Political science test. Political elitology Chapter I

ELITOLOGY IN THE SYSTEM OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Ashin G.K.

The term “elitology” is a Russian innovation at the end of the twentieth century. It was introduced into scientific circulation in response to the need to create a comprehensive scientific discipline that describes the phenomenon of the elite, integrating the achievements and methods of philosophy, political science, sociology, social psychology, sociology, historical science, cultural scientists. This article emphasizes the role of philosophy as a theoretical foundation for solving elitological problems.

Keywords: elite, elitology, pseudo-elite, people masses Keywords: elite, elitology, pseudoelite, people masses

G1 For teachers and students of the elite (b-b MGIMO (U), there is a natural interest in kelitology - the science of elites and the elite.

Subject of elitology. The 20th century sharply accelerated the process of differentiation and integration of sciences, passing it on like a baton XXI century. Moreover, new scientific disciplines are increasingly being formed not just as specialized areas of already established scientific disciplines, namely, as disciplines that integrate the achievements of different, mainly related sciences (and sometimes very distant from each other)1, and often the methods and concepts of one science turn out to be heuristic when solving problems that arise before another scientific discipline. It is precisely such a complex scientific discipline, increasingly claiming independent status, that is elitology2. It was formed in line with social and political philosophy, but integrated the achievements and methods of other related disciplines. Elitology has developed as a complex interdisciplinary knowledge lying at the intersection of political science, social philosophy, sociology, general history, social psychology, and cultural studies.

Elitology is a relatively new socio-political discipline, although its roots go back to hoary antiquity. This is the science of elites and the elite, the highest layer in the socio-political system

stratification. Being a minority of society, this layer plays a huge, often decisive role in the social process. The special role of the elite is determined by the special importance of management activities. The fate of millions of people directly depends on the decisions made by this ruling minority. Is this situation fair, is it a universal law of social development, or is it a historical phenomenon that arises at a certain stage of the historical process and, therefore, is transitory, how elites are formed, how they come to power, and then degrade, leave the historical arena, how it happens transformation and change of elites, whether it is possible to improve the quality of the elite, and if so, by what methods - these are the most important problems that this scientific discipline seeks to solve.

But in an extremely broad sense, elitology goes beyond the boundaries of the systematic nature of social sciences; it can be considered as a science about the differentiation and hierarchization of being, its ordering, structuralization and evolution, a non-gentropic process. It is known that the movement from chaos to order - the content of the development process - includes the differentiation of being, with which its hierarchization is inextricably linked (the key problem for understanding the phenomenon of the elite and the elite). As is known, the feature

Ashin Gennady Konstantinovich - Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Department of Philosophy at MGIMO (U) MFA of Russia, e-mail: [email protected].

systems - their stable ability to self-regulate, prevent or minimize disturbances, maintain balance, homeostasis. General systems theory has an extremely wide scope of application. Any system can be represented as a certain integrity, consisting of elements that are in relationships, connections with each other, constituting a certain unity; Moreover, it is possible to identify the hierarchy of these relations, their subordination (each element of the system can be considered as a subsystem, that is, a system of a lower order, as a component of a broader system). There is no doubt about the connection between elitology and synergetics (which can be considered as prolegomena to elitology or, more precisely, as its metatheory). Synergetics, to the development of which I. R. Prigogine made a huge contribution, can be called the science of universal patterns of development of complex dynamic self-organizing systems, the latter undergoing sharp changes in states during periods of instability. In the synergetic paradigm, development is a change of stable states of the system by short chaotic periods (bifurcations), which determine the transition to the next stable state, and the choice is probabilistic in nature and occurs at bifurcation points. It is during these periods that elitogenesis, as well as a change of elites, is most likely in social systems.

In an extremely broad interpretation, elitology is a kind of meta-theory in relation to social elitology, which, in fact, is the subject of its research. And the latter is not an extrapolation to society of the elitology of existence, the laws of space, or even biological elitology. It is not enough to say about social elitology that it is specific, it differs significantly from hierarchization in nature (macro- and microcosm), because it is subjective, its laws are implemented through the active activity of people; the laws of society are not simply a continuation or special case of the laws of nature. Society, on the one hand, is a part of the material world, but it is a part that is not only different from nature, but in a certain sense is also opposite to it, being a product of human activity.

But we will not endlessly expand the subject of elitology, if only because as a result of this it loses its specificity. Perhaps it would be much more accurate to say that elitology in a broad sense is based on the doctrine of the systemic nature of being (and, consequently, on the general theory of systems), its differentiation and hierarchization, on the laws

thermodynamics (entropy and negentropy), synergetics. Of course, these areas of knowledge in themselves do not reveal the specifics of elitology; they rather indicate the attitudes and principles from which elitology starts and on which it is based. At best, they can only be preliminary remarks about what methodological principles elitology is based on.

