A-Infos (en) Italy, IFA, UCADI #200 - The Crisis of the Elite in the West (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In attempting to understand what is happening around us, we are 
appropriately guided by historical materialism in evaluating the 
multiple factors of the economy, in order to deduce the possible 
developments of human events. However, this often fails to provide a 
full and exhaustive understanding of phenomena and geopolitics because 
it is necessary to include within this narrative a variable consisting 
of the role played by individuals and to integrate into the historical 
materialist analysis elements arising from individual actions, human 
impulses, and therefore the role played by elites.
While the first two decades of the last century were marked by the rise 
of the masses on the political scene and thus by the prevalence of 
political parties, which nevertheless, in a relatively short period of 
time, became verticalized, granting a fundamental role to those who 
assumed their leadership. In the second half of the 1930s, the study of 
the role of elites, who, using the leadership of a political party as 
their instrument, rose to power in order to manage the politics of 
states, emerged within the field of political sociology, while political 
leaders still dominated.

If, from a factual perspective, it was war that served to liquidate the 
role of more or less charismatic leaders, replacing them with 
governments composed of teams of experts as collectors of class 
interests, it was Max Weber who devoted some of the most interesting 
pages of his political sociology to the "superiority of the small 
number," attempting to explain the role played by the elites who were 
establishing themselves as the defining factor of the new era. After 
him, analyses such as Wieser's on the essence of power highlighted the 
role and function of the minority principle, according to which a few 
people govern the masses, but it was Vilfredo Pareto who fully 
identified the elites and their circulation as the key concepts for a 
global interpretation of political and social phenomena as they were 
taking shape in complex societies. This reading of the world was fueled 
by the affirmation in society of objective elements constituted by 
aggregates, by Masonic Lodges, by associations of bankers, of merchants 
(just think of the Bilderberg), by more or less fallen nobles, by 
neo-influencers, from which it emerged that the elite manifest 
themselves in many ways, which arise from the conditions and the 
organization of economic and social life: "The conquest of wealth among 
merchant and industrial peoples, military success among warlike peoples, 
political skill and often the spirit of intrigue and baseness of 
character among aristocracies, democracies and demagogues, literary 
successes among the Chinese people, the acquisition of ecclesiastical 
dignities in the Middle Ages[...]are so many ways in which the selection 
of men is carried out." Elites, usually accompanied by the adjective 
"social," constitute a more or less broad plurality of small groups, 
identifiable according to different types of activities, the degree of 
concentration of resources, and the highest levels of individual 
ability. Sometimes, as an offshoot of the activities of large 
universities, research groups, study centers, and consultancies emerge. 
These present themselves as expert groups, but in reality constitute 
lobbying tools, expressions of interests with economic and therefore 
political ramifications, and whose purpose is to influence state decisions.
This process is accompanied by the prevalence of private economic 
choices over public ones, and the financialization of the economy, to 
the detriment of real economic activities. For example, Tesla's stock 
market value is higher than the combined values of the world's largest 
automakers, despite Toyota alone producing 10 times as many cars as 
Tesla. It follows that US corporations will be extremely powerful in a 
war based on shareholdings but ineffective in the real economy. And to 
the extent that large economies (China first and foremost) exist, whose 
elites control, or intend to control, the production line of essential 
goods regardless of the profit obtainable from the sale of individual 
products, the US super-financial model is destined to fail. These power 
groups equip themselves with tools to plan the exploitation of man by 
man, but it is of no use establishing specialized research centers that 
serve as think tanks, places for developing the strategies of domination 
that these power groups intend to develop.  But these groups, holding 
the largest shares of power and control of economic resources, are the 
ones who effectively manage ideological and political choices, creating 
a concentration of resources whose possession and/or control ensures 
power, specifically political power.

