In a certain country the people are divided by law into just three classes: the Owners, the Experts and the Workers, the precise boundaries between them being set down in the relevant statutes. At one point the Owners, who were at that time basically warlords and protection racketeers, were in charge of everything. However, as time went on, the Experts – merchants and what we might now call professional people- grew more influential until the Owners deemed it advisable to allow them a share in the running of things. There had in fact always been a few Experts co-opted into the Owning class in return for services rendered, but now they as a class were granted a say – and their very own house of Parliament alongside the House of Owners. And in due course both classes, Owners and Experts, became known collectively as gentlefolk – as opposed to the rough folk, who were the Workers.
The Workers were excluded from this new dispensation, but since they were considerably more numerous than the other two classes put together, it wasn’t difficult to argue that this was contrary to natural justice. And eventually it was judged prudent to grant the Worker class also a modest say in the running of things, if only to forestall rebellion. The way this was arranged in this particular country – other countries achieved the same sort of thing in various more complicated ways – was to create a third house of parliament, so that each class was now represented by its own house: the House of Owners, the House of Experts and the House of Workers. The rule was that, to make a new law or elect a prime minister, at least two of those three houses must agree to it.
For some time, the Owners and the Experts continued in practice to run things, because they were now used to working together. The boundaries between the two had in any case become blurred, for the less wealthy children of Owners would often study for professions and so move from the Owning to the Expert class, while the most successful Experts would often accumulate sufficient wealth to join the Owners’ ranks. Indeed so often had the latter happened that the descendants of warlords and protection racketeers had ceased to form the backbone of the Owning class, and it now predominantly consisted of business magnates risen from the Expert class, and the wealthy descendants of such magnates.
But the boundary between Experts and Workers was also blurred. There were many in the Expert class who had risen from the Workers (which you could do either by obtaining certain prescribed qualifications, or by achieving a level of material wealth deemed by the law to demonstrate sufficient business acumen). And there were many in the Expert class too who resented the wealth and standing of the Owners, for the latter were still disproportionately powerful. After all, Owners were far less numerous than the Experts and often had no special expertise of any kind, yet they still had their own house of parliament equal in power and status to the other houses.
These disgruntled members of the Expert class began to find common cause with the Workers, and they called themselves ‘progressives’, by which they meant that, in alliance with the Workers, they would bring about progress towards a fairer future. So successful was this movement, in fact, that it sometimes came about that a ‘progressive’ majority in both the Expert and Worker houses was able to drive through changes and chose prime ministers against the wishes of the Owners.
Naturally enough, many Owners didn’t like this and, since they had considerable resources at their disposal, including ownership of almost all of the country’s newspapers and television stations, they set about doing something about it. And their strategy was to drive a wedge between the Expert and Worker classes.
This actually wasn’t difficult because, once you moved away from the boundary between those two classes, they didn’t have a great deal in common. Even the ‘progressive’ element of the Expert class, who were notionally allied with the Workers, did in fact rather look down on them, seeing them as ignorant, and itself as enlightened, whether as a result of superior ability, superior education or both. This element tended to assume that it should lead the whole ‘progressive’ movement, and that the Workers, if they had any sense, should simply follow. Since many Workers resented this assumption, it wasn’t hard for the Owners to pursuade them that the Experts really didn’t have their interests at heart (not least because there really was some truth in it), and that they should form an alliance with the Owners instead.
When this happened, the ‘progressive’ element of the Expert classes felt betrayed by the Workers, and so came to despise them even more, accusing them of being so ignorant that they voted against their own interests and refused to be guided by reason. (Although some might argue that it was actually quite canny of the Workers not to let themselves be taken for granted). Some progressive members of the Expert class even went as far as to argue that the Workers shouldn’t be allowed to vote on matters that they weren’t competent to understand.
But here the ‘progressives’ themselves, in their disappointment, were being irrational, for they lacked both the numbers and the resources to govern alone.
See also: ‘Trust’
