Corruption and Populism

NEOPOPULISM AND CORRUPTION: TOWARD
A NEWCRITIQUE OF THE LITE

1
Marina Calloni
Introduction
The lite and populism have often been interrelated in both political and
economic debates through the centuries, and now are being interconnected in the
controversy around the role of the media in the intellectual/scientific domain.
This paper aims to discuss:
(i) the transformation of the ideological self-interpretation and public self-
presentation of intellectual lites over time;
(ii) the change in intellectual/professional work in politics and ideology;
(iii) the integrative link between litism and populism in the age of globaliza-
tion and in the increasing sophistication of the mass media;
(iv) the necessity to redefine the traditional aristocratic and avant-garde
concepts of the intellectual in order to avoid new forms of populism and litism
in a communication society.
The issue of corruption will be used as a key organizing concept for the discus-
sion. This construct also allows me: a) to develop a form of social criticism; b) to
stress the dialectic between a critique by the lites and the critique of the lites;
(c) to define intellectuals as research workers with specific individual and
public/civic responsibilities regarding their own profession.
At the end of the paper I argue that the intellectual has to think of his/herself
not only as the good lite, but also as a subject who can corrupt or could be
corrupted (selfcritique by the lites). This means that neo-populism and neo-
litism in their search for political, economic and cultural consensus in late-indus-
trial democracies is a cause of reciprocal corruption among the different social
actors (critique of the lite and of the ordinary people).
I. The Story of the Corruption of Intellectuals
Intellectual aristocracy and lite are two concepts that have characterised the
cultural and political history of Western thought and have contributed to the hier-
archical self-understanding of intellectuals. However, they are not simply theo-
retical or cultural determinations.
They have always been connected with the problem of political and economic
power in a dual way: the intellectual has been considered as both a critical thinker
Constellations Volume 5, No 1, 1998. Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Copyright 2000. All rights reserved.
and a defender of the dominant power. The connection between these two
complementary traditions among Western intellectuals constitutes the immanent
contradiction of the self-representation of the lite as well.
Intellectuals in ancient Greek political and cultural thought were termed an
aristocracy, with both moral and aesthetic implications and meanings. With the
modern era and the development of the empirical sciences, such identification
was no longer certain.
The first example of the self-interpretation of the intellectual, and more
precisely of the philosopher, as a human being belonging to an aristocracy, is to
be found in Platos Republic. In his masterpiece, Plato describes three classes of
citizens, namely the workers, guardians and governors of the polis, where educa-
tion, politics and philosophy were interconnected. In this regard, Plato argues that
the philosopher in his role as legislator has to escape the sensible world,
moreover, in order to elevate himself to the world of being [immutable essences],
otherwise he will never be a clever calculator.
The dichotomy between the world of ideas and the sensible world, the notion
of theory and the reality of praxis, involves the assumption (already present in the
esoteric Parmenidian tradition of the immutable being) that thought is connected
with an ontological and metaphysical idea of truth and wisdom which is accessi-
ble only to a minority of adepts.
In Greek, the notion of aristocracy carries etymologically ethical and politi-
cal implications. According to the Aristotelian Politeia, citizens of Athens
included only people whose parents were born in the city. However, such an
ethnical concept of citizenship also implied an identification with handsome-
ness and moral beauty (kalos kai agatos). The aristoi were the best, i.e., the most
virtuous men.
This tradition is also present in critical Enlightenment thinking. For instance,
in the Secret Article of a Perpetual Peace, Kant believes that the philosopher
possesses a certain wisdom.
2
In short, until the last century, the self-understanding of Western intellectuals
has been mostly idyllic: the intellectual aristocracy has represented itself as the
best part of society. Interpretations which deviate from this rule take their bear-
ings from a negative anthropology of human behavior and from a realistic and
pragmatic viewpoint in politics, as in the case of Machiavelli.
However, if we consider the history of the intellectuals from an ideological
perspective, we see that the Platonic legacy and tradition did not only affect the
self-understanding of intellectuals and their identification with the employment of
pure reason, but other issues as well.
Language, as Bourdieu has argued (taking as an example the language of
being theorized by Heidegger), reveals the signs of existing power and its social
construction.
3
Namely, the self-representation of intellectuals has frequently
been blind to the factual condition of the intellectuals as human beings.
