The solution to the problem of modern elitism is not the elimination of leadership but its reformation—the cultivation of stewardship elitism that positions leaders as servants of civilization rather than its masters.

In a recent essay for The Free Press titled “Our elites don’t deserve this much hatred,” economist Tyler Cowen makes a characteristic defense of our current elite class. Cowen’s argument follows familiar lines: elites are generally competent at what they do, they work hard, and society benefits from their expertise and innovations. To reject them wholesale, Cowen seems to suggest, would be to embrace a destructive populism that ultimately harms everyone.

This defense, however well-intentioned, misses the fundamental critique that traditionalist thinkers have long leveled against modern technocratic elitism, as well as the current populist revolt against elite opinion and authority. The issue is not competence versus incompetence (althought many of our current elites are indeed incompetent), but rather a deeper question of what stewardship-oriented leadership means and what responsibilities elites have toward civilization itself.

Beyond Technocratic Elitism

The modern conception of elitism that Cowen implicitly defends is fundamentally technocratic – defined primarily by specialized knowledge, educational credentials, and technical mastery. It values innovation over continuity, disruption over stewardship, and expertise over wisdom. These values especially represented the intellectual baggage left over from the so-called Progressive Era in Amerca.

In health care, education, the economy, and culture, we are constantly told to abide by the recommendations and opinions of the college-educated “experts” who apparently know better than ordinary folks what we should eat, how we should vote, and what kinds of social values we should embrace.

This attitude toward elites represent a radical departure from traditional understandings of leadership.

Roger Scruton, one of the most significant conservative philosophers of recent decades, articulated this problem in How to Be a Conservative, where he wrote that conservatism “is less interested in abstract schemes for improvement than in the concrete question of what we ought to conserve.” For Scruton, change must always reference tradition: “The desire to conserve is compatible with all manner of change, provided only that change is also continuity.” Modern technocratic elites, by contrast, often implement changes with little reference to established traditions or community needs.

This is particularly problematic when our elite (what Patrick Deneen calls the “laptop class”) increasingly exists in a cultural and social bubble disconnected from broader society. As Irving Babbitt observed in Democracy and Leadership, there is a danger in “setting up a pseudo-aristocratic ideal on a utilitarian basis.” Today’s credentialed experts frequently operate from this ungrounded position, implementing what they view as rational policy without understanding its cultural implications.

The conservative tradition is not, contrary to common misconception, anti-elitist. Rather, it offers a richer and more demanding conception of what elitism should entail. Edmund Burke, the philosophical father of modern conservatism, articulated this vision when he described society as “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” True elites in this vision serve as trustees of this intergenerational compact.

This view was elaborated by T.S. Eliot in his Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, where he argued that civilization requires elites who transmit cultural inheritance. Eliot wrote: “The transmission of culture may even be described simply as the transmission of our education, meaning by education… all that one generation can give to the next.” This is not mere preservation but active stewardship: “If we take culture seriously, we see that a people does not need merely enough to eat… but a proper and particular cuisine.”

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, in his prescient work “The Revolt of the Masses,” distinguished between mere social privilege – what members of the laptop class often possess – and authentic elitism, writing: “Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us – by obligations, not by rights.” This concept of noblesse oblige is entirely absent from Cowen’s defense, which frames elitism primarily as a matter of competence rather than duty.

Political philosopher Patrick Deneen’s recent work Regime Change builds on these traditionalist insights to diagnose our current predicament. Today’s bifurcated elite structure has produced a professional-managerial class that advances progressive social values while serving neoliberal economic interests – in essence, combining cultural progressivism with market fundamentalism. This arrangement has left working-class communities culturally alienated and economically vulnerable.

In his earlier work Why Liberalism Failed, Deneen argued that “a better course will consist in the patient work of recalling people to the practices of self-governance and the care of the commons.” What he proposes is not the elimination of elites but their reformation – leadership that unites the working class and educated professionals in service of the common good.

In fact, far from a populist uprising, Deneen essentially calls for a revolt of the elites against current social and political structures. We need members of the laptop class who are willing to ally themselves with the working class to renew the concept of a society in which a commitment to the common good transcends identitarian differences.

Heirarchies are nature to the human order. If our current elite class does not embrace a multi-class, multi-ethnic, pro-America agenda for the common good, a different, perhaps far more dangerous elite will emerge to take their place. As Russell Kirk wrote in The Conservative Mind, “Society requires honest and capable leadership; and if natural and traditional distinctions among men are obliterated, presently adventurers and demagogues and mobs fill the vacuum.”

For Kirk, the question was not whether to have elites, but what kind: “There is no conservative principle that says privilege ought to be maintained for privilege’s sake.”

Elites as cultural stewards

The problem is not, as Cowen suggests, that we resent expertise itself. Rather, it is that we have uncoupled expertise from its proper context within a larger moral and cultural framework. Our current elites have no moral ground upon which to stand after the massive failures of the media, politicians, health care officials, and educators during the COVID-19 fiasco. But their credibility was already in freefall, as described by Yuval Levin in his pre-pandemic masterpiece, A Time to Build.

True stewardship elitism must reclaim the role of cultural preservation. This means several things; firstly, a reconnection with tradition. As Scruton wrote, “The real conservative…knows that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.” Traditions embody accumulated wisdom that cannot be replicated through abstract reasoning alone.

Second, elitism as cultural stewardship means embracing local knowledge. Technocratic elitism typically imposes universal solutions from above. As Burke noted, “Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect.” Knowledge must be contextualized in particular communities and traditions.

Leadership of this sort also looks toward serving intergenerational interest. Stewardship elites must think beyond electoral cycles or quarterly reports to consider impacts across generations. That is why education is so fundamental to the nurturing of an effective and credible elite. Education serves a fundamentally formative purpose, and among its purposes is not just the formation of youth of their civilizational heritage, but the raising up of new generations of elite committed to the transmission and preservation of the common good.

Finally, the ultimate test of an authentic elitism is its attention to cultivating moral formation in the citizenry. Babbitt emphasized that education must form character, not just technical capacity: “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on.”

The alternative to both resentful populism and deracinated technocracy is what G.K. Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead” – leadership that respects the accumulated wisdom of tradition while adapting it thoughtfully to present circumstances. True elites are those who can serve as bridges between past and future, between high culture and popular sentiment, between necessary innovation and essential continuity.

Contrary to Cowen’s implicit assumption, the conservative critique of modern elites is not that they exist, but that they have abandoned their proper role as cultural stewards in favor of becoming social engineers.

The solution is not the elimination of leadership but its reformation – the cultivation of stewardship elitism that positions leaders as servants of civilization rather than its masters. Only then can we reconcile the legitimate authority of the competent with the equally legitimate desire for leadership that respects and preserves our cultural inheritance.

This essay originally appeared on the author’s Substack, “Schools, Souls, and Civitas.”

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The featured image is “Oath of the Horatii” by David and his pupil Girodet, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.