject the myth of popular sovereignty—the most potent opium of the masses—and embrace the cold reality of politics as revealed in Elite Theory.
If our detractors wish to continue this foolish game of smoke and mirrors, then so much the better. Let us not interrupt them when they make a mistake.
Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class, p. 53
Ibin., p. 154
Robert Michels, Political Parties, p. 90
Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion, p. 17-18
Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class, p. 65
C.A. Bond provides his own set of categories: centre, subsidiary, and periphery. On the subsidiary, he said that they “can be seen as delegates of the centre, and act in its name… Jouvenel termed the elements that comprise this category 'social authorities', and by this he meant such entities as the nobility, families, corporations, trade unions, and any other institution … which can demand … obedience and allegiance … in conjunction with the central governing apparatus, or Power.” (See Bond, Nemesis, p. 4.)
Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion, p. 77-79
Jouvenel, On Power, p. 176
C.A. Bond, Nemesis, p. 6-7
It is important to distinguish nobles from plutocrats. The former is an aristocracy founded upon tradition whereas the latter an aristocracy built upon wealth.
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