Essay on the New French Elites

It was a long time since I´ve read a French-language essay, by Pierre Birnbaum, about the circulation of elites. His latest, Où va l´Etat. Essai sur les nouvelles élites du pouvoir published in 2018 by Seuil was an easy yet informative read on the changes underwent lately by the French elites. 

Despite the general tone, the book has to do with France - and only France. Birnbaum is a writer I used to quote often during my SciPo university classes and actually I was partially agreeing with his methods and conclusions. His researches are following the sociological methods integrated into a perspective of the historian of the state and I appreciate the mix of research perspectives and methods.

The analysis of Birnbaum starts with the raise to power of president Macron and inferrs further that the French state is currently under threat by the private sector, whose representative the current resident of the Elysée is. 

Long before Macron administration, the traditional path of circulation of elites - mostly via the Ecole Normale Supèrieure (ENA), the classical network of political representatives both at the local and central level - began to erode. Nowadays, according to Birnbaum whose analysis is based on research of professional CVs of the power representatives, the percentage of people belonging to the economic environment is over 50%. Besides a statistical account of persons, this challenge means that concepts of public management are entering the French political space which may on the long term challenge France with the concepts of the American society ´ouverte à tous les vents au monde du privé´. Besides the French existential fears when confronted with the American interference, Birnbaum also fears a higher occurence of corruption and he brings as arguments the increased frequency of mismanagement of public funds by political representatives from the last decade. The next effect of such changes may be the weakening of the state and the threat of populism.

I personally use this method of professional CV analysis when it comes to identify patterns and trends among elites. It is the easiest way to read the changes taking place within a society as well as the old and emerging centers of power.

However, only this approach is not enough for understanding a complex political system. For instance, Birnbaum´s analysis does not mention the fact that Macron won the power based on the support of a political party newly created. The essay does not have in any case any analysis about the situation of the current political party which is a pity for the overall evaluation of the situation. 

On the other hand, the fact that the traditional channels of power created by the selection of elites via ENA, for instance, is becoming obsolete is not necessarily a bad news as competition to this channel can offer more diversity and opportunities for the state configuration. 

Personally, I would have expect more than an essay about the new French elites, but I promise to return with more French analysis about the current system and its challenges, especially at the level of the intellectual elites. 

Rating: 3 stars

'The Elite Charade of Changing the World'

The modern elites seem to be broken. The fundament of those elites and their reproduction principles seem to be widely rejected. But this rejection means also directing votes towards anti-elites, populist candidates, such Donald Trump of America, who in fact altough a counter-elite is nevertheless also part of the upper - money-fuelled - class. 

Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All. The Elite Charade of Chaging the World is focused on the American case - with its high concentration of wealth and prestige among the elites - but it can easily serve as a guide for any other developed country. 

The situation, according to Giridharadas: the gap between the upper and lower layers of the society only gets bigger; winners know the problem but want to preserve their status quo; instead of trying to change the system, the member of the elites are trying to rather redistribute their wealth through charities instead of putting more efforts into redesigning the system completely. 

Is it a sign of a failure of participatory democracy? Or rather there is a need to reinvigorate citizenship? Or to improve the level of trust into public intellectuals whose ideas seem to be often subsidized by the same members of the establishment they are supposed to criticize?

The book is very interesting for the detailed landscape offered and the overview of various aspects related to the lack of balance of the system of distribution of wealth and power nowadays. It questions this system by simply displaying its failures. But when thoughts are changed into commodities - part of the ways in which the system reproduces itself at the intellectual elites level - it is hard to hope in a due change.

This book is a warning of how far things are in terms of resistance to genuine change. The fact that the priviledged few are throwing up some crumbles of money to the many unpriviledged is sometimes a simple PR spin that doesn't bring social justice, it rather confirms an inequality status. In the American case, donations for charity involve tax exemptions therefore paying for generous causes is done for a very specific non-charitable reason. 

It is a good start if you want to understand the map of intentions and interests among elites nowadays. How the change may actually occur is a topic for another book, maybe.

Who are 'The Arabists'?

I went familiar with the writings of Robert D. Kaplan through his Balkan travelogue Balkan Ghosts - part of it I translated for a feuilleton published by a newspaper I was working on, in a time when the Balkans were on interest, although deeply misunderstood - which I've largely found relativistic, sensationalist and written in a very simplistic way. It rather has the style of blog posts, at a time when there were no blogs around, written fast, to cater an audience hunger for colourful descriptions and easy explanations of century-long conflicts. Those were the times...

Kaplan is a favorite of many South-Eastern European leaders who happily invited for an insightful chat, especially when they hope to have their name mentioned in his next travelogue, wrote also about South-Eastern Asia and went embedded with US troops in Iraq. He has the knowledge and the right connections for obtaining direct reliable information but don't expect his writings to be academically insightful. You might get the shape of things, but the content must be filled with something different if looking for a solid picture.

