Elite and the State

Many years ago during prohibition times, when boxing fights attracted the whole mob from Mafia, one ring announcer used to announce boxing fights with following wording „Ladies and Gentleman and I use this term loosely...” .

In my case, I use the term „elite” in the same loosely way, because people started to use this word to describe not only people elected by someone (true origin of the Latin word „eligere”), but everyone who decides about the fate of the country, regardless if he has knowledge and moral values and even though he never got any formal approval from the voters. The current political system got closer to elitism and further from true democracy.

If you have read my earlier articles, you probably already know, that I'm against any elite at all, because I believe in direct democracy and not in representatives elected from time to time (the only exception I'm prepared to made is for government, because you cannot efficiently govern any country if you have millions of ministers).
However the true problem with people which consider itself elite is that they stopped to be representatives of the voters and started to think that just because of heritage, studies, or even just because they belong to „elite” they know better what their voters really need.

Let say it clearly – not all people have the same intellectual potential and all from us think from time to time that exclusion of plain idiots from the decision process would give great results. Nevertheless this kind of thinking on the long run is a clear call for disaster. In order to understand why we cannot ignore even the idiots, we need to go back to origin of states.

The states have been established because some problems like e.g. safety can be solved more efficiently in groups than on one's own. It's cheaper to split the cost of army between many people, than make everyone to defended himself. However in the moment in which the man replaced personal defense with a group safety, he had to define the rules inside of the group. This is how law entered into our lives. At first the law regulated only existing problems, but very soon the people who have been elected to organize internal life of the group (elite) started not only regulate existing problems, but also to use the law as a tool to change existing relations. This is how the special privileges for the chosen have started. Let me make it clear – special privileges are not necessary a bad thing. If a soldier risk his life every day for you maybe he really should get paid better than a simple farmer. However any decision of this type must be founded on clear principles and accepted by the majority, because in other case the farmer will feel injustice and will start to question the existence of the state in this form. The state can only exist if the majority of its' citizens are convinced that its' existence is necessary. If on the other hand most of the citizens feel that the state rules treat them unjustly, it will led to the change of these rules or to the fall of the state.

So yes, I also think sometimes that with bright dictatorship we would get more in less time, but almost immediately after I forget this idea, because if anyone is really smarter and has better view, he/she should be able to to convince the voters to changes and not to force them by introducing any law against them. Sadly there are still many people who does not understand it. Let's take the death penalty in Poland as example and let's skip entirely the whole discussion about who is right and who is wrong about it. The situation we had in Poland was that the majority of people was for the death penalty, still the elite first stopped to execute this type of penalty and after few years the penalty itself was removed from Polish laws. What's the sense of a state in which the safety and feel of justice are taken away from its' citizens against their will, both of which being the very bases on which the state itself has been built?

The elite usually aspires to something more and forgets about the needs of the voters. In this case the elite wanted to prove that its' origins are of bright and humanitarian European heritage. However by removing the death penalty against the will of the voters the only thing it has proved was that the Polish elite is unable to give enough safety for citizens for them to change their mind by themselves and that the elite prefers elitist dictatorships of banana republics, where all decisions are taken on the top level without voters approval or even against it.

This kind of state destructive decisions are the ones which are responsible for citizens which loose interest in state and for dropping participations in voting. This kind of decisions can on the long run lead to the fall of state itself.

English