(This is Hilary, but I don't have an LJ.) By a peculiar coincidence, David, last night, before you showed up with Monty, I was reading "Reginald in Russia" written in about ... oh, 1905 I'd guess, which opens with Reginald chatting to a Russian Princess. Who professes Socialist principles. (This was satire, but not, I think, complete fantasy). There have been Tony Benns around for a long time! Now I don't think anyone can argue that the Princess already belonged to an Elite which - nominally at any rate - she *was* prepared to denounce (at private salons). However, I also don't suppose that she foresaw what the result of those denunciations would be, carried through to its logical conclusion, as happened a decade or so later on. Perhaps the answer is that people are very good at performing a sort of doublethink, or are naturally drawn to the idea of belonging to an elite *within an elite*, Lewis's Inner Ring - a gang within a gang, Socialists within aristocrats, the only people who can rule the Future, according to their lights. I've heard it said that upper-middle-class intellectuals, who already enjoy membership of several of Society's elites to begin with, are disproportionately drawn to terrorism and fringe revolutionary movements for that reason. Not from anti-elitism - from snobbery.
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timeasmymeasure
It's more complicated than that ...
Date: 2004-08-12 06:40 am (UTC)By a peculiar coincidence, David, last night, before you showed up with Monty, I was reading "Reginald in Russia" written in about ... oh, 1905 I'd guess, which opens with Reginald chatting to a Russian Princess. Who professes Socialist principles. (This was satire, but not, I think, complete fantasy).
There have been Tony Benns around for a long time!
Now I don't think anyone can argue that the Princess already belonged to an Elite which - nominally at any rate - she *was* prepared to denounce (at private salons).
However, I also don't suppose that she foresaw what the result of those denunciations would be, carried through to its logical conclusion, as happened a decade or so later on.
Perhaps the answer is that people are very good at performing a sort of doublethink, or are naturally drawn to the idea of belonging to an elite *within an elite*, Lewis's Inner Ring - a gang within a gang, Socialists within aristocrats, the only people who can rule the Future, according to their lights.
I've heard it said that upper-middle-class intellectuals, who already enjoy membership of several of Society's elites to begin with, are disproportionately drawn to terrorism and fringe revolutionary movements for that reason. Not from anti-elitism - from snobbery.