to rule.63
Publicly at least, these new bourgeois heroes did not speak like ancient heroes. Their vocabulary consisted of such terms as equality, popular sovereignty, and liberty. Rousseau, however, sees this as little more than hypocrisy and ideology, and he warns his readers not to be fooled. The new upstart men of commerce and administrators (and to a lesser degree intellectuals) supported opening up the political system and other democratic measures only to the extent that the new measures would weaken their perceived enemies and promote their own ambitions.64 If they championed equality, it was only in a form such as equality of opportunity, which would not get in the way of their aristocratic ambitions.65 They knew that if they were to attain their goals of becoming the new aristoi, they had to subvert the old powers. They had to delegitimize, in short, the courtly aristocracy and the church. If democratic language was suitable to this purpose, they were more than willing to use it. Thus, like Odysseus, their values slid around to meet their desires, which paradoxically were aristocratic.
It is therefore sensible to conclude that Rousseau interprets the great social-class battles of the eighteenth century as an ideological scrum between competing aristocratic factions rather than between democrats and aristocrats. The contest between Ajax and Odysseus is not between two separate worldviews so much as between competing claims to the same prize. While the old and new aristocrats fought for dominance, Rousseau worried about the common people. In his view, they were merely pawns in this upper-class competition, to be used, abused, and demeaned for someone else’s ends. Throughout his writings, he tears off the democratic clothing of Europe’s emerging elite and attempts to protect the masses against the elite’s scheming and maneuvering for dominance.
Political Evidence: Elias’s Civilizing Process and Elite Politics in Modern Europe
Rousseau’s intuition about the nature of eighteenth-century politics draws support from important historical scholarship. In particular, Norbert Elias’s Civilizing Process perfectly frames Rousseau’s narrative. According to Elias, the medieval era in Europe is at first dominated by a warrior aristocracy of landowning knights who, like the ancient Greek aristocrats, earned their superiority on the battlefield. It was a violent, almost anarchic age in which those with official power were unable to monopolize authority. The nobility could share in ruling, provided that they had “the power to command and punish, to coerce.”66 In a violent age, naturally enough, the especially violent will dominate and have a strong claim to being best. True to classical aristocracy, these knights did not view their power simply in realpolitik terms. They obsessed about honor and glory and desired to be remembered and lauded by subsequent generations. The knightly aristocracy differed from their Greek counterparts in one crucial respect, however: they were also dedicated Christians and combined martial virtue with moral virtue.67 They were firmly committed to ideals of compassion and justice, and believed it was their duty to protect the weak. This knightly ideal meant that warriors could not merely work for themselves. They had to think about others as a matter of principle and not just when they believed it to be beneficial. Interestingly, in this Christianized aristocracy, knights were receptive to the idea that members of the peasant classes could earn glory and honor. According to Johan Huizinga, “The passionate defenders of the ideal of knighthood at times intentionally list the deeds of peasant heroes … to show they had great courage.”68 It was not unheard of for peasants themselves to try to immortalize themselves through great deeds. For example, Keith Thomas writes of Michael An Gof (a.k.a. Michael Joseph), a blacksmith who in 1497 led fifteen thousand Cornish tax rebels to London in the hope for “a name perpetual and a fame permanent and immortal.”69 Unfortunately, An Gof was hanged for his crimes. To be sure, there is a rather wide gap separating the Christian ideals espoused by the knights and their actual behavior. While the knights believed themselves to be defenders of beauty and virtue and were of inestimable social value, critics tend to dismiss them as little more than a self-serving elite scrambling for power and glory. Indeed, “seen from a truly spiritual view, all the noble life was nothing but open sin and vanity.”70
It was not hypocrisy that did the knights in, however. The anarchic political system could not last forever. Monarchical families emerged, as knights engaged in zero-sum competitions for land that increasingly concentrated power in a few hands until one family claimed victory and became the ruling family of the nation. Kings would slowly establish absolute power in England, France, and the Hapsburg territories. These structural changes led to the demise of the knightly aristocracy, as their abilities on the battlefield were not only unnecessary but also an unambiguous threat to these new absolutist kings. Warrior aristocrats simply could not be tolerated. At the same time, the new monarchs required capable administrators to govern their vast territories. Accordingly, universities became much more important, as they churned out a new socioeconomic class of lawyers and specialists capable of filling the monarchical need for rational administration. This new class of trained administrators was joined by a class of financiers and bankers, who learned to make money in the emerging commercial economy, and eventually a class of intellectuals, who taught in the universities and populated Europe’s urban centers. Combined, these new classes successfully challenged the old landed knightly nobility for social preeminence. Unsurprisingly, this struggle did not resolve itself quickly. The decline of the old knights was a slow process, as many could make money from their lands and remain powerful in the new age. Although they were, as Elias notes, a “functionless” social class and no longer had a claim to being best, they did not quietly disappear.71 Still, they slowly lost ground to the new administrative and commercial classes and by the beginning of the seventeenth century could no longer be considered the dominant social class.
For a time, the monarchs greatly benefited from this aristocratic turmoil. The two groups that posed greatest threats to their sovereignty were consumed with one another. As the new middle-rank lawyers, businessmen, and administrators increasingly gained the upper hand in their struggles against the old knightly aristocracy, however, the monarchs realized they could not afford to let these upstart classes vanquish the landed nobility. They surmised that a victorious middle rank would set its sights on political power next and try to supplant monarchy itself. So, they made every effort to string along class warfare as long as possible. To that end, the kings tipped the scales in favor of the old knightly aristocracy by awarding it tax exemptions, taxing powers, positions at court, and other important privileges in the hope of creating a roughly equal balance of power between the old knights and the new lawyers and bankers. The hope was that if the old knights could not compete monetarily with the upper strata of the upstart middle classes, at least they could claim to be the true aristocratic class.
Monarchical privileges alone, however, were not enough to merit the claim of being best. The old knights needed a new justification that would allow them to assert their superiority and define themselves as the true aristocracy. This was no simple task. The most obvious criteria for being best—superiority on the battlefield and wealth—were unavailable (though they would continue to subscribe to martial values even if they were rarely called upon to use them.) They would eventually settle on civilité. That is, they would distinguish themselves based on “fine dress, elaborate manners, and elegant speech.”72 They were, in short, members of a courtly aristocracy who were refined and polished, in contrast to the simple and vulgar or “rude” lower classes. This new aristocratic code of manners was not as petty as it sounds. It included civic virtue and was meant to publicly signify true superiority inherited from one’s ancestors. The nobles saw themselves as worthy of honor or public recognition for their distinctive genetic quality and felt obligated to behave in accord with their supposed superior nature. Nonetheless, whatever lip service was paid to love of country and virtue, courtly life was far from idyllic. Refined and polite mannerisms often did not lead to elevated behavior, even if there was little possibility of physical violence. The courtly aristocrats were cliquey and vigorously competed in what was a never-ending game for superior social status. Elias compares it to a stock market: “As in every ‘good society,’ an estimate of the ‘value’ of each individual is continuously being formed.”73 Successful courtiers became experts at expressions, suppressing emotion, disguising passion, and any other
