BOOKS
Democracy in America
THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES AND THE BETRAYAL OF
DEMOCRACY. By Christopher Lasch. W. W. Norton Co. $22.00.
Like Tocqueville, Christopher Lasch was troubled primarily about the
future of democracy. But whereas one hundred-sixty years ago Toc–
queville still could point to the contradictions and hope for their posi–
tive resolutions, Lasch was faced with the many wretched turns it had
taken in the interim. Thus he questions whether American democracy has
a future at all, given "the decline of manufacturing and the consequent
loss of jobs; the shrinkage of the middle class; the growing number of
the poor; the rising crime rate; the flourishing traffic in drugs; the decay
of the cities - the bad news goes on and on." We all have asked our–
selves these questions which, when extended beyond America, can be
summed up as an update of "The Decline of the West," or of "The
Death of the Enlightenment." And yet, I believe, such criticism itself in–
dicates that improvement is possible.
Christopher Lasch did not live to see the publication of this book,
but he would be heartened were he to know that his trenchant and his–
torically informed criticism, once again, is being taken most seriously. He
has been chided for not offering any solutions. But how could he do so
when most politicians, experts, and problem-solvers of both the right
and the left, by relying on the certainty of their ideologies, have not
been able to resurrect the economy, empower the middle class (which
Tocqueville had perceived as dominant), abolish or even diminish poverty
and crime, and so on?
IfJose Ortega y Gasset were alive today, argues Lasch in the leading
essay, "The Revolt of the Elites," he would realize that they are the ones
who now threaten the social order rather than "the masses." Lasch de–
fines the elite as consisting of intellectuals, professors, financiers, founda–
tion and government officials - in sum all those belonging to the
"culture of critical discourse," and whom Alvin Gouldner, in 1979, per–
ceived as the "new class" of political and technical intellectuals who
gradually have replaced the "economic aristocracy." But as Lasch points
out, "the secular, analytical attitude that now prevails in the higher cir–
cles" exaggerates its intellectualism and interest in rationalization, while
"minimizing its concern with the capitalist market and frenzied search for
profits." This unacknowledged antirationalism, in turn, is said to allow
them to "live in a world of abstract concepts and symbols, ranging from