Note that hierarchy is characteristic not only of the morphology of a certain system, but also of its functioning: individual levels of the system are responsible for certain aspects of its behavior, the functioning of the system as a whole is the result of the interaction of all its levels, and the control of the system as a whole is carried out by its highest level. Thus, in complex dynamic systems, it is possible to distinguish the control and controlled subsystems, to record the phenomenon of subordination - the most important point explaining the problem of elite and elitism. Among the most complex dynamic systems, biological and, of course, social systems are of particular interest, and the latter, in fact, are the specific subject of consideration by elitologists. Let us note that one of the founders of the approach to society as a system in a state of dynamic equilibrium was the recognized classic of elitology V. Pareto. In this regard, I would also like to note the development of a systematic approach in tectology by A. A. Bogdanov3 and praxeology by T. Kotarbinsky4, which are especially fruitful in relation to understanding the functioning of the political-administrative elite.

It is known that the peculiarity of systems is their ability to self-regulate, prevent or minimize disturbances, maintain balance, homeostasis. Another feature of systems is their hierarchical structure, in which the quality of the whole is irreducible to the properties of its constituent elements. The system as a hierarchical structure, as an integrity, “sets” the program for the functioning of its elements (moreover, self-regulation of biological systems, in particular, a population, occurs not at the level of individuals making up the population, but at the level of the population as an integrity, and in society - not at the level of individuals , and at the level of society, and the identification of an elite is an element of the evolution of social systems at a certain stage of their development, aimed at reducing entropy; the main quality of the elite is to keep the social system in a state of equilibrium, giving it an impetus for dynamic development).

Evolutionary change in a biological population begins with a shift in environmental conditions and leads to an increase in the frequency and diversity of genetic and behavioral deviations from the norm. Individuals that exhibit the most viable deviations from the norm can be called elite. These elite individuals act as scouts, and then as the vanguard in the development of the population; the most useful of them for the population are “selected” by this population through the consolidation of qualities that are optimal for the population in the offspring of these individuals. Moreover, natural (as well as artificial) selection turns the changes in elite individuals that are necessary for the population into mass (typical) changes for the population, into the norm. As noted by the prominent Russian paleontologist M.A. Shishkin, “as a result of selection, the structures and functions of the organism are involved in a coordinated change, which spreads over generations down to the genome level and ultimately turns the aberration into a new stable norm”5.

Now let us narrow the subject of elitology to social elitology6, which is elitology in the proper sense of the word. Elitology can be considered as a science about the foundations of social differentiation and stratification, more precisely, as a science about the highest stratum in any system of social stratification, about its special functions related to the management of the system as a whole or certain of its subsystems, with the development of norms and values ​​that serve the self-maintenance of the system and its development, orient it towards movement in a certain direction, as a rule, towards improving the system, towards its progress. Therefore, the elites include the most dynamic, passionate elements of society (or, if this applies to closed societies, their upper classes or social strata). Thus, the elite is a part of society, consisting of the most authoritative, influential people, which takes leading positions in the development of norms and values ​​that determine the functioning and development of the social system. The elite is the reference group on whose values, considered exemplary, society is oriented. These are either the bearers of traditions that bind and stabilize society, or, in other social situations (usually crisis ones), the most active elements of the population who are innovative groups. Thus, elitology is the science of elites and the elite, the science of the foundations of differentiation of society, the criteria for this differentiation, the legitimacy of this differentiation, a science that studies the political behavior of the elite, its value system

orientations, its social characteristics. Of course, it needs to develop an appropriate categorical apparatus, including the definition of the concepts “best” and “chosen”.

Finally, often (primarily in political science) the elite is spoken of in the narrow sense of the term as a political-administrative, managerial elite. Exactly this component elitology has become (perhaps without sufficient grounds for this) the most important, widespread, “applied” part of elitology, although this is only one of many elitological disciplines. In this narrow sense, the subject of elitology (more precisely, political elitology) is the study of the process of socio-political management and, above all, the highest stratum of political actors, the identification and description of the social stratum that directly carries out this management, being its subject (or, in in any case, the most important structural element of this subject), in other words, the study of the elite, its composition, the laws of its functioning, the elite’s coming to power, its retention of this power, the legitimization of the elite as the ruling layer, the condition for which is the recognition of its leading role by the mass of followers, the study its role in the social process, the reasons for its degradation (as a rule, due to its closedness) and departure from the historical arena as not meeting the changed historical conditions, the study of the laws of transformation and change of elites.

