Taming the 'Bewildered Herd' - Social class and the Establishment

While not quite in a fetal to genius sort of way, I've recently felt that I've been going through my own personal enlightenment period. A less pompous description for it might be rather a gradual understanding and clarification of the complexities that I (or more accurately, we all) have been living through and observing for a number of years. Most of this is actually semantics - which, admittedly, does not sound like it would set the pulse speeding in excitement - but it appears clearer to me on a daily basis how much of a difference words and the deviation of their original meaning can have on society as a whole. Realising that fighting contemporary injustices do not really seem to concentrate around conservatism, but neoliberalism. The difference between socialism and communism, or indeed the left and the right.

 But perhaps the most depressing and important realisation that has become known to me, is the word and meaning of 'class'.

 My initial understanding deviated from a trip to India a few years ago and being introduced to the 'caste' system which is essentially social stratification where you are born into a social sector and therefore indefinitely remain in that social sector, or in other words - eternal tribal-like classification. These people in rural India are from a different world let alone a different class than the Bollywood actors the children worship. One elderly man explained to me, in the small shack (generously described) that we met him in, that this was the family business, and he had worked there for as long as he could remember and will continue to do so until he could no longer work. This 'inescapable' system where social mobility is fantastical seemed shocking to me - coming from a place of apparent privilege where I could follow the career direction of my choosing.

 Fast forward nearly ten years and I'm vocally supporting politics designed (in my view) to open social mobility in my society, grateful that unlike the caste system we have an opportunity to bridge that gap if we are able to motivate voters and encourage politicians to do so.

 And it is at that precise moment of optimism that I stumbled across an essay by Noam Chomsky on Walter Lippmann (coiner of 'stereotype' and apparent liberal democratic theorist). Long before a society I'm familiar with, he set out his vision of society in a disturbing, pseudo-marxist way. Lippmann, like Marx, believed that society was separated by classes and like Marx made a distinction between the bourgeois and workers. Except to Lippmann these were defined as 'the specialised class' and the 'spectators' (or as he repeatedly, charmingly describes as 'the bewildered herd' or 'the other'). The specialised class were the executives in society, those who would be in control of planning and executing laws for the 'benefit' of all people. The bewildered herd have a function in this democracy too - to occasionally lend their weight to one leader or another from the specialised class. That privilege is known as an election, and once it is done - they are expected to sit back down and continue in their natural 'spectator' state.

 It all sounds rather run-of-the-mill until you get to the ugly explanation of what makes a specialised person or a spectator. To be part of the specialised class to Lippmann, you have to be able to understand the complexities of government life, and this is an ability in very short supply and usually only common in blood and similar social groups. The spectators are the bulk of the population, those deemed 'too stupid' to comprehend such matters, or those who are inherently irrational or who would cause trouble if left to run things. It is the 'duty' of the specialised class to protect the country from the 'herd', much like, as Chomsky puts it: 'using the same logic that says it would be improper to let a three-year-old run across the street'. They have to be controlled and tamed like animals.

 You fast forward again, this time close to a hundred years and we are in the so-titled progressive, western world. In the midst of this day-to-day life however, it is repeatedly stated that Lippmann's theory is as alive and relevant today as it has always been in times of monarchy, slavery and serfdom. The difference, of course, is we have universal suffrage. We technically have immense power to affect change if we mobilise and collaborate, but you would assume reading Lippmann's theory that the specialised class would never allow the vote to get in the way of their sworn duty to protect society from the ‘stupid’.

 The obvious weapon to use then is of course propaganda, or as Lippmann dubbed 'the manufacture of consent'. It's funny how things always seem to roll around to semantics again. When we say 'propaganda' we think of Goebbels, or North Korea's film industry, in another time or place distinctly different to our own - we think less of Channel Four's Benefits Street. Here comes the argument that sounds suspiciously like conspiracism but is rooted in simply looking around (acknowledging that that is usually the way that conspiracies are rationalised but bare with me).

