In Defence of Aristocracy by Peregrine Worsthorne (HarperCollins, ?15)
At the end of his satire The Rise of the Meritocracy, Michael Young foresees a society in which members of the high-IQ ruling class breed only with each other: "A high-IQ man who mates with a low-IQ woman is simply wasting his genes." Eventually genetic determination of intelligence becomes so firmly established that the "New Conservatives" argue for the recreation of a hereditary ruling class as a way to avoid the stresses of competition and social mobility.
Perhaps we are on the way to a society like this, only more finely tuned. Greater social mobility - at least within the top half of society - has brought greater competition for money, rank and fame. Part of the competition comes from the equality of the sexes. A hundred years ago it made no sense to ask a girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. Now women compete on increasingly equal terms with men in most professions, and if the terms are not equal enough the courts can intervene. In school, girls beat boys; in the rest of the world they are beginning to give them a hard time. Once the ideal was effortless elegance; now it is aggression and commitment.
In this environment, everyone has to work harder to stay ahead: long hours at the office mean less social life, less opportunity for young men to meet young women and vice versa.
Fortunately the solution to this problem comes from the same source as the problem itself. In his chambers late at night the young male lawyer now finds himself surrounded by young female lawyers; the junior doctor not only has nurses on hand but also junior female doctors. There is much convenience in same-profession marriages. The couple shares each other's interests, understands each other's problems better and is at home in the same social circle, if they ever have time for such a thing. The phenomenon of same-profession couples is on the increase. In the Chinese diplomatic service, young diplomats used to be encouraged to marry each other so they could be sent together to the same post, saving the government a good deal of money. In Britain, the government has not yet gone so far but the number of diplomatic couples is undoubtedly on the increase. In Brussels, European civil servants marry each other and send their multilingual children to the European School.
Then guess what happens to the children of these same-profession unions. Not only do the children of doctors have good doctoring genes flowing through their DNA - and now on both coils of the double helix - but they are brought up in an environment where there are stethoscopes and plastic models of body parts lying about. In the past it was taken as natural that the children, especially the eldest son, would follow in his father's footsteps. Now we can expect that children of both sexes may choose to follow in the footsteps of both their parents. We can look forward to dynasties of doctors, lawyers, plumbers and politicians. Equality of the sexes may pave the way for the return of the heredity principle.
The same trend is already visible in sports where both men and women compete as professionals, and where the pressures of the professional circuit are strong. Kim Clijsters - whose parents were both sportsmen - is now going steady with Lleyton Hewitt. One day their children may be able to contest the majors with the children of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf - who are already showing a keen interest in the sport. And watch out for the children of Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. Breeding will tell.
The future may be glimpsed from the acting world, one profession which has been open to women as well as men for some decades. Kate Hudson's mother is Goldie Hawn and her stepfather is Kurt Russell; her brother, Oliver, also acts. Gwyneth Paltrow is the daughter of an actress, Blythe Danner, and a director, Bruce Paltrow. Now that she is married to Coldplay's Chris Martin and has a daughter, Apple, she may found a dynasty like that of the Redgraves, covering three or four generations of actors, actresses, directors, playwrights and cameramen.
The twin conditions of professionalism and sexual equality - which encourage selective breeding in the professions - are not yet present. In politics, political unions are still comparatively rare. But if dynasties such as the Kennedys and the Bushes can manage with a single political parent, how much better their chances will be when both parents bring political DNA to the table. The Clintons are showing the way ahead.
Perhaps this might be the solution to the problem that troubles Peregrine Worsthorne in his new book, In Defence of Aristocracy. Where once we had two class-based parties in Britain - and often cursed the fact - now we have two radical liberal parties both intent on showing that they can make the market work: New Labour by improving equality of opportunity, the new Conservatives by removing market-distorting taxes. The estate agents have taken over from the landowners. Peregrine Worsthorne yearns for a bit more inequality so that we can get back to the days when:
None were for the party
But all were for the state
And the great man helped the poor
And the poor man loved the great.
How much the great man actually helped the poor is uncertain. Not enough to prevent most of them from remaining poor. Instead the poor voted with their feet and escaped subservience to an upper class through the labour market and the trade union movement. The trade unions provided Labour with something resembling an aristocracy. But today trade unions are in decline: there is no need now to use monopoly power to get decent wages. So we are left with the market. And, as Marx and Worsthorne agree, the market rots all things. Worsthorne mourns the dissolving of the class system and with it the "the authority of the old governing class and the deference of the old governed class." He bemoans the degeneration of the great educational instruments of the governing class, the public schools and Oxbridge, which now turn out businessmen instead of young gentlemen with ideals of public service - noblesse oblige replaced by:
A levelling rancorous rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of a drunkard's eye.
More eccentrically yet, Worsthorne regrets the 1930s when his stepfather Montagu Norman dedicated himself to serving the public and, no doubt with the best intentions, helped to ruin the lives of many of the public he was serving. Worsthorne's admiration extends also to the "sober courage" of the appeasers who saw that the only way for the old conservative Europe to survive was to make peace with Hitler. (Some truth in that: wars breed revolution). His heroes are the upright Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and Norman rather than the "financially greedy Churchill, the unashamedly lecherous Duff Cooper." The last two presumably do not fit Worsthorne's notion of a gentleman. But if the 1930s represent the ideal and the product of the aristocracy then we must be well rid of it. An aristocracy based on land ownership seemed important in a static, backward-looking society. Today, people are interesting if they have something new to offer, not if they are merely rich. Innovation and competitive edge are what matter.
In among the insights, eccentricities, contradictions, and wit of this book there is an important question: who is going to provide public goods in a market-driven society? How can we achieve a sense of history in a society interested only in the present and the future? How can we generate a governing class now that the aristocracy has been embourgeoisified?
The things that make the market possible: security, justice, sound administration, some redistribution of wealth - all of these depend on people with a sense of duty, honour and country, who are not for hire to the highest bidder, who work for something more than money. Worsthorne's view is that such people can be bred only through several generations of tradition, presumably in great houses surrounded by famous portraits of their ancestors. But recognising that it may be too late for this, he wonders at the end if the great public schools and universities might not be turned into a sort of English ?cole Nationale d'Administration - which is indeed what they once were - producing a Platonic guardian class. Too late for that too. Schools and universities now have to compete in the market and become professional. Many are making a good job of it.
One answer is that the institutions of government still stand for collective values: honour in the armed services, fairness in the judiciary, service and impartiality in the administration. It is important, perhaps vitally important, to maintain this whatever the next round of efficiency reforms may decree. None of these ideals is incompatible with efficiency, but none of them will produce a culture exactly like that of the private sector either.
As Michael Young's meritocracy moves towards its crisis, the Chelsea manifesto is published calling for a classless society: "Were we to evaluate people not only according to their intelligence and education, their occupation and their power but according to their kindliness and their courage, their imagination and sensitivity, their sympathy and generosity, there could be no classes." This sounds remarkably like the old static, class-based society - in the idealised version - that Worsthorne longs for. If we are going back, then why not to an old Liberal party and an old Tory party? At 200 pages, the Worsthorne manifesto is long, but no doubt people will have time for such documents if we can return to a time when the leisured classes have time for leisure.
