Book Review "The Ruling Class" by Angelo Codevilla
Elites, Others, and the American Divide
Overall Rating: 3.25/5
As someone who works in Manhattan and who lives on Connecticut's Gold Coast, I had, even before reading this book, thought the best word to describe the local culture is Mandarin. Since this is something that isn’t quite for me, this book quickly drew my attention when I saw it, and it immediately resonated with me upon reading.
The book's greatest strength is that it powerfully captures the repulsion that "The Ruling Class" and their arrogance generates in the rest of the nation. Although written in 2010, starting from this observation, it was amazingly prescient in correctly anticipating the rise of the phenomenon of Trumpism. Unfortunately, the book's weakness is substantial: it is a polemic rather than a rigorous analysis of class antagonism in the United States.
The Book's Central Thesis
The book's central thesis is that America has devolved into two classes: An arrogant "Ruling Class" who believes it is their birthright to control everything that happens in the country and a "Country Class" who just wants to live their lives and be left alone by the government.
As exemplified by this excerpt:
The other class' position is analogous to that of the frog that awoke to the fact that it was being slow-boiled only when getting out of the pan would require perhaps more strength and judgment than it had left.
Codevilla believes the Ruling Class has expanded its power to control nearly everything. At the same time, the Country Class, who is reluctant to take an interest in politics, has put up little effective resistance. Codevilla argues that the Democratic party represents the Ruling Class well but that the Republican party does not represent the Country Class well. Indeed, Codevilla elaborates that Republicans are merely "junior partners" who seek to be full members of the Ruling Class themselves one day.
Codevilla thus argues that the situation is unsustainable and the emergence of a third party or, at least, a complete transformation of the Republican Party is inevitable.
Key Themes
A critical theme that Codevilla argues from cover to cover is that the fundamental problem with the Ruling Class is its arrogance. They feel that they ought to control everything because they are intellectually and morally superior to the Country Class, who are merely violent, racist, simpletons incapable of reason on any even mildly complex issue, and who are driven solely by irrational, generally religious (i.e., superstitious) fears and anxieties regarding change. As Codevilla puts it:
Such people can no more believe that a Christian might be their intellectual and moral equal than white Southerners of the Jim Crow era could think the same of Negroes.
Codevllia argues that the Ruling Class, far from having great power of intellect, are mere conformists. What they learn in school is not actual knowledge but
the patterns of belief and behavior that make one fit to circulate among those already established in the ruling class.
Codevllia further argues that with its arrogance, the Ruling Class has insulted the rest of the country to the point of irrevocably losing its trust.
The Book's Weaknesses
I believe the book's central thesis and key themes are essentially correct. However, I found several problems with the presentation. One of the most glaring is the lack of citations. This makes it hard to check some rather hard-to-believe but possibly valid claims.
Along similar lines, the author makes it seem as though The Country Class, which he claims comprises 2/3 of the country, is opposed to abortion. This, of course, is simplistic. Since about 80% of the country takes some intermediate position on abortion, that is, neither no abortions at all nor full access to abortion at any time for any reason, by dropping the subtleties, you could disingenuously argue either way: they support abortion! No, they oppose it! In general, Codevilla is not inclined to get into much nuance in this book.
Another instance of avoiding nuance is further demonstrated in his claim that Goldman Sachs effectively received an indirect bailout from the government that the Ruling Class supported but which Country Class opposed when AIG was "saved" during the Global Financial Crisis. Goldman Sachs, however, thought they had adequate risk control to survive an AIG collapse. If Codevilla pursued the argument, he would have to claim that if AIG collapsed, it would have taken the whole financial system with it. This is almost undoubtedly true, but it would undermine his argument that the Ruling Class never gave a clear argument for the bailouts.
Finally, in focusing so intently on the perspective of the Country Class, Codevilla neglects the rationale and historical arguments of the Ruling Class. This omission is a considerable weakness. While Codevilla effectively critiques the arrogance and insularity of the elite, he fails to delve into why they believe the country cannot run on its own with minimal government intervention. Although there are many, one example that the Ruling Class may feel gives a historical sense of the need for government regulation is the slow adoption of automobile safety standards. Codevilla should attempt to at least address a few of the most common arguments for government regulation.
Conclusion
I found the book to be worth reading. It helped solidify some of the things I instinctively feel as a Country Class member who lives near a Ground Zero of the Ruling Class. The book's themes of the Ruling Class's simultaneous incompetence and arrogance are quite consistent with Thomas Sowell's in Intellectuals and Society. The book is also quite prescient in its predictions and provides much food for thought regarding the country's present state. In particular, and consistent with my reading of Robert Draper's Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, it seems likely that the Country Class is not done after Trump. After digesting the two books' perspectives, I must, sadly, conclude that the insatiable appetite for the most outlandish conspiracy theories has yet to be filled, as the conspiracy theories are undoubtedly a manifestation of the underlying class antagonism.
Despite all the strengths, the book is lacking in rigor. You will either agree based on intuition or not be convinced. Finally, the prescriptions provided to remedy the situation are wanting. It is true that, as Machiavelli argued, we must either learn the art of politics or be subject to the whims of those not reluctant to learn them, but beyond that, the book lacks good realistic suggestions. After a weak concluding chapter, it merely ends with a copy of the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution included. The rest, I suppose, is left as an exercise for the reader...
Sincerely thankful that I don't need to read this book now. Too many screeds with the appearance of constructive thought. And I got the reminder of Sowell's book. My Odyssey of seeking the emergence of the new elites continues.
I liked this book, but you're right that in it Codevilla is not particularly comprehensive in his analysis. I think that's because, first, he meant it as a polemic, and second it originated from a long-form essay on The American Spectator. I do think his depiction of the ruling class is dead on, and he's also right that the country class won't go unrepresented forever. You almost wish that instead of repackaging the article as a book, he would have expanded the article into a fuller work, although he does hint at some of the points in his last book, America's Rise and Fall Among Nations.