The structure of the subject of elitology certainly includes the history of the development of knowledge about elites, that is, the history of elitology7. At the center of the subject of elitology is the study of its laws - the laws of structure (the structure of the elite, the connection between its elements, which are usually subsystems of the elite as an integral system - political, cultural, military elite, etc.), the laws of the functioning of elites, the interaction of elements of the system, the dependencies between its various components, the role in which each of these components acts in relation to the elite as an integral phenomenon, the laws of connection and subordination of the elements of this system, and finally, the laws of development of this system, its transition from one level to another, usually higher, to a new one the type of connections within this system. This will be discussed in more detail below.

Russian school of elitology. The term “elitology” is a Russian innovation. It was introduced into scientific circulation in the 1980s and has become widespread in Russian social sciences since the second half of the 1990s, when a number of works on this issue were published8.

We can safely say that a Russian school of elitology has emerged. One of its centers is MGIMO (U), where elitologists work - professors O. V. Gaman, E. V. Okhotsky, G. K. Ashin and others.

Unfortunately, foreign colleagues they are in no hurry (yet?) to recognize the necessity and legality of this term (is it because this is precisely a Russian innovation?), however, they themselves do not offer its equivalent. It is quite possible to admit that the term “elitology” hurts the ears of people for whom English language is native. It is no coincidence that they prefer the term “political science” to political science and “cultural studies” to cultural studies. However, we do not at all cling to the term9. As the Russian proverb says: “Even if you call it a pot, just don’t put it in the oven.”

Behind last years The author of this article visited more than 20 universities in the USA, Great Britain, Germany, in many of them he gave lectures on elitological issues, as well as reports at world philosophical, political science, sociological congresses and conferences. Moreover, in foreign universities, as a rule, I was asked to give lectures and special courses under the titles traditional for Americans and Western Europeans: “Sociology of the Elite” in sociology departments and “Political Elites” in political science departments. It was necessary to explain that the sociology of the elite and the problems of political elites are only parts of elitology, albeit very important ones. In fact, do the courses “Political Elites”, “Sociology of the Elite”, “Theories of the Elite” taught in Western universities exhaust all elitological problems? They can rather be considered as separate sections of elitology, which describe certain aspects of the phenomenon of the elite as an integral, systemic object. With such a fragmented approach, it is impossible to cover the subject of research - the elite - as a certain integrity, as a certain system, to reveal the laws of the functioning and development of this phenomenon, to exhaust all the richness of relations within the elite and relations between the elite and society as a whole. It is precisely this holistic, systemic approach to the phenomenu of the elite and the elite that elitology, in particular, the Russian school of elitology, insists on. As for the term “elitology” itself, its meaning cannot be exaggerated; it, like any other scientific concept- just a moment, even a key moment, of a certain concept. Elitology is the broadest concept, including all sciences about elites, regardless of the value orientation of a particular scientist developing this issue, regardless

whether he is an apologist, a singer of the elite, or a critic of a society that needs an elite to govern and places the elite in a privileged position. Elitology strives to be scientific, not ideological.

At many congresses and conferences one had to listen to criticism of the approach to elitology as a relatively independent scientific discipline. The objections of Western colleagues against the very term “elitology” and against distinguishing it as an independent science are characteristic and not without interest. Here is the opinion of one of them: “The term itself is rather clumsy, clumsy, and also consists of two roots - Latin (elite) and Greek (logos), which already speaks of its eclecticism.” I replied that one could agree with this argument, that I would with great pleasure introduce the term “aristology”, where both roots would be Greek, that the Greek “aristos” seemed to me preferable to the Latin root “elite”. But the whole point is that the term “elite”, introduced into scientific circulation by V. Pareto, is well-established, firmly established in science, and the term “aristology” would introduce even greater confusion into an already difficult problem.

Another objection to elitology. One of the participants in the discussion of this problem said: “It’s bad when the number of scientific disciplines increases” and called for relying on the words of the famous medieval scholastic Ockham that “entities should not be multiplied.” In answering a colleague, I had to refer to the fact that he did not quote Ockham in full: the philosopher said that “entities should not be multiplied unless absolutely necessary.” And this is precisely the case when there is a “special need”. The role of elites in the historical process in general is too great, and Russia has suffered too much from unqualified, cruel, and sometimes dishonest elites.

But let’s return to the courses taught in a number of Western European and American universities, whose subject matter is one or another elite, one or another aspect of the study of elites. The course “Theories of Elites” is usually only of a historical and political science nature. A very interesting course taught by L. Field and J. Higley, Elitism (and a book with the same title10) analyzes an important paradigm that is directly relevant to our problems, but it is only one of the paradigms that does not take into account the egalitarian paradigm (and therefore it cannot claim to be a holistic analysis of elitology). Even elitist concepts cannot satisfy us

in the spirit of F. Nietzsche and H. Ortega y Gasset, if only because they all unconditionally accept the elite-mass dichotomy as an axiom, as a norm of a civilized society, ignoring the possibility of studying and interpreting the phenomenon of the elite by researchers proceeding from the egalitarian paradigm and considering the presence of an elite as a challenge to democracy, leaving aside objections against the perpetuation of this division as an ahistorical approach to the very fact of the existence of the elite.

