The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

11

Chapter I

Elite’s Power and Interests in Britain

Theory of Elite

It was in
the seventeenth century that the word ‘elite’ was used for the first
time. Its purpose was to
describe “commodities of particular excellence; and the
usage was later extended to refer to superior
social groups, such as crack military
units or the higher ranks of the nobility.”1 According to the Oxford English
Dictionary “the earliest known use of elite in
the English language is in 1823 at
which time it was already applied to social groups. Nevertheless, the
phrase did
not become widely used in social and political writing until late in the nineteenth
century
in Europe, or until the 1930’s in Britain and America, when it was
diffused through the sociological
theories of elites, notably in the writings of
Vilfredo Pareto.”2

Elite is
described by Pareto in two different ways. Firstly he began with a
very broad definition: “let us assume
that in every branch of human activity each
individual is given an index which stands as a sign of his
capacity, very much the
way grades are given in the various subjects in examinations in school.
The
highest type of lawyer, for instance, will be given 10. The man who does not get
a client will be
given 1 – reserving 0 for the man who is an out-and-out idiot. To
the man who has made his millions –
honestly or dishonestly as the case may be

– we will give 10. To the
man who has earned his thousands we will give 6; to
such as just manage to keep out of the poor-house 1,
keeping 0 for those who get
in… And so on for all the branches of human activity… So let us make a class
of
the people who have the highest indices in their branch of activity, and to that
class give the name
elite.”3 This concept of elite, as PARETO himself recognises,
is
simply used to indicate “the inequality of individual endowment in every sphere

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213