Nevertheless, there is another issue concerning intellectual work. Even if the
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
Neopopulism and Corruption: Marina Calloni 97
philosopher-intellectual has to produce ideas, problems arise when he has to
apply these ideas pragmatically to the sensible world. The story of the end of
Platos political utopia after his travel to Syracuse shows both his bitterness and
disappointment at the unsuccessful realization of his idea and his experience of
the sense of corruption.
Giving a new twist to the Platonic story, I would like to argue that the issue of
the corruption of the lites allows us to reanalyze, more radically, some aspects of
democratic societies in the late industrial era. A more complex understanding of
the ideological self-presentation of the lite gives us the chance to analyze
Western cultures over time. Furthermore, it can also help us to re-conceptualize
interculturally the neo-traditionalism propounded by religious avant-gardes in
fundamentalist countries.
A more appropriate understanding of corruption can contribute to modifying
the emphatic self-description of the intellectual both as a carrier of truth and
wisdom, and as the political lite. Our normative point of view will raise claims
of validity on the subject of the critique of litism and populism both in contem-
porary democracies and in non-Western societies.
Corruption isnt the fall of an abstract idea in its factual realization or the
decadence of the lites as conceptualized by conservatives or supporters of
Kulturpessimismus. The notion of corruption (presupposed in the context of this
discussion) regards both the political, professional and deontologcal behavior of
the lites as well as their social and ideological self-(re)presentation.
The identification of the intellectual and political lites with a moral aristoc-
racy is at an end. Intellectuals can be both corrupted and corrupting. An intel-
lectual can no longer recognize himself as the best part of society. This
consciousness also affects his relationship with the people. But populism in this
case, the relationship induced by the lite from the bottom up is not at an end.
Namely, the media contributes to increasing the traditional vanity of intellectuals
in a new way: in the form of telematic neopopulism.
4
II. Democracy and Political Corruption
In ancient times as previously stated the public vocation of the philoso-
pher/intellectuals was connected mostly with the political utopia. In the
modern era, this one-dimensional identification between the life of the mind
and the life of the polis, philosophy and politics, has changed for the intellec-
tuals due to the development of the empirical sciences, and later because of the
development of technology and the market.
The utopia connected to the realization of a perfect city has shifted to the
idea of a construction of new worlds and instruments (as in the case of Leonardo
da Vinci) thanks to empirical techniques. But these technicological projects
which in antiquity and the Renaissance were mostly understood as experiments
or games in the context of modernity become more and more dependent upon
98 Constellations Volume 5, Number 1, 1998
the financing of the market, more related to industrial production and subject to
increasing profits. The political domain is also affected by these cultural modifi-
cations and, consequently, so is the lite in government.
The structure and training of the political lite connected to parties or the
specific interests of groups consequently changes in liberal democratic systems.
The question of corruption assumes a new meaning in this context: the lites
want to preserve their power and maintain the peoples consensus in a populistic
way.
However, the concept of populism is in itself difficult, also because its mean-
ing has changed semantically, historically, politically, and socially. But I think
that populism is not only the expression of political movements or political
parties which reflect a major disillusionment with conventional political parties
and which have, or present themselves as having, the objective of returning polit-
ical power to the mass of the people.
5
On the other side, populism does not
necessarily imply the reaction of the people against the domination of the lite.
Populism I think is also a particular strategy used by the lite over time to
regulate their asymmetrical connection with the masses.
A cross-cultural perspective may help us to reconsider the general problem of
the present reconceptualization of populism and litism. A comparison between
some European and American studies on democratic litism illustrates the
political/social diversities that exist and the range of different analytical perspec-
tives chosen by the authors.
Interestingly, a quick perusal of the indexes of some relevant recent studies on
litism and populism published in the 1990s shows a discrepancy between
books published in America (for example, Christopher Laschs The Revolt of the
lites; Jeffrey Bells Populism and litism; Michael Kazins Populist
Persuasion; Jim McGuigans Cultural Populism) and books edited in Europe
(see, for example, litism, Populism and European Politics edited by Jack
Hayward
6
).
While in the American publications the problem of corruption is not explicitly
treated, in the European studies, discussion of party policies in different European
countries raises the issue of political corruption. What does this difference in the
analysis of democracy and the lite mean, given that political scandals in the
United States have involved government lites? On this matter it is enough to
mention the judicial case of Hillary and Bill Clinton, accused of illegal connec-
tions between politics, finance power, and private interests.
One explanation of the lack of concern with corruption involves the
hermeneutical horizon and cultural background of the authors mentioned
above, who choose specific arguments and not others. The European intellectu-
als/researchers seem to be more realistic and self-critical regarding their own
ideological history than do the American.