 There seems to be a continuingly clear system in place which aims to direct any public anger away from 'the specialised class' and down towards 'the other'. The specialised class - to our modern understanding - would perhaps be best titled as 'the Establishment' - or people bound together by common economic interests and fitting smoothly into the accepted definition of neoliberalism, that those who are wealthy deserve to be so and remain so, even to the detriment of ordinary people. There is even some ironic relation between the modern Establishment, Lippmann and Marxism - where all three appear to be prepared for the 'other' class to inevitably and forcibly take power away from those at the top of society. A useful strategy to prevent this is essentially what is happening around us, where there is an attempt to shape public opinion to prevent the specialised class from losing their authority and power. In the Establishment, there is a constant link between the popular press and prominent government figures (at this point it should be necessary to point out that this is not limited to the Conservative party - as much as Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron's text buddyness would imply - as New Labour were as much in bed with neo-liberalists during the majority of their time in power (a sad fact that is still true today is that no party in recent memory has won an election which was not backed by News International)). And so we have the 'manufactured consent', or in other words: 'there is always somebody else than us to blame for your social ills'.

 Benefits Street is such an example. In a world recently turned over by the financial sector getting too greedy and then relying on the public to fork out over a trillion pounds to bail them out, you would imagine in a fair society 'Banker's Street: Scroungers of the State - a story how a small group of elites fucked up with full knowledge they'd be fine because they had you - the public - to carry the risk' being aired, depicting the 'socialism for the rich' on an unprecedented scale.  Or 'Tax Avoidance Street' - a story of how some people just deserve to profit off the state without contributing to it.' Instead we have the benefit fraud, scrounger culture of the last ten years. The Sunday Times 'End the something for Nothing Culture' sitting next to The Sun's 'Help us stop Billions to Benefit Scroungers'. A Yougov poll in 2013 showed that on average, those polled believed that 27% of social security was claimed fraudulently, compared to the true figure of 0.7%.

 Another example is the hysteria about the NHS' wasteful expenses. The Sun and the Daily Mail ranted about how irresponsible patients were causing the NHS to spend £87million on paracetamols, neglecting to mention that the NHS is often described as one of the most efficient health systems in the world and conveniently drifting the anger away from quite shocking underfunding from the Government. The bewildering narrative encouraged by neo-liberal think thanks suggesting that New Labour's public spending and expansive welfare state was 'irresponsible' and the direct cause for the 2010 economic situation is another example, one which holds its own as truly exceptional in managing to avoid mentioning the fact that the Conservative government backed virtually all of New Labour's spending until the crash. Accepting that austerity is the ‘responsible’ economic reaction is a further ‘success’ of this point.

 Slightly further back, and blaming Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough disaster where 94 people were crushed with two more dying of injuries later on - when the actions of the actual ones responsible, the South Yorkshire Police managed to be covered up by the Government for well over twenty years, while family members of the victims waited for Justice. Surviving fans who helped policemen carry victims on stretchers made from advertising billboards were said to have 'urinated on police, pick-pocketed dead victims and prevented brave PCs giving the kiss of life to some of the victims' in The Sun's ''The Truth' headline. Miners were described as 'the enemy within'. Stigmatisation of refugees and immigrants, especially in relation to classroom sizes.

 There are countless other examples to give where 'the specialised class' manage to bar the 'other' from fulfilling what Marx thought was inevitable, in reversing the ‘accepted’ system of power. Propaganda is very real and very current today, and though the concept of 'class' has changed dramatically, Lippmann's belief that society is essentially split into two distinctive fractions appears to have some basis. The success of our current 'specialised class' is the belief they've managed to instill into vast swathes of the population that 'there is no alternative'. Margaret Thatcher infamously described New Labour as her 'greatest achievement' and 'legacy', and though New Labour invested heavily into the public sector they also bowed down to the neoliberal dogma, accepting that 'there is no alternative'.

 This current election seems to be a continuation of this theme, where the narrative is being played according to the wishes of a select group of people at the top. There appears to be a worry - as has been felt since the working class first got the vote - that the 'bewildering herd' might be scraping closer and closer to the 'truth' which explains the hugely unequal society we live in. The rise of social media and citizen journalism along with the potential to go viral is a strong weapon to be used against such previous restrictions. How long the 'protectionism' of the Establishment continues, or at what point irresponsible journalism becomes such a concern that it cannot continue as it has done, remains to be seen. I do not believe there is any question of 'intellect' in regards to why people vote one way or another, or how they might respond to such propaganda, but I do not doubt the power and effectiveness of such a weapon. Whether or not an opposition to the current political consensus is able to break out loudly into the public sphere, now or by the next election is also a question left unanswered, as even if it does manage such a feat, I doubt that Lippman's men would not be able to find an alternative way to keep the 'three-year-olds' from ruling.

 Chomsky said:

 'An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be barred from managing their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled'.

It sounds scary, and slightly unbelievable, but maybe, that is just because it is real.

Credit to Owen Jones and his book The Establishment for the major basis of this essay.