About The Arabists, which traces the roots of the Foreign Services elites in the Middle East, I had no idea it exists, until browsing a collection of books about this part of the world. The book was written at the end of the 1980s and republished. What is fantastic about this book is the big number of references and interviews regarding various diplomatic appointees in various positions in the Middle East. Not few of them were children of methodist protestant missionaries sent by their churches to converts Arab populations to Christianism in the 18th-19th century. In some places, like in what used to be called the 'big Syria', which included Lebanon of today, those missionaries clashed with the French representatives represented by the Catholic Church. Children of those missionaries were eventually born in the Middle East, spoke Arabic, returned in the State and were included in the white Protestant elites. They entered the Foreign Service but eventually their interest decreased and went to explore other 'exotic' part of the world, like Africa.

The Protestant religious activism shaped at a great extent the political activism and Arab nationalism, including through the university network created, such as the American Universities - in Lebanon and Cairo, that still remain important institutions of high education in this part of the world. Americans themselves prefer to study there for a full immersion into the elitist version of the local societies and for improving the language. The intellectual life was developed under the Protestant spell. For instance, the first Arabic printing press in Syria was brought by American missionaries to Beirut from Malta in 1834. 

But who really are those 'Arabists'. According to Robert D. Kaplan since the early 1950s onwards, there were two definitions that will exist side by side. One, for the use of the Foreign Service and the Protestant missionaries, referred to 'someone who spoke Arabic well and had substantial living experience in the Arab world'. The other one, public and according to the author embraced by the 'Jewish public' was: 'Someone who loved Arabs, often because he hated Jews'. The latter acception prevailed sometimes in the US diplomatic approaches to the Middle East peace process, including through the policies of the American embassy in Tel Aviv - very knowledgeable in Arab affairs, speaking the language, but not Hebrew (which is spoken in only one country, anyway). I might add that the current pathos of the US administration towards Israel is often based also on a religious basis, the neo-evangelical missionarism which is equally toxic and anti-Semitic in its origin.

However, that 'love' for the Arabic speaking realm has some limits, many of them. It did not have the state-building outreach of the Brits - who, like Lawrence of Arabia or Gertrude Bell were genuinely believing that they can change the course of events and the geopolitical configuration of the region. Many were just too desillusioned with their Western bubble and were looking for an exotic connection to the outside world. They pretended not only to 'understand the Arabs' but they assumed that their disgust toward the unreliable political elites and corruption would in fact help the local societies to change. More often those diplomats chose to change their location when apparently things were not following their designs.

Following the end of the Cold War, when the local - especially Republican - American elites lost their grasp of the realities as the binary US/Russia (which generously got involved in the elite building in many places in the Middle East, Syria being one of them) conflict ceased to exist. The life of the Arabists fell the victim of the 'rampant shallowness and careerism and the sterilization of embassy life. The Foreign Service, after all, mirrors the society from which it draws it recruits, and these recruits are consumed with status and advancement and less concerned with the subject of their expertise that their predecessors were'. 

Robert D. Kaplan avoids making any conclusion. But it is enough to read only for one day the flows of news regarding America's adventures in the Middle East to see how low the standards sunk. It can't get any lower. 

German elites at work. And their money

While I was preparing my PhD on elites in Central and Eastern Europe, I had read a book by Julia Friedrichs, where she is addressing the issue of elites as such, and as a beginner in issues regarding the German society, I found it interesting. Meanwhile, in the last seven years, my knowledge advanced and got more and more insights about the local elites, either from media reports or other books, or by using my own network of friends and acquintances. 

This relatively recent work by Julia Friedrichs goes into more specific details, with a focus on the genesis of financial elites, those members of big money families, ruling big stores like Rossmann or the Oetker and Aldi or Neckermann. More interestingly, it also describes the legal and financial incentives system offered by the state to the rich class, such as low taxes or various exemptions. 

There is a high incidence of wealth reproduction in Germany, particularly in the Western side, not few of them subsidizing the cultural adventures of bohemians stays-at-home in Berlin neighbourhouds such as Prenzlauer Berg or Kreuzberg. In most cases, this helps and it is nothing wrong with parents trying to help their children to survive in a very complicated world. Very often though, the money creates responsibilities and obligations and takes the freedom out too. Children who are forced to follow the steps assigned from birth by their parents in order to be able to continue the management of their companies or empires. Marriages of wealth in order to keep the wellbeing or even increase it. Some may conform, some may rebel, some can even comit a crime to get their freedom back. Wealth remains and people get even richer. 

This is the way of life, some may say and nothing to do against the trends. I don't think it is nothing wrong to secure a safe future for your children, particularly if you went out ot nothing. No one wants to be poor and the Socialist-Communist 'ideas' were proved wrong - as within the communist elites themselves people were doing the same transfer of wealth and prestige and sometimes the political positions too. Most of Friedrichs impressive work is describing the situation. Some comparative suggestions with the US or Japan are made, without entering into too much details, although as we can read in the conclusion, there are mounting fears that Germany may end up as a sort of Japan elite-wise. Meaning that the economic resources will be concentrated into the hands of some powerful families that can control the economy and the society.

The work opens a lot of interesting paths to further investigation, but it also did not cover many areas, such as the big real estate families or the very conservative auto-motive industry or some 'von' families from the South of Germany. What is the departure point of these new elites? At what extent these financial elites are coincide with the cultural and political ones? I was also expecting more charts and statistics featuring the mobility and distribution of elites too.

A book worth reading but quite incomplete. Maybe the next one will bring more light into the life of the shadowry life of German elites, and not only.