In Europe, the problem of the corruption of lites has in fact become the
center of the analysis of government lites, and it has been studied in empirical
case-studies of political and economic corruption (see, for instance, the exam-
ples of Italy, Spain, Belgium, Greece).
The connection between the lite and corruption in liberal democracies is not
at all a new issue. However, the issue is revealing itself in novel forms. For this
reason, we need a new approach to guide our analysis of these new aspects and to
decode the relation (or distinction) between neo-aristocracy and neo-populism in
a more insightful way.
Such approach requires both theoretical analysis and the development of
empirical studies aimed at uncovering the facts of corruption as well as its mech-
anism of perpetuation. The new condition of the lite in late capitalist society
transforms, but in a way also de facto continues, the tradition of the rationaliza-
tion of modernity.
As a matter of fact, from this realistic point of view, we can read Webers
theory of rationalization and secularization, as well as Paretos notion of litism
as expressed in The Mind of Society,
7
in relation to the political and economic
corruption of the lite and the links they are forced to maintain to keep the
consensus of the masses.
Webers interpretation of the Protestant ethic explains the formation of an
economic and financial lite and the legitimation of its actions through a convic-
tion that wealth is Gods will. Michels and Paretos theory of the lite as a neces-
sary product of modern democracy points to the transformation of the old
intellectual aristocracy in a mass society. But this account differs radically from
other approaches, such as Dahls interpretation in Who governs?,
8
where the pres-
ence of democratic lites in government and the increase in corporations as
poliarchy are a result of industrialization.
While Webers intent was to propose a post-conventonal Verantwortungsethik
(ethics of responsibility; different from a Gesinnungsethik) valid for all citizens,
Paretos perspective was to show the psychological aspect of both the relation and
the gap between lite and masses.
The liberal and optimistic theory of democracy was criticized in its ideological
utopia, even if in a very different way than in Marxs critique of bourgeois polit-
ical economy. As Pareto writes: Apolitical system where the people expresses
their will (. . . ) without cliques, intrigues, lobbies and factions, exists only as a
pious wish of theorists.
9
It is worth noting that in recent studies, theories of litism are not used to
support the necessity of morality and the legitimacy of political and economic
lites, but to stress their immorality and illegitimacy.
Following this line of research, sociologists at the University of Calabria
10
are
conducting empirical research on the Mafia, their control of territory, illegal traf-
ficking, and financial interests, using Moscas and Paretos theory.
Some Italian social scientists
11
and criminologists
12
have underlined the politi-
cal and collective responsibilities of the lites. They point to the problem of: (i)
the connection between politics and economics in the form of consociativismo;
and (ii) the persistence in European politics and economy of illegal practices as
normal and institutionally admitted actions (from Finland to Italy, England,
France, and so on).
The relation between economics and politics is therefore part of the history of
modern democracy as it has been analyzed and theorized by Schumpeter in his
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.
13
This model of democracy stresses the
increased efficiency in the pursuit of the interests of particular power groups. This
framework, in turn, explains the structure of survival and the transformation of
oligarchies in contemporary democracies. It also throws some light on the strategic
and instrumental links between litism and populism in the creation of mass
consensus.
However, the question of the illegality of lites in government and their
corruption acquires different cultural meanings depending on the particular
history of democracy and problems of social legitimization which have charac-
terized the institutions and practices of each country.
For instance, since the last century, Italian culture has been characterized by
theorists of the lite as well as by critics of parliamentarian institutions. This
criticism, connected to the strong social roots of the lites in power and the
fragility of a young liberal democracy (as still evident in the processes of corrup-
tion started in the last century under the Sabaudian monarchy) had a twofold
effect.
First, it produced a paradoxical dictatorial parliamentarism: fascism. For
twenty years, fascism cohabited with a monarchy and a liberal and flexible consti-
tution: the so called Statuto albertino.
14
Second, it provoked increasing demands for
the legitimacy and legality of political power (see, for instance, Guglielmo Ferreros
work,
15
and in general the anti-fascist Catholic, (liberal) socialist and Communist
traditions
16
during the civil war in the second world war).
These historical examples reveal that populism takes hold more easily in those
societies which are not yet permeated by democratic institutions and practices (as
in the case of Latin America or, in general, of military governments, where the
lite arose from the armed forces). These political and theoretical traditions show
that the hiatus between lite and masses, aristocracy and the people, may differ
depending on the cultural histories of the different countries and the functioning
of their democratic proceedings.
