#natural elite

“…If, then, the natural inequality of ability and of interest among men must make elites inevitable, the only sensible course is to abandon the chimera of equality and accept the universal necessity of leaders and followers. The task of the libertarian, the person dedicated to the idea of the free society, is not to inveigh against elites which, like the need for freedom, flow directly from the nature of man. The goal of the libertarian is rather to establish a free society, a society in which each man is free to find his best level. In such a free society, everyone will be “equal” only in liberty, while diverse and unequal in all other respects. In this society the elites, like everyone else, will be free to rise to their best level.

In Jeffersonian terminology, we will discover “natural aristocracies” who will rise to prominence and leadership in every field. The point is to allow the rise of these natural aristocracies, but not the rule of “artificial aristocracies” — those who rule by means of coercion. The artificial aristocrats, the coercive oligarchs, are the men who rise to power by invading the liberties of their fellow men, by denying them their freedom. On the contrary, the natural aristocrats live in freedom and harmony with their fellows, and rise by exercising their individuality and their highest abilities in the service of their fellows, either in an organization or by producing efficiently for the consumers. In fact, the coercive oligarchs invariably rise to power by suppressing the natural elites, along with other men; the two kinds of leadership are antithetical.

Let us take a hypothetical example of a possible case of such conflict between different kinds of elites. A large group of people voluntarily engage in professional football, selling their services to an eager consuming public. Quickly rising to the top is a natural elite of the best — the most able and dedicated — football players, coaches, and organizers of the game. Here we have an example of the rise of a natural elite in a free society. Then, the power elite in control of the government decides in its wisdom that all professional athletics, and especially football, are evil. The government then decrees that pro football is outlawed and orders everyone to take part instead in a local eurythmics club as a mass-participatory substitute. Here the rulers of the government are clearly a coercive oligarchy, an “artificial elite,” using force to repress a voluntary or natural elite (as well as the rest of the population).

The libertarian view of freedom, government, individuality, envy, and coercive versus natural elites has never been put more concisely or with greater verve than by H.L. Mencken:

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among men. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.51

     — Murray Rothbard, Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, & the Division of Labor

”…In contrast, democratic politicians are generally held in contempt, even by their own mob constituency. But then there is also no one else to whom one might turn for protection. Local and regional politicians are basically posing the same sort of problem, and with the abolition of their monopoly powers, they obviously do not offer an attractive alternative to this problem either. Nor are there any great entrepreneurial personalities standing in the wings, and insurance companies in particular, have become almost entirely creatures of the egalitarian democratic state, and thus appear as little trustworthy as anybody else to take over this particularly important task of protection and justice.

Thus, if one did today what the king could have done a hundred years ago, there would be the immediate danger of having in fact social chaos, or of “anarchy” in the bad sense. People would indeed at least temporarily become highly vulnerable and defenseless. So then the question becomes: is there no way out? Let me sum up the answer in advance: Yes, but rather than by means of the top-down reform, one’s strategy must now be that of a bottom-up revolution.And instead of one battle, on a single front, a liberal-libertarian revolution now will have to involve many battles on many fronts. That is, we want guerrilla warfare rather than conventional warfare…”

          — Hans-Hermann Hoppe, What Must Be Done