In Defense of Inequality
March 13, 2015
IN THIS talk, the late Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira stated:
Contemplating the inequalities that exist in all ages of history and human societies, three questions come to mind:
1. Is the existence of elites just?
2. Are elites useful for the religious, moral, political and cultural common good of peoples and civilizations?
3. Precisely, what constitutes an elite?
Addressing these questions, he quotes a profound passage from a radio talk by Pope Pius XII:
The people and a shapeless multitude (or, as it is called, “the masses”) are two distinct concepts.
The people lives and moves by its own life-energy; the masses are inert of themselves and can only be moved from outside.
The people lives by the fullness of life in the men who compose it, each of whom, at his proper place and in his own way, is a person conscious of his own responsibility and of his own views. The masses, on the contrary, wait for the impulse from outside, an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits its instincts and impressions; ready to follow, in turn, today this way, tomorrow another.
From the exuberant life of a true people, an abundant rich life is diffused in the state and all its organs, instilling into them, with a vigor that is always renewing itself, the consciousness of their own responsibility, the true instinct for the common good.
The elementary power of the masses, deftly managed and employed, the state also can utilize; in the ambitious hands of one or several who have been artificially brought together for selfish aims, the state itself, with the support of the masses, reduced to the minimum status of a mere machine, can impose its whims on the better part of the real people; the common interest remains seriously, and for a long time, injured by this process, and the injury is very often hard to heal.
Hence follows clearly another conclusion: the masses, as we have defined them, are the capital enemy of true democracy and of its ideal of liberty and equality.
In a people worthy of the name, the citizen feels within himself the consciousness of his personality, of his duties and rights, of his own freedom joined to respect for the freedom and dignity of others. In a people worthy of the name, all inequalities based not on whim but on the nature of things, inequalities of culture, possessions, social standing, without, of course, prejudice to justice and mutual charity, do not constitute any obstacle to the existence and the prevalence of a true spirit of union and fraternity.
On the contrary, far from impairing civil equality in any way, they give it its true meaning; namely, that before the state everyone has the right to live honorably his own personal life in the place and under the conditions in which the designs and dispositions of Providence have placed him.
Against this picture of the democratic ideal of liberty and equality in a people’s government by honest and far seeing men, what a spectacle is that of a democratic state left to the whims of the masses!
Liberty, from being a moral duty of the individual, becomes a tyrannous claim to give free rein to a person’s impulses and appetites to the detriment of others. Equality degenerates to a mechanical leveling, a colorless uniformity; the sense of true honor, of personal activity, of respect for tradition and dignity, in a word all that gives life its worth, gradually fades away and disappears. And the only survivors are, on one hand, the victims deluded by the specious mirage of democracy, naively taken for the genuine spirit of democracy, with its liberty and equality; and on the other, the more or less numerous exploiters, who have known how to use the power of money and of organization in order to secure a privileged position above the others, and have gained power.2
