A Case for Aristocracy

 

Reviewing images of the First World War, preparing to teach All Quiet on the Western Front, I am struck by an obvious fact: Eliot’s “Waste-Land,” and Beckett’s barren landscape in Waiting for Godot, are no-man’s land.

The modern meaningless, the slow suicide of civilization, rises from the trenches of the Great War.

And the thing that was shattered then was largely the old aristocracy:

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee 

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

The First World War swept the active aristocracy from most of Europe: from Germany, from Austria-Hungary, from Russia, from Turkey. Not just titles and monarchs, but the functioning guts of the most aristocratic states. In those others that had retained kings, they were presiding over functioning democracies. Austria-Hungary and Russia were the models of autocracy.

It feels odd to realize that Eliot, and perhaps Beckett, laments their loss. It feels odder still that, in reading The Waste Land, or visiting the museums of Istanbul, I lament their loss too. This was the “ceremony of innocence” that Yeats saw drowned in a “blood-dimmed tide.” Now the falcon can no longer hear the falconer—a reference to the most aristocratic of sports.

There was a genuine beauty in the pageant and plumage of the old aristocracy; something is lost.

Yet it is aristocracy against which America was founded, and modern liberalism. As a Canadian, and indeed as a Christian, I have always scorned titles and class distinctions. Aristocracy violates the fundamental principle that all men are born equal, with equal protection before the law.

It is also undeniable that the European aristocracy brought about their own ruin, along with untold suffering for the population at large. It was the most autocratic states that bore the greatest responsibility for the war: Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany.

Life in Austria-Hungary or Russia was also notably lacking in democracy and human rights; government was oppressive. Economies were underdeveloped. 

On the other hand, the successor governments, once these autocracies collapsed, were far worse: The Nazis, the Bolsheviks, the Young Turks, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Armenian genocide, the ethic cleansings of the Balkans. A blood-dimmed tide indeed. I had not thought death had undone so many.

And what passes for an upper class in Britain or America has often produced its best leaders: George Washington, Winston Churchill. What tends to mark them is a commitment to principle over either personal advantage or ideology. There is something to be said for that.

Perhaps these upper class twits, these preening peacocks, were necessary to European Civilization; perhaps with their collapse, it lost its ridgepole.

One advantage of an aristocracy is that it can be bred for power; as Plato recommended for his Republic. That is, to wield power responsibly. Because position comes with birth, aristocracy does not advantage either the ruthless or the egotistically ambitious. Because the charge is passed on generation to generation, one is able to educate and train for the function, inculcating essential values of chivalry, fair play, and sportsmanship. Because the charge is passed on within the family, there is incentive not to loot or overreach; one wants to pass on the family business in good order to one’s grandchildren.

An idle class—idle at least in times of peace—also has the time to devote to the finer things in life. They become sponsors and advocates of the culture. While much can be said for popular culture, the average man, forced to forge a living by his sweat, does not have the time to devote to poetry or to art. There is not the time to develop a truly discerning taste.

Lacking such aristocratic patrons, artists are required to rely either on popularity or on government largesse. Neither are going to be as discerning as an aristocrat.

Our arts have grown moribund since the aristocracies fell; perhaps as a direct result.

The aristocracy serves, as well, as a check on the enthusiasms of the mob. It stands as a bulwark of tradition. This was the idea behind the Canadian Senate or the British House of Lords: “chambers of sober second thought.” We have reduced their power, offended by their anti-democratic nature. Perhaps this has been a mistake.

The role that once was played by these bodies, of standing against the popular will, has increasingly been taken up by the courts, the press, and the academy. Yet the courts, the press, and the academy do not do nearly as good a job at it: rather than upholding precedent, they seem to be in the vanguard of overthrowing it. They emerge, after all, from the same class as did the Russian Bolsheviks or Robespierre. Perhaps, lacking the principle of inheritance, the incentive is overwhelmingly to leave their personal mark on history by initiating some great change.

I am not sure I have a solution. Perhaps it is to identify the most intelligent among us in infancy, something that could now be done by IQ testing, and educate them to aristocratic positions in a new Senate or House of Lords. Since IQ is largely hereditary, they might then still have the incentive to preserve things for their progeny.

This would more or less correspond to both the Platonic and the Confucian ideal. Of course, it would not be democratic and would not be egalitarian. But might it be better nevertheless, even for all concerned?