Conspiracy Theory and Political Planning

The set of considerations developed thus far contains objective elements 
of analysis and recognition of the true structure of power centers and 
can easily lead one to view politics as a conspiracy of hidden centers, 
contrasted with a world of transparent and visible, orderly, and 
protective institutions constituted by so-called democratic systems of 
government, in which power belongs to the people, who exercise it in the 
forms and ways established by a Constitution, wishing to remain within 
the purportedly democratic West. Naturally, the management of power 
takes on different institutional forms depending on the political and 
institutional systems of the countries we are referring to, often 
governed by oligarchies over which the so-called democratic West 
continues to reaffirm its moral superiority. However, the very fact that 
democratic systems have transformed into formal rather than substantive 
structures effectively reduces the difference between the different 
types of system and leads citizens, reduced to subjects, to see their 
rulers as an elite, effectively alien to their fellow citizens. This 
produces an ever-increasing distance from participation in the life of 
democratic institutions and, in effect, demonstrates the futility of 
voting, since political choices are directed by centers and structures 
of power that do not change with the different orientations of the vote, 
but are shaped and adapted to the persistent strategies of 
decision-making centers and power, effectively autonomous from any 
popular control.
For further information, and as proof of our assertion, it is worth 
reading the report on Competing from Advantageous. Extending Russia[1], 
to learn what plans were developed by the West and by this accredited 
American think tank, to understand that the policies adopted toward 
Russia are still those of Brezinski and that therefore the distinction 
between the attacked and the aggressor regarding the Ukrainian war is 
completely distorted by the narrative developed by the West. This 
document describes in detail, three years in advance, the various stages 
of the strategy of aggression against Russia, the destabilization and 
provocation actions implemented, leading up to the inevitable Russian 
military intervention that subsequently occurred.

The Crisis of Empire and the Crisis of the Elite

Even if we were to interpret the role of the elite as a tool for 
understanding and analyzing the evolution of geopolitics in the Western 
world today, we cannot escape the consideration that the evident and 
irreversible crisis of the American empire coincides with the 
progressive degradation of the elites, composed, as in the Middle Ages, 
of vassals, vassals, and vassals, who were supposed to represent and 
constitute the intermediate levels, the articulations through which 
imperial power unfolds across the territory and should allow for its 
control.
At the top of the pyramid we find the President of the United States, 
along with members of the British royal house and the elite of economics 
and finance, distributed between Wall Street, the City of London, and 
Silicon Valley, where they merge with the techno-capitalist component 
that aims to transcend the Enlightenment and the legacy of 1968, 
delighting in frequenting exclusive clubs and savoring power. We are 
faced with a rabble of degenerates involved, in various capacities, in 
the trafficking of Jeffrey Epstein, the American billionaire who 
committed suicide and offered minors of both sexes for the pleasures of 
these pigs.
These "criminal greatness" is supported, and their power is supported by 
a group of supporters whose qualities and intelligence are in fact 
diminishing. These supporters are of increasingly modest caliber, such 
as Ursula von der Stupid, the idiotic Kaja Kallas, the failed President 
of the French Republic, Macron, German Chancellor Merz, a former Black 
Rock executive, the ineffable and colorless lawyer Starmer, a champion 
of stupidity, and the banker Mario Draghi, auctioneer of Italy's public 
industry and liquidator of the Italian economy, passed off as the savior 
of the country and all the rest. In this panorama of mediocrities, it's 
not difficult for the underdog Meloni to emerge, tail wagging, every 
time she finds herself in the presence of Donald Trump, or a US 
President who strokes her hair as Biden used to do. On the other hand, 
the mediocrity of this ruling class is the factor that has allowed the 
US President to launch his own tariff policy and to strike without a 
blow at the economies of Western countries, treating them, as they 
effectively are, as vassals of the empire, called upon in times of 
crisis to repay its debts, as befits all servants when the master 
commands. Taking this opportunity, given that the sixteen-year-old 
emperor is at work, he takes advantage of the situation to try to sever 
the umbilical cord that ties Anglo-Saxon capitalism to US capitalism, 
finally freeing himself from the hegemony that the latter thinks it can 
exercise over the "colonials", believing that the time has come for the 
neo-scientist technocratic component of capitalism to take the lead in 
the evolutionary process[2]. He therefore attempts to launch a policy of 
geostrategic agreement with Russia, under the banner of a common 
business across a range of sectors, hoping in this way to also revive 
the disastrous fortunes of the imperial economy.

The Failed Cosmopolitan Integration

This process failed to account for the substantial failure of the 
expansion and incorporation of the elites following the collapse of the 
USSR. After the two-year period of 1989-91, the oligarchs of the failed 
Soviet empire deluded themselves into the full circle of Western elites, 
individually seeking admission to the most exclusive circles, so much so 
that Vladimir Puntin himself attempted to be annexed and admitted to 
NATO's elite. It took them a few years to realize they were considered 
rejects, a reject, as befits the nouveau riche, to decide it was time to 
slam the door and embark on an independent path, which is what happened 
to Punti and his oligarchs starting in 2008. Since then, the ex-Soviet 
oligarchy, painstakingly selected in a fierce struggle for 
self-elimination, has progressively structured itself around the leader, 
constituting an alternative power structure that competes with the 
empire's elite for hegemony and living space.
The weakening of imperial power has inevitably left room for growth for 
the elite of an increasingly multipolar world. Thus, over time, ruling 
classes have emerged in China, India, Islamic countries, emerging 
economies, and even Africa, freed from the old colonial ties: the empire 
was no longer capable of encompassing and containing the world's ruling 
classes as a whole.
There is room for a multipolar world to grow and develop, where the 
oligarchies vying for power are structured into groups, based on 
interests, that fiercely vie for hegemony. These new oligarchies, these 
new elites, highly combative and aggressive, appear at first glance more 
hardened because they have been forced into a tough fight and a severe, 
no-holds-barred selection process, and in these conditions they have 
learned to survive and prevail. Like all young organisms, they sense the 
vigor of their recent formation and, aware of the growing weight of the 
economies and interests they represent, they prepare for a confrontation 
without firing shots.
In this confrontation, the servile elite, raised in the empire, in 
obedience and subservience to the hegemonic power, is destined to 
succumb to these new oligarchies, these new elites, who have everything 
they need to impose themselves and prevail, because they are equipped 
with greater autonomy and new and innovative tools for confrontation and 
struggle.

