The Populist Delusion Quotes

“Left-wing progressivism” and “managerialism” are synonymous since the solutions of the former always involve the expansion of the latter. To stay with the example of LGBT causes, these may seem remote from something as technical as “managerialism” but consider the armies of HR officer, diversity tsars, equality ministers, and so on that are supported today under the banner of “LGBT” and used to police and control enterprises. The “philanthropic” endeavours of the Ford Foundation in this regard laid the infrastructure and groundwork to setup new power centres for managerialism under the guise of this ostensibly unrelated cause. Similar case studies can be found in issues as diverse as racial equality, gender equality, Islamist terrorism, climate change, mental health, and the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The LOGIC of managerialism is to create invisible “problems” which can, in effect, never truly be solved, but rather can permanently support managerial jobs that force some arbitrary compliance standard such as “unconscious bias training”, “net zero carbon”, the ratio of men and women on executive boards or whatever else.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“Myth of the stateless society: that state and society were or could ever be separate. Myth of the neutral state: that state and politics were or could ever be separate. Myth of the free market: that state and economy were or could ever be separate. Myth of the separation of powers: that competing power centres can realistically endure without converging.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“Power does not rest nor will ever rest in ‘the will of the people’, but rather in the organised efforts of the ruling minority.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“First, Mosca’s central thesis, for which he is most famous, is the fact that human societies are always governed by minorities. He says: Among the constant facts and tendencies that are to be found in all political organisms, one is so obvious that it is apparent to the most casual eye. In all societies—from all societies that are very meagrely developed and have barely attained the dawnings of civilization, down to the most advanced and powerful societies—two classes of people appear—a class that rules and a class that is ruled.1”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“Mosca’s The Ruling Class punctures absolutely what I would like to call the populist delusion that if conditions get bad enough, if the plebians become too disgruntled with their leaders, then the people will rise up and overthrow them. This, as Mosca shows, has never happened in history, not even once.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“If people want change even at a time of popular and widespread resentment of the ruling class, they can only hope to achieve that change by becoming a tightly knit and organised minority themselves and, in effect, displacing the old ruling class.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“Where will it end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone—that of the state. In each man’s absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master—the state. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the state, and in the denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the state. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is now their common bondage to the state. The extremes of individualism and socialism meet: that was their predestined course.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“If the ruling class keep political prisoners and act in an arbitrary manner, do not give the ruled the right to a fair trial, do not persecute serious crimes and let criminals loose on the streets, and so on, then it is evidence of a lack of juridical defence. Samuel T. Francis coined the phrase ‘anarcho-tyranny’ in 2004 to describe the situation in which a highly bureaucratic and modern system such as the USA or the UK today could fail in meeting the basic standards of juridical defence.35”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“To use James Burnham’s later phrase, he is thinking of the managerial class. Gramsci seems to have in mind the intelligentsia, those people responsible for disseminating and controlling the flow of information and ideas, opinion shapers, mythmakers, ideologists, upholders and justifiers of the political formula, or, if you prefer, a priest class.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“Below the highest stratum in the ruling class there is always, even in autocratic systems, another that is much more numerous and comprises all the capacities for leadership in the country. Without such a class any sort of social organization would be impossible. The higher stratum would not in itself be sufficient or leading and directing the activities of the masses. In the last analysis, therefore, the stability of any political organism depends on the level of morality, intelligence and activity that this second stratum has attained […] Any intellectual or moral deficiencies in this second stratum, accordingly, represent a graver danger to the political structure, and one that is harder to repair, than the presence of similar deficiencies in the few dozen persons who control the workings of the state machine.21”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“For him, the prime movers in history were disturbances to ‘social forces’, which can be brought about through changes in economic conditions or technology or brought about by new ideas. By ‘social forces’, H. Stuart Hughes explains, ‘he meant the major public interests constituted by businessmen and agriculturalists, intellectuals and the military’.20 The ruling class must adapt to the new conditions or else they will be replaced with a new one more apt to rule in the new circumstances.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“No ruling class can survive without an effective political formula. ‘Ruling classes may fail to adapt their formula to the changed demands of society; or ruling classes may renew themselves or be renewed. In the first case, failure to renew the formula may signal the end of the ruling class; in the second case, the formula might be retained (the British crown would be a good example).”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“representative democracy is simply ‘elected oligarchy”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“The importance of taking this realist approach to power and politics is not only theoretical or academic, but also has practical implications. Those who wish to bring about political change cannot hope to do so if they adopt populist methods or have faith that at some point a critical mass of the public will suddenly reach a ‘tipping point’ after which elites will be inevitably toppled. Change always takes concerted organisation and cannot hope to be achieved simply by convincing the greatest number of people of your point of view. Power does not care, in the final analysis, how many likes you got on your Twitter account. In practice, the great bulk of people will adjust to new realities after the fact of change and reorient themselves to the new power structure one way or the other. In any case, ‘manufacturing consent’ can only be carried out once a group is de facto in power. A group may achieve de jure power only to find that they cannot execute or manufacture consent because they have not achieved de facto power—and, realistically, de facto power is the only power that counts.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion

“defining feature of ‘top-down’, as opposed to bottom-up, change is the fact of tight minority organization as against the disorganized masses. ‘Elite’ in this sense could be the elites in currently power or a set of ‘counter-elites’ who seek to supplant them.”
― Neema Parvini, The Populist Delusion