Even fewer can claim to cover all elitological issues in the “Political Elite” course. It should be noted that the vast majority of modern researchers recognize the pluralism of elites (political, economic, religious, cultural, etc.). But if in any context the concept of “elite” is used without an adjective specifying which elite is meant, one can be sure that we are talking about the political elite. This very circumstance indicates that in the public consciousness it is the political elite that comes to the fore, which pushes other, non-political elites into the background (which, in our opinion, is more bad than good, because by default it presupposes the primacy of the political elite). It seems to us more fair that in the hierarchy of elites and socially dominant groups, the leading place should rightfully belong to the cultural elite, the creators of new cultural and civilizational norms. The highest place in the hierarchy of elites and leaders of mankind should be given not to Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin or Churchill, but to Buddha, Socrates, Christ, Kant, A. Einstein, A. D. Sakharov, A. I. Solzhenitsyn.

If we ignore the narrow, one-sided, one might say, somewhat philistine, interpretation of the elite as a group of political leaders, then it can be interpreted as the vanguard of any social community, be it humanity, a country, a nation (down to a small group), its most active part- these are the creators of cultural norms, the initiators of social transformations, those who play the role of scouts for society. By the way, what has been said applies not only to the elite of humanity, but also, to a certain extent, to the elites of biological populations. One of the largest Russian psychophysiologists P. V. Simonov, while studying a population of rats (which he considered one of the most intelligent representatives of the animal world), found out that in this population different groups can be distinguished - one, constituting the absolute majority (let's call it a conservative group) , as well as a small, most

an active group of innovators, the most inquisitive individuals. The experiment consisted of the fact that in a certain limited space (although it had access to the outside), the rats received a sufficient amount of food and other “rat goods”, and the simplest and safest way of their life was not to go outside - into an open field, where it was impossible to hide from enemies (and among them were predator birds); most did so. But there was also a certain percentage of individuals in the population who were curious enough, overwhelmed by a thirst for knowledge, to “take a risk,” explore a new space and try to master it. These were elite individuals who objectively acted for the population.

Perhaps the closest thing to the subject of elitology is the subject of the sociology of the elite. However, the subject of the sociology of the elite is significantly narrower than the subject of elitology. The sociology of the elite does not exhaust all the richness of the content of elitology. At a meeting of the Academic Council of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, one of its members, criticizing the term “elitology”, said on this occasion that sociology has a large number of terms, and if desired, you can add the word “logy” to each of them and similarly create many new sciences . It seems that in this formulation of the question one can discern a kind of “sociological expansionism”, the confidence that everything social problems can be resolved within the framework of sociology. Isn’t this approach a manifestation of a kind of “childhood disease” of a relatively young science, striving to “conquer” as much space as possible for itself? But elitological problems have been solved for more than one millennium by the best minds of mankind, starting with Confucius and Plato, while sociology has existed for only about two centuries. Sociological research methods should not be absolutized either; in elitology they are supplemented by philosophical, political science, cultural, and psychological ones. Sociological approach to identify the elite was proposed by one of the founders and classics of elitology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. V. Pareto. IN various fields human activity he singled out the people who carried out this activity most successfully (he assigned them an index of 10, and then in descending order to zero). Let’s say, according to the criterion of wealth, one should give a ten to billionaires, a one to those who barely keep on the surface, reserving o for the beggar, the homeless (although, strictly speaking, according to Pareto, there is always a hierarchization, and, consequently, an elite of beggars, homeless people, etc.). d.). But is it possible to use

specified criterion when determining, say, the cultural elite? What index will we assign to Van Gogh or Vermeer - geniuses of painting, not appreciated by their contemporaries, or J. S. Bach, whose genius was fully appreciated only by his grateful descendants? Obviously, specifically cultural criteria will be needed. The sociology of the elite is the most important part of elitology, but it is still only part of it. That's why systems approach, proposed by Russian elitology, seems to us more promising.

The Russian school of elitology emerged in the last two decades of the twentieth century. And this is quite understandable. It is known that in Soviet times, elitological issues were taboo. Research on the Soviet elite was impossible for ideological (and, therefore, censorship) reasons. In accordance with the official Soviet ideology, the elite is an attribute of an antagonistic society, and it cannot exist in a socialist society (although the presence of an elite - a privileged layer in the form, first of all, of the top of the party-Soviet bureaucracy was an open secret). Historically, elitological issues entered Soviet science from the “back door” - through the permitted genre of “criticism of bourgeois sociology” (of course, this term itself is the same nonsense as “bourgeois physics” or “bourgeois biology”).

And it is no coincidence that Russian elitology was formed during the years of Russia’s democratic transition. When censorship barriers were removed, elitological research in