A new paradigm and a new approach

In the face of a West, the embodiment of a dying empire, which 
nevertheless struggles like a serpent, dealing out lashes left and 
right, a world characterized by global relations between its various 
components is gaining increasing traction. This is well represented by 
the BRICS, a multipolar world of relations that seeks to embrace free 
trade and mutual coexistence as the central tenet of its relations. In 
this crisis, the rebirth of empires is taking shape, and peoples are 
structuring themselves into groups that trace ancient linguistic, 
ethnic, religious, and geographical fault lines, sometimes rediscovering 
an anachronistic nationalism that often takes on ugly and crude forms, 
with racist and supremacist content.
Faced with the inability to reconcile interests, armed conflict prevails 
and war is resorted to. This is demonstrated by the fact that this is an 
era in which local conflicts erupt, with the danger of degenerating into 
nuclear conflict always looming, especially since the threat of 
resorting to nuclear weapons has become the only guarantee for ensuring 
respect for the autonomy of states. While a fierce struggle for control 
of markets and raw materials, even resorting to armed conflict, is 
raging between the various forces involved, so fierce is the possibility 
of nuclear war. Unfortunately, today there are those who speculate that 
nuclear war is a possible price to pay to decide the real balance of 
power on the ground, or those who are willing to resort to genocide in 
order to appropriate territories inhabited by other peoples, erasing 
with the memory the horror of the atrocities experienced.

At first glance, these new ruling classes are unprepared to address 
certain new factors linked to the feedback that the environment, in the 
broader sense, is providing to human society (however it is organized). 
Whether it be climate change or eternal pollutants or even more or less 
natural epidemics, these are problems that require collective choices 
that cannot be made in the presence of a neo-feudal regime.
It is a world that has not reckoned with inequality and refuses to do 
so, ignoring the latent but inevitable presence of class struggle. A 
world governed by elites, whether a homogeneous class or a set of 
competing factions, inevitably generates unjust inequalities that 
legitimize rebellion and give rise to the yearning for a potential 
equality, the search for a possible and necessary social justice.
In this precarious situation, some see the restoration of the empire as 
the path to ensuring the peaceful coexistence of peoples, content with 
the fact that the imperial order simultaneously ensured slavery and 
peace. A new Roosevelt appears, or the American empire is destined to 
decline anyway (nuclear war aside, in which case it all ends). But for a 
new Roosevelt to emerge, countries must first experience and overcome a 
great depression, which will likely extend to the countries of the 
so-called collective West.

[1]Competing from Advantageous. Extending Russia, edited by analysts 
James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, 
Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent 
Williams. Editor's Note, September 2022, 
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html. For commentary: 
Giuseppe Galliano, "The Wear and Tear of Russia and Europe," "Analisi 
Difesa," 
https://www.analisidifesa.it/2025/01/il-logoramento-di-russia-ed-europa/; 
L'indipendente, "There is a 2019 US plan to "unbalance" Russia," 
https://www.lindipendente.online/2022/03/16/esiste-un-piano-usa-del-2019-per-sbilanciare-la-russia-leggerlo-oggi-spiega-molto/ 
Reading it today explains a lot.
[2]Center for State Reform, Silicon Valley's Plan for the 
Techno-Republic, 
https://centroriformastato.it/il-piano-di-silicon-valley-per-la-tecno-repubblica/; 
Musk and Zuckerberg, From Digital Capitalism to Platform Fascism, 
https://ilmanifesto.it/musk-e-zuckerberg-dal-capitalismo-digitale-al-fascismo-delle-piattaforme

G.L.

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https://www.ucadi.org/2025/09/04/la-crisi-dellelite-nelloccidente/
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