My thesis is that the structure of the link connecting populism and litism in a
mass-democracy depends mostly on the different forms of bargaining and practi-
cal compromises that the political powers and related government needed and
continue to need for building and establishing political consensus.
This argument questions the relationship and the unstable dynamic that exists
between majority and minority in contemporary and representative democracies:
excluded minorities represent de facto the majority of the people in relation to the
minority of lites in government, which pretends to represent the majority and to
maintain power also through a process of inclusion of interests.
Democracy is a complex process and a chemically unstable compound
(Norberto Bobbio) of inclusion/exclusion
17
and fights for recognition.
18
However,
one of the main problems of present democracies is their oligarchic tendencies,
which limit access to democratic power to social actors and pressure groups.
The new strategies adopted by the government of few are the basis of
neopopulism, oligarchic degeneration, and also of corruption. In this case, corrup-
tion is expressed in an ambivalent way: as the relationship between political and
economic lites and the connection between political power and the different
social groups which have to give their vote and support.
The viewpoint from top down, i.e., from the perspective of the lite, is the
contrary of the legitimation processes of a critical deliberative politics/democracy
(as theorized by Habermas),
19
where the private autonomy of equally treated
citizens can only be assured in accordance with the activation of their civic
autonomy.
20
III. Intellectual Ideology and Politics
Elite means a small group of people or a power group. Intellectuals are a minor-
ity of the population and can be a part of an elite, but they are not necessarily an
elite or a power group. The tension between elites and intellectuals is the focus of
the following chapter. The issue of corruption also contributes to undermining the
univocal self-understanding of Western intellectuals. In this case, corruption is
not to be understood directly as an increase in personal wealth, but as a corrup-
tion of spirit as well.
Giving again another twist to the Platonic story, we could reanalyse not only
the activities of the lite in government, but also the ideology of the political intel-
lectuals; the history of avant-gardes in Western societies and their asymmetrical
relationship to the people; the transformation of academic identity and, at the
same time, the tendency to perpetuate political and cultural power inside the
universities
21
; the change in the structure of state universities as mass universities
in continental Europe; the loss of their litarian role as the privileged place of
knowledge,
22
science and learning processes.
These social transformations continue the metamorphosis of the medieval
intellectual in relation to the issue of corruption.
The intellectual becomes in modernity a clericus vagantes, freischwebendes
Wesen, free to sell his knowledge and be paid for his competence, whether he
teaches at universities or does political work, as consigliere del principe or
mandarin,
23
or involves himself in the world of the machines, technique and
technology, the practical sciences and arts, which are no longer necessarily infe-
rior to the theoretical ones. But the intellectual decides not only to be an adviser
in order to maintain political and economic power, to become a sort of Principe,
but also to be recognised as the avant-garde of the people.
However, the professional and political claims of the intellectuals are considered
as a form of traison des cleres (as formulated by Julienne Benda in the 1920s),
because they are no longer interested only in theoretical activities.
As industrialization conferred increased importance on the world of business,
the distinction between intellectual and manual labor became more complex.
Still, the figure of the professional, the economically-minded businessman,
continued to be opposed by the figure of the pure and democratic intellectual, as
in the case of the radicalization of bourgeois intellectuals such as mile Zola,
who played a strong and politically critical role opposing corruption and injustice
during the Dreyfus affair in France.
However, although the distinction between the professional and the intellectual
is clear, another difference needs to be made between the political militant and the
pure intellectual.
This increasing tension between the critical (free from political/economic
constrains) and the organic (connected to a party) intellectual in politics (as
Gramsci uses the terms in his Prison Notebooks
24
) constitutes the history of intel-
lectuals in this century. However, the relationship of intellectuals to the estab-
lished powers represents the most delicate and problematic aspect of their
ideological history.
The dilemma of co-operating with institutional politics and at the same time
maintaining an ethics of responsibility is represented in Sartres theatrical piece
Les Mains Sales, where the French philosopher discusses the old problem of the
corruption of the intellectual
25
with regard to the personal compromises that the
intellectual is forced to make in his daily practice, instead of being related to the
world of unrealizable ideas. However, this approach was strongly critiqued by
both Aron and Foucault.
26
In the last decades, with the fall of the regimes of the real socialism and the
crisis of comprehensive worldviews, the problem affecting the self-understanding
of intellectuals relates to the increasing collaboration between the world of busi-
ness and the media instead of engagement in political parties.
The deepest transformation of the role of political intellectual occurred
when they started to collaborate not only with publishers, magazines and news-
papers, but with the mass media. The arena of public discourse becomes the
virtual space of mass communication. Television captures the vanity of intellec-
tuals as opinion-makers and contributes to developing a narcissistic neopopulis-
tic idyll between them and the masses of viewers. They are enclosed in a circle
of reciprocal seduction. The notion of corruption acquires a new meaning in this
respect.
The public of readers (as defended by Kant) and the spheres of pure intel-
lectuals do not exist any more. The public, as audience, has changed in number
and quality. In this case, corruption doesnt concern the criminal code. It is
connected to the way in which intellectuals search for a new mass consensus to
sell their ideas. They do not seek only to convince the public of the validity
of their arguments, but, moreover, they want to be loved by the viewers.
IV. The Compatibility of litism and Populism in an Information Society
The ambiguity of the self-presentation and self-understanding of intellectuals in a
late-industrial society and the crisis of their ideological role emerged clearly in
the 1980s.
It also emerged in research conducted in the 1990s by Marisa Bertoldini and
myself on the transformation of collective identities in a post-industrial city
Milan prior to the discovery of the political/financial scandal of
Tangentopoli.
27
The intellectuals/professionals felt guilty about the increasing paralysis of the
political, economic, and cultural environment, but at the same time they did not
have any innovative or morally convincing answers. It was clearly the end of their
previous ideological role when they discovered that the political intellectuals as
collective actors were not homogeneous and an individual selfcritique was
required. As a matter of fact, many of our interlocutors defined themselves as
professionals and no longer as intellectuals.
Nevertheless, during our research four elements emerged clearly: 1) a number
of our informants assumed that the crisis of society/city was caused by others; 2)
they did not recognize their individual responsibilities; 3) they were not really
conscious of the increasing weight that mass media still had on their work and
biography; 4) they stressed the change in the public to which they addressed
their ideas and work, as well as in the structure of public opinion.
Two main questions then arose: i) what new type of litism emerged with refer-
ence to neopopulism; and ii) which type of critique/selfcritique could be exerted
by/against the lite? Namely, traditional populism (the lites who want to
educate the masses) had been replaced in present democracies by forms of post-
modern neopopulism, where the masses play a different role as spectators,
culture consumers
28
and virtual participants. This transformation also induces
a change in the sociological interpretation of the psychology of social classes
29
and their habitus and distinction.
30
Technology has created a new type of social space. Mass media seems to
reduce the distances which have traditionally separated the masses from the lite.
Thus, people think they have more direct access to power and culture. Politicians
and intellectuals play to their interests with this virtual nearness. A perverse
result of this dynamic is that the public no longer recognizes boundaries between
public life and the private sphere of individuals. The faces seen on television
become as familiar as member of ones own community. Neopopulism captures
its strategists. The structure of the public sphere changes radically.
31
As a matter of fact, with the development of an information industry, intel-
lectual work increasingly involves the world of communication, publishing
(mostly controlled by financial groups), and media. The intellectual as expert
often becomes part and parcel of this new power system because he/she is able to
translate the different cultural languages.
In his study Sur la television,
32
Pierre Bourdieu reconceptualized his concepts
of social capital and social fields in relation to the power of mass media/econom-
ics, their intrusion in the universe of science and social research,
33
and the
danger that they pose to the autonomy of scientific development.
What I mentioned here as corruption is considered by Bourdieu through the
concept of collaboration, which in the France historically refers to political
collaboration in the Nazi occupation. Bourdieu argues that such cooperation is a
submission without conditions to situations, which destroy the norms of the
scientific, political and literary fields. The reason for this submission is found
in heteronomous individuals, who dont have any real recognition inside their
disciplines and for these reasons try to find success in the mass media environ-
ment.
Television says Bourdieu reproduces a new form of litism, esoterism and
demagogy. Namely, it seems to give access to a majority of people in some fields
of public life, but at the same time it deeply influences the cultural production as
well as the structure of research, denying autonomy.
Bourdieus strong critique of the new activity of the tertiary sector of intellec-
tual capital questions the new links between mass/intellectuals and profession-
als/finance/mass media. His analysis of the resulting sophisticated mechanisms of
corruption also allows us to understand the new forms of neo-litism and neo-
populism and their unusual connections better.
