On Plebeian Credentialism

The Populist Persuasion Industry

I’m reading John McCormick’s Machiavellian Democracy, which is mostly a commentary Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, itself a commentary on Titus Livy’s history of Rome. Long before Marx wrote “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle,” Machiavelli believed that all cities’ politics were essentially struggles between the ordinary people (popolo) and the wealthy and powerful elites (grandi, ottimati.) Machiavelli believes these two groups have intrinsic types of behavior: the popolo mostly wants to be left alone, to enjoy their liberty without interference, but the grandi are ambitious and actively strive to oppress and torment the people. Unlike Marx, who foresaw a final battle between proletarian and bourgeoisie that would result in a classless society, Machiavelli does not seem to think that class struggle is something that can be overcome. Instead, it has to be managed through the creation of institutions in a free republic that can check and control the ambitions of the rich and powerful. The rich and powerful are so greedy that they naturally tend to mess everything up—they will ruin everything for their short-term enjoyment. On McCormick’s reading, Machiavelli’s Discourses is a detailed description of the kinds of institutions in ancient and medieval republics that could provide checks on the power of the notables and thus provide stability and security to the entire population.

One such example is the tribune of the plebs, an elected office in ancient Rome that would have certain delegated powers to act in the interest of the plebeian order against the patricians. The tribune had the power to indict powerful citizens and could also free citizens from punishment who the populace felt were being unfairly persecuted by the upper class. (Another institution Machiavelli considered is popular trials of abusive nobles, but I want to talk about those another time.)

There is something appealing and persuasive about institutionalizing checks against entrenched social power, rather than just balancing the branches of government against each other. Intuitively, this would ameliorate a great deal of problems in our society, which are caused by the concentration of wealth and power among the self-interested few. Nonetheless, I think I can see some problems with this approach. Let me just say, though, I haven’t finished the book, so I don’t know if McCormick deals with these objections.

The first problem that occurs to me is the distinction between grandi and popolo. This can quickly become confused, especially after the popolo gains the civic rights that permit them to live free of domination by the upper classes. I’m not an expert on ancient Rome, but as I understand it the patrician and plebeian distinction became more complex as the republic progressed: patricians could be poor, plebeians rich, etc. The power of the plebeian tribunate was also liable to be corrupted and eventually (unconstitutionally) fell into the hands of a patrician in the person of Julius Caesar, himself from an ancient patrician family but whose politics appealed to plebeian sensibilities. (I think Machiavelli and McCormick both deal with the problem of Caesarism, but I haven’t gotten there yet.)

The problem I see applying this scheme to our society is that we have a very democratic culture, although often not a very democratic form of government. Since we have a democratic culture, “plebeian” origins are an advantage politically. No politician would willingly identify themselves with “the elite,” they have always have to make pretense to commonness. So much of politics (and not just electoral, but professional and personal politics) in America revolves around positioning one’s own faction or party as the true “people” and the other side as some kind of rapacious or parasitic elite. (This is populism, I guess.) Sometimes these appeals are not really that plausible on examination, but people recognize themselves in them; they still can create enough political unity to win elections, and to become the source of power. Again, it’s hard to imagine anyone with political ambitions would openly and honestly identify as a member of an aristocracy, it would immediately strip them of popular legitimacy and be political suicide. It would also be kind of preposterous; who could honestly make such a claim? Anybody who made aristocratic pretenses in public would immediately get tarred as probably just another cheap fraud or an out-of-touch, self-deluded dodo, and they’d be put rightly back in their place. It’s kind of funny to think how conmen and parvenus once pretended to have noble titles and aristocratic backgrounds; now they would run from the implication.

I also think this is endemic to living in the kind of democracy that America is and not the result of some kind of newfangled ideological corruption: I remember in my elementary school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where there was a mix of middle class and quite wealthy students, even at a very young age there was a competition to prove whose family origins where the most humble and down-to-earth, a position which was felt confer a kind of authenticity and authority; democratic politics to correct the inequity of the social order apparently begins very young.

The problem is that this creates a race to the bottom, where plebeian credentials become valuable political capital. Figures like Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump, for example, are wealthy, move in elite circles, but they have a kind of crude affect that convinces people (even gullible liberals) that they represented a genuine strain of popular sentiment. (Funnily enough, Trump was so stupid he couldn’t even really understand this dynamic even though he practiced it: he got very mad when his supporters were not referred to as “elites,” because he wanted to be on the side of the real elites and not the slobs. But in his stupidity, he perhaps had an honest insight into the nature of his politics.) Much of the conservative movement and the Republican party can be understood as a machine that manufactures grievance credentials for some of the country’s most well-off citizens. So we end up with the worst of all possible worlds: extremes of wealth and power tied to those who make shows of vulgarity and brutality to shore up a spurious kind of democratic legitimacy. This rarely creates broad consensus, but enough people are duped for long enough that it creates problems.

One problem that this plebeian credentialism creates is endemic irresponsibility. If all power comes the supposed lack of power (“we’re outsiders fighting for our survival”,) then being in the position to govern undermines the initial claim to legitimacy. You get all sorts of absurd things to keep these politics operating, like the president, the most powerful official, claiming he’s the victim of a conspiracy of elites to undermine him. The culture wars also function according to these dynamics. When the only possible legitimation of power has become its absence we get a situation where in order to demonstrate power one has to deny its possession or existence: “I am not really exercising power, this is merely a last ditch protest, I am under severe threat” and so forth. (Flight 93 election type discourse, for instance.) In this way, no one ever has to take responsibility: everything becomes a cri de couer, rather than an action with consequences.

Theoretically, in a democratic society, power should be not static, it flows from the people to the government and from the government back to the people. Ideally we should all grow accustomed to the alternating roles of ruler and ruled, depending on the political circumstances of the moment. But the system of plebeian credentialism seems to create a situation where the power of ruler and the position of ruled can be seized simultaneously and held without responsibility. This is not at all to say that people’s struggles in life do not uniquely qualify them to understand and address issues that others will not and cannot, even despite their best efforts. The reason it’s so valuable to forge plebeian credentials is because the real deal is something important. But this is not all just a system of deception, it’s a system of self-deception as well: we willingly accept phony credentials because we also get something out of it, too—even though the goods might be cheap and shoddy, at least there’s an immediate kick. Neither is any amount of moral handwringing is going to end public duplicity, that’s just a given, but maybe it’s possible to catch our own gullibility from time to time. Of course, that would mean sometimes giving up something, too.