The Goodwin that failed

The Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto is perhaps most famous for the Pareto efficiency, distribution and principle named after him — although the latter was only based on his work, rather than his direct invention.

It is his theory on the circulation of elites, however, that I want to dwell on. To Pareto, a hierarchy of skills and aptitudes was axiomatic, leading naturally to the formation of classes, which helped in maintaining social balance and organisation across a society. As a natural result of this, Pareto argued that society is, and always will be, ruled by an elite minority: elite meaning “the small number of individuals who, in each sphere of activity, have succeeded and have arrived at a higher echelon in the professional hierarchy.” 

These elites, who determine the direction and development of every society, were further divided into a governing elite, and a non-governing elite, who directly or indirectly play some considerable part in government. The history of any society, as Pareto saw it, is therefore the history of the relationship between its elites and the rest.

According to this theory, the composition of the elite is never fixed. Individuals continually move between elite and non-elite status, whether through gradual integration or through abrupt and violent upheaval. “By the circulations of elites,” Pareto wrote, “the governing elite is in a state of continuous and slow transformation. It flows like a river, and what it is today is different from what it was yesterday. Every so often, there are sudden and violent disturbances. The river floods and breaks its banks. Then afterwards, the new governing elite resume again and slow process of self-transformation. The river returns to its bed and once more flows freely on.”

This circulation of elites occurs in every society, whether democratic or autocratic, open or closed. It most often takes the form of negotiation and competition among rival power groups, and only rarely appears as a genuine bottom-up revolution.

But because this process is constant, societies must have mechanisms for bringing new talent into positions of influence while moving those whose influence has waned aside. This counteracts inherited privilege, insularity, and the groupthink that tends to take hold within entrenched elites. The most resilient societies build pathways for capable individuals to rise and establish institutions that prevent any single person or faction from dominating indefinitely: in a truly free society, Pareto thinks, the circulation of elites would be continuous and unobstructed.

Reform’s rise has unwittingly made this impossible to ignore. The main criticism from the right — that they are too reliant on Reformed Tories — betrays a concern that without sufficient change of personnel, the impulses of the old elite will be bought over. The main criticism from everyone else — that they are as-yet unfit to govern — betrays a concern that a wholesale replacement of the ruling elite will have disastrous consequences. 

Much of Reform’s own criticism of the political situation also echos Pareto’s theory. Arguments that the voice of normal people has been wilfully ignored, or that the old political elite are “out of touch”, reflect a concern that does beyond the idea that the current elite holds different values, but that it has become closed, self-perpetuating, and increasingly insulated from the wider society it governs. The circulation of elites has slowed, or even stalled. Reform’s rhetoric — that a detached political class has entrenched itself while ordinary voters are shut out — is, in effect, a claim that the mechanisms of elite circulation have broken down.

No one has sung from this hymn sheet with more brio than Matt Goodwin. His book Values, Voice and Virtue argues that recent political shocks reflect a broader realignment in British politics, pitting marginalised, white working-class, older, socially conservative, non-graduate voters against a “new elite” of university-educated progressives. He claims the latter group, as I have written in these most august pages, “have adopted a new set of luxury beliefs, and a developed a deep intolerance of any questioning of them, along the way taking the institutions they dominate with them— the BBC, the civil service, universities, advertising agencies, museums, galleries, and public bodies — and using their social and cultural power to impose a narrow package of socially liberal views on the rest of society, which by and large it does not share.” In identifying social and cultural power as vectors of influence — which he used to claim figures like Gary Lineker, Hugh Grant and Emma Watson exert significant political authority —Goodwin was widely criticised. He was, however, making the same distinction between governing and non-governing elites as Pareto: although given he did not reference it directly, we cannot claim he did so knowingly. 

Many Reform supporters saw Goodwin, as perhaps Britain’s most successful political entrepreneur and with a former academic, as something of a model for how Reform may begin renewing Britain’s elite. With the publication of his new book, however, and the criticism he received for the use of Chat GPT: an act which m’colleague Ben Sixsmith likened to the suicide of his own credibility. Given Suicide of a Nation has just become the no.1 paperback in Britain, I’m not sure how concerned he will be. 

Part of the reason for the success of democracy is that it provides a responsive, regular and non-violent means of elite circulation, which requires them to demonstrate a degree of competence in order to gain power. Goodwin failed to provide a solution to his own diagnosis of Britain’s ills: the lesson for his colleagues in Reform should be, as Ben concluded in his piece, “is not to let short-term popularity make them complacent when it comes to political and intellectual seriousness.” 

But likewise, there is a lesson for Britain’s existing elites. Britain’s democracy is under increasing strain: the domination of communicative skill, as Max Weber wrote of, has created a political elite whose talents are matched only to the function of winning and retaining power, rather than the challenges of governing the country. The divergence in values between the broader public and the non-governing elite — and the former’s willingness to use their social and cultural influence to advance radical progressivism — has undermined trust in a range of institutions.

Pareto’s, and to some extent Goodwin’s, analysis on the stalled circulation of elites is not wrong. A healthy system must generate opportunities for new talent more reflective of wider public sentiment. To shut them out entirely is, as Pareto warned, to forget that “history is a graveyard of aristocracies.”