Furthermore, the notion of collaboration/corruption shows the ambivalent
roots of some neopopulist movements and the reasons for their success. For
instance, Berlusconis political neopopulism can be understood in terms of
economic control and his knowledge of mass communication mechanisms
(ethnomethodology applied to politics). The litist control of mass communica-
tion and public discourse as well as the control of the political arena, in fact,
require both the world of business and the political fields.
Berlusconi financially controls a wide system of goods distribution that he has
developed over the years as a form of territorial control. Once the social and
cultural infrastructures were built, his next step was to found a new political party,
consulting the cultural advice of academics, social scientists, fashion and media
experts. His political career spared him from being accused of corruption. In
Berlusconis case, populism is compatible with litism.
Populism and aristocracy are paradoxically connected by a kind of mass
communication that seems both very extensive and as Umberto Eco argued
regarding Internet and the telematic systems very specialized in order to repro-
duce a new lite able to control the diffusion of information in a global environ-
ment. Thus, access to knowledge becomes restricted to selected power lobbies. A
new esoteric level of understanding and information takes place beside an appar-
ently diffuse mass communication.
At this point, the second question related to the critique and the self-under-
standing of lites must be raised. But there is a methodological and epistemolog-
ical problem. If we consider ourselves as lite, then the critical discourse becomes
selfreferential and tautological because we cannot criticize the same object of our
critique, as pointed out by Adomo in Minima Moralia.
34
Otherwise, we as lite
would be obliged to consider ourselves to be the good lite that criticises the
bad lite.
For this reason, a selfcritique of intellectuals needs a normative point of view
and, as the same time, the consciouness that the critic is also subject to different
forms of corruption.
I believe that we need to overcome the kind of litism implicit in the ideologi-
cal avant-garde concept of the intellectual as morally best and to develop a criti-
cism of neopopulism (and its emphatic interpretation of democracy as
peoplecracy) in order to avoid manipulation by media.
Platos metaphysical conception of an intellectual aristocracy detached from
the people has become obsolete and been replaced by the consciousness of the
ideology of ideas.
35
Gramscis Marxist conception of the organic intellectual
strictly connected to a political party and his cultural hegemony has become too
restrictive due to the crisis of the centrality of the political domain regarding the
multiple components of civil society.
36
Moreover, the personal identity, profes-
sional behavior, and civic action of the intellectual cannot be reduced only to the
political sphere.
Taking as a background the history of lites and intellectuals in Western soci-
eties, I think that the intellectual has to be understood as a social actor who has
specific disciplinary competencies, is capable of improving the solutions given to
problems of general interest, and is able to develop social criticism and selfcri-
tique (as critical organ, as suggested by Mill). He/she cannot be outside the
society he/she represents.
We need neither a philosopher-ruler nor a totalitarian party; we need accept
neither corruption as the inevitable fate of post-modern lites, nor the populist
legitimization of lites in government in order: firstly, to develop our democratic
competencies; secondly, to clarify our deontological responsibilities as individuals
and as experts having public roles; thirdly to build a deliberative democracy; and
finally, to maintain a concept of legitimate power in politics from the bottom up.
For this reason, I suggest the idea of the intellectual/professional as a research
worker
37
with civic duties in order to develop lite criticism in a dialectical way
as critique by the lite and critique of the lite. Research neither discovers a meta-
physical/ontological idea of truth and wisdom, nor realizes a teleological goal in
human history. It is a fallible process of knowledge which regards the three differ-
ent dimensions of time: analyzing interconnected phenomena in the past, aiming
to resolve social problems in the present, and intending to prevent catastrophes
and risks in the future from the perspective of democratic civic life. Research is
the implementation of projects which must be pragmatically realized in respect to
both human beings and the environment.
Female and male research workers also as teachers and citizens have to
understand their profession multiculturally as a process of lifelong learning, that
means to comprehend the increase in their knowledge and biographical experi-
ence as continuous forms of selfeducation and interaction.
38
This new professional
and biographical approach implies the understanding of what corruption is and/or
what being corrupted means whether of lites or of ordinary people.
The time of the avant-gardes as moral lites, as the best of the society, as a
religious, cultural, political, and also gender aristocracy over other groups is over.
Postmodernism implies a stronger form of selfreflexivity regarding her/his
identity, argue Giddens and Beck.
39
That means that the individuals also have to
be more conscious of their ideological boundaries.
