Epstein, W. M.

(2017) The Masses are the Ruling Classes: Policy Romanticism, Democratic
Populism, and Social Welfare in America, Oxford University Press, New York.

Reviewed by: Andrew Simon Gilbert, La Trobe University, Australia

Populism is popular as a buzzword among political and social scientists right now, as they collectively
try to make sense of the contemporary political moment. Epstein’s book is certainly about populism,
but for him the term points to something much more pervasive and longstanding in American
society that the relatively recent phenomenon of Donald Trump or his equivalents elsewhere in the
world. In fact, far from describing an outlier political tendency, which has only recently made in-
roads into electoral successes, “democratic populism” for Epstein is entrenched as the most
dominant political force in the USA and stretches right back to the nation’s colonial origins. In
Epstein’s hands, populism refers more to pervasive cultural sensibilities, shared by the mass of the
American public, than to the personalities, policies or political strategies of individual political
figures. And his contention is that politicians must adhere to these populist cultural sensibilities if
they are to succeed electorally. Framed this way, Donald Trump appears as just a recent, if perhaps
unusually perverse and mean-spirited, iteration in the long tradition of romanticism and heroic
individualism in America. It is a tradition which was also mastered and deployed by his predecessor –
a different type of heroic individual – Barack Obama.

While this book contains no reference to Trump, the cultural logic it unfolds in the context of current
events provides such a convincing explanation of his rise that it is difficult to avoid reading it in that
way. Epstein’s conclusions are troubling news for believers in the virtues of the public sphere, and
likely a bitter pill for many of Trump’s American detractors to swallow. According to Epstein,
American democracy is largely very effective at representing the mass preferences of the American
people. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that whoever wins office, and whatever their policy
positions are, is a fairly accurate reflection of what the American public want out of their leaders.
Epstein is disdainful of intellectuals, left, right, and centre, who insist that the American people are
not culpable for their country’s political reality. He rejects theories of ideological manipulation, dark
conspiracies, and political repression as the delusions of an intelligentsia who cannot accept that
reason does not have traction. “If the masses have been brainwashed, they have done the laundry
themselves” (p. 226). If economic policies appear to kowtow to the interests of big business, it is
because the American people have a predominantly reverential attitude towards private industry,
private ownership, and private success. Furthermore, if social policy appears ineffective at solving
such long-standing problems as childhood poverty, mass incarceration, or racial inequality, it is
because Americans do not sees these problems as worth the cost of solving, or worse still, it is
because Americans largely see such problems as acceptable because they are due to the moral
shortcomings of poor, incarcerated, or minority individuals. According to Epstein, attributing blame
to those who find themselves structurally disadvantaged by their position within the American social
system is maintains the myth of America’s God-given providence – a myth that the American people
by and large believe in and consent to.

Epstein’s argument proceeds primarily by way of constructing a conceptual dichotomy between

what he calls “policy romanticism” on the one hand, and the “pragmatic” and “progressive” tradition
on the other. The latter, much more marginal, strain in American culture refers to a sober and
rational attitude which maintains a commitment to scientific methods, empirical facts, and testable
outcomes. The ultimate representation of this is apparently exemplified in the use of randomised
control trials, “the epitome of credible research methods” (p. 211), as a means of evaluating social
policy. However, American pragmatism has been both pushed aside and corrupted by romanticism,
a kind of civic religion which values subjective testimonies, gnostic knowledge, and emotional
experience over objective truths and scientific rigour. Romantic sensibilities are largely fleshed out
by Epstein via a tedious survey of recent self-help and New Age literature, which uniformly exalt the
authenticity of inner-directed individualism and the moral superiority of a striving autonomous will.
This, according to Epstein, is but the contemporary expression of long-standing national delusions
that America is a land of divine entitlement, and that its people have been providentially endowed
with an inner morality and agency. The destitutions of poverty or crime are therefore indicative of
personal sinfulness or character flaws, they individual failures to adhere to American virtues. The
project of policy romanticism is to instil individuals with these virtues, obviating any sustained
consideration that America might be a deeply unequal society in which deprivation is structurally
rooted in inequality of conditions and opportunities, and the insufficiency of social services.

In this vein, Epstein performs an evaluation of “personal social services”, which consist of the
philanthropic efforts of private charities to lift individuals out of poverty through training them,
connecting them with employment, and so on. He argues that these efforts are socially ineffective,
as they only really provide a leg-up for selected highly-motivated individuals. Moreover, the
evaluation of such services generally falls short on scientific rigour – by which he means randomised
control trials – and opts for romantic affirmations whenever objective evidence of their successes
are lacking. This theme extends into a two-chapter discussion of the Food Stamp program, whereby
Epstein surveys its political history alongside other associated social welfare programs. The picture
that emerges is that welfare efforts in America are largely about applying “moral behaviourism”,
targeted at reforming the character of individuals rather than addressing their social conditions.
Paltry welfare provisions are used as a stick to motivate people to seek work. The question of
whether there is worthwhile work available to them is largely left unaddressed – as are any social
problems which might point towards expensive or ambitious solutions.

Social welfare policies have had to remain responsive to the cultural myths of America. Their
ineffectiveness and punitive nature are manifestations of popular national preferences, and not the
nefarious actions of illegitimate – corporate or political – elites. Epstein’s analysis of the recent
history of social policy arrives at the troubling conclusion that when Washington elites have sought
to implement effective and generous social welfare programs, their efforts have often been curtailed
by publicly popular state-level policies.

As said, Epstein makes no mention of Donald Trump, and the book seems to have been written prior
to Trump’s successful presidential campaign. There is a brief discussion of the Tea Party movement,
which seems anachronistic now. Yet the book offers as clear an explanation as any for the rise of
Trump: the self-presented archetypical American success story, a man doggedly convinced of the
authenticity of his own inner-intuitions regardless of their obvious external falsity. The celebration of
global military dominance while rejecting global responsibilities. Trump tapped into the cultural logic
of romanticism with the message that Washington had betrayed the American people’s divine
entitlement to immigrants and foreign interests. He argued that political elites had robbed
Americans of their ability to be self-efficacious individuals by allowing foreign trade to wreck primary
industries, prioritising environmentalism over economic growth, and stacking the deck against
middle class whites. Social welfare is a shameful sign of moral inferiority. Hence Trump promised to
bring back major industries with a narrative that it was through jobs, beneficently supplied by big
business, that middle America would retain its dignity. It is the same narrative that illuminated policy
romanticism all along, only now articulated in an unusually succinct and aggressive way.
It is not that hard to see why so many of Trump’s followers claim that he is appointed to the
presidency by God – Trumpism is deeply rooted in the long-standing values of policy romanticism,
which blurs into contemporary Christian beliefs (pp. 73-74). Trump himself has long been creating
himself as the archetypical romantic hero of American civic religion: an ostensibly self-made success
story with an exaggerated sense of personal agency, all driven by an interminable inner-will and
Gnosticism. Trump was not installed by a Russian conspiracy, and if we follow Epstein’s argument,
nor did he manipulate or dupe the electorate into voting against their preferences. His symbolism
corresponds with the hopes and aspirations engrained in American culture, and his administration’s
actions correspond remarkably well with romantic policy priorities. Epstein knows he cannot test his
own hypotheses through randomised control trials, so he can only really insist that his argument is
convincing. To be convinced means conceding that any current upsurge in American democratic
populism is not a strategic manipulation of the people by politicians or special interests, but rather
the political expression of deeply embedded and widely affirmed cultural traditions. It is so deeply
embedded, in fact, that Epstein has almost nothing at all to say on how such a culture could possibly
be resisted.