Feminism had an advanguardistic component. However, it has always under-
stood itself as coming from the concrete experiences of all women. This collec-
tive self-representation avoided feminism from elitistic tendencies. This is the
reason why an analogous discourse never began in the womens movement.
Feminism has, on the contrary, stressed the notion of the situated self and the
complex connection between mind and body, i.e., language, action, and sexual-
ity.
40
This consciousness pointed out that the interested social actor is always exis-
tentially and deonologically vulnerable. Furthermore, this understanding implies
the clarification of our moral, political, and cultural responsibilities as citizens
making public use of (our) reason.
NOTES
1. I thank Nadia Urbinati, Giovanna Zicone, Bianca Beccalli, Giancarlo Bosetti and Alessandro
Ferrara for their comments.
2. Immanuel Kant, Secret Article of a Perpetual Peace, in Perpetual Peace, A Philosophical
Sketch, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
3. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and symbolic power: the economy of linguistic exchange
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); Pierre Bourdieu, The political ontology of Martin Heidegger
(Oxford: Polity Press, 1991).
4. Jrgen Habermas, Neopopulismo: se la massa diventa pubblico, Reset 34 (1997): 911.
Paper presented at the conference on Democracy between Populism and Oligarchy, Princeton
University, November 89 1996.
5. Populism in: David Jary and Julia Jary, Dictionary of Sociology (Glasgow: Harper Collins,
1995), 505.
6. Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of lites: on betrayal of democracy (New York: Norton, 1995);
Jeffrey Bell, litism and Populism in the Age of Equality (Washington: Regnery, 1992); Michael
Kazin, Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Jim McGuigan,
Cultural Populism (London New York: Routledge, 1992); Jack Hayward, ed., litism, Populism
and European Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
7. Vilfredo Pareto, The rise and the fall of the lite: an application of theoretical sociology
(Totowa: Bedminster, 1968).
8. Robert Dahl, Who governs? Democracy and power in an American city (New Haven: Yale
University Press 1961); Robert Dahl, A preface to economic democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1985).
9. Vilfredo Pareto, Trattato di sociologia generale (The Mind of Society: a treatise on general
sociology) (London: Cape, 1935).
10. Ercole Parini Su alcune recenti interpretazioni del fenomeno mafioso, Quaderni di
Sociologia 14 (1997). The author analyses the mechanisms of selection of the lite used by the
mafia organization. Mafia is a form of autopoietic system which reproduces itself through a form
of dynamic equilibrium. See also, Renate Siebert, Secrets of Life and Death. Women and the
Mafia (London: Blackwell Verso, 1996).
11. Alessandro Pizzomo, Le Radici della Politica Assoluta (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1993).
12. Vicenzo Ruggiero, Le Economie Sporche (Torino: Ballati Boringhieri, 1996).
13. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: Allen & Unwin,
1943).
14. Statuto altertino was the constitution allowed by King Carlo Alberto in 1848 after the
peoples revolts. After national unification in 1861, it was extended to all Italian regions and
remained in force until 1948, when it was substituted by the republican constitution. The institu-
tional peculiarity of the Statuto albertino was its flexibility. It meant that it could be modified
without the problems of anticonstitutionalism and that some laws could be in contrast also to its
principles without having to change. This is the reason why fascism could govern Italy for twenty
years, admitting persecutions, supporting coercive laws and maintaining a liberal constitution. But
institutionally the king was at the center of the executive, judicial and legislative powers; he nomi-
nated the members of the senate-house and he gave the mandate to the prime minister. This is the
technical reason why Mussolini institutionally nominated by the king could be dismissed on
25th July 1943 by Vittorio Emanuele III, when the Gran Consiglio voted its no-confidence.
Mussolini had to resign from the office and was substituted by Badoglio. Vittorio Emanuele III
abdicated in favor of his son, Umberto II, who became king on 9 May 1946. After a referundum in
June 1946, when Italian women gained the right to vote for the first time, the people chose the
republican system against the monarchy. The king left Italy and settled in Portugal. On the 1
January 1948, a republican constitution was established one hundred years after the Statuto
albertino.
15. Guglielmo Ferrero, La Democrazia in Italia (Milano: Treves 1925); Guglielmo Ferrero,
Pouvoir (New York: Putman, 1942).
16. The bibliography and the debates about the different roles and the diverse components of
Italian antifascism are very broad. I mention here only Claudio Pavone, Una guerra civile (Torino:
Bollati Boringhieri, 1991).
17. Norberto Bobbio, The age of rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
18. Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992); Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: the Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995); Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self, Gender,
Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
19. Jrgen Habermas, Three Normative Models of Democracy, Constellations 1 (1994): 110.
20. Jrgen Habermas, ber den internen Zusammenhang von Rechtsstaat und Demokratie,
Die Einbeziehung des Anderen, Studien zur politischen Theorie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996),
305.
21. Pierre Bourdieu, Academic Discourse: Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professional Power
(Cambridge: Polity Press 1994); Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility: lite Schools in the Field of
Power (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996).
22. Peter David, Inside the knowledge factory, The Economist (Oct. 10, 1997): 84 ff.
23. See the critique made in the 1960s by Noam Chomsky, American Power and The New
Mandarins (New York: Pantheon Book, 1969).
24. If the test of the intellectuals is to determine and to organise the reform of moral and intel-
lectual life, in words to fit culture to the sphere of practice, it is clear that crystallised intellectuals
are conservative and reactionary, Antonio Gramsci, Selection from the Prison Notebooks (London:
Lawrence and Weshort, 1997), 153.
25. Jean-Paul Sartre, Playdoyer Pour les Intellectuels (Paris: Gallimard, 1972).
26. Raimond Aron, Lopium des intellectules (Paris: Agora 1986); Michel Foucault, Gli
Intellettuali e il Potere, Microfisica del potere (Torino: Einaudi, 1986), 107118.
27. Marina Calloni, Sapere, potere e comunicazione culturale. Sullidentit complessa fra
intellettuali e metropoli, in Marisa Beroldini and Marina Calloni, Pensare Milano. Intellettuali a
confronto con la citt che cambia (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1992), 7790. The research was
supported by the Faculty of ArchitecturePolytechnic of Milan in collaboration with the Faculty of
Social SciencesJ. W. Goethe University of Frankfurt. See also, Marisa Bertoldini and Marina
Calloni, Milan: der Aufstieg des Dienstleistungsbetriebs und die Entzauberung des Gesites, in W.
Prigge, ed., Stdtische Intellektuelle, Urbane Melieus im 20, Jahrhandert (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer,
1992), 5466.
28. This new approach to neopopulism reformulates the traditional Frankfurt interpretation
related to the critique of the cultural industry. See Max Horkheimer and Theodeor W. Adorno,
The Dialectic of Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1979).
29. Maurice Halbwachs, Esquisse dune psychologie des classes sociales (Paris: Marcel Rivire
et Cie, 1955).
30. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984).
31. John Keane, Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere, The Communication Review
1: 1 (1996), 122.
32. Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la television (Paris: Seuil, 1996).
33. In the previous decade the main danger for the social researcher was seen in his/her collab-
oration with industries and concerns. See Luciano Gallino, Il ricercator sociale e limpresa in C.
Vivanti, ed., Intellettuale e potere. Storia dItalia, Annali 4 (Torino: Einaudi, 1981), 1329ff.
34. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschdigten Lebens (Frankfurt
a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1955).
35. See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: an Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1936).
36. Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Philosophy (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1992).
37. Marina Calloni, La corruzione del <<Moderno>>. Intellettuali e professionisti dopo
Tangentopoli, Democrazia e Diritto 3 (1995), 85118.
38. Art. 2: Adult education thus becomes more than a right (. . . ) It is both a consequence of
active citizenship and a condition for full participation in society. It is a powerful concept for foster-
ing ecologically sustainable development, for promoting democracy, justice, gender equity, and
scientific, social and economic development, and for building a word in which violent conflict is
replaced by dialogue and a culture of peace based on justice. (. . .) Art. 3: Adult education denotes
the entire body of learning processes taking place, formal or otherwise, whereby people regarded as
adults by the society to which they belong develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, and
improve their technical or professional qualifications or turn them in a new direction to meet their
own needs and those of their society. Adult learning encompasses both formal and continuing
education, non-formal learning and the spectrum of informal and incidental learning available in a
multi-cultural learning society, where theory and practice based approaches are recognised.
UNESCO, The Hamburg Declaration on Adult Education. Fifth International Conference on Adult
Education (Confintea V). Hamburg, 1418 July 1997.
39. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization; Politics,
Traditionalism and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
40. Henrietta L. Moore, A Passion for Difference, Essays in Anthropology and Gender
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).

Corruption and Populism

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Corruption and Populism

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

NEOPOPULISM AND CORRUPTION: TOWARD

A NEWCRITIQUE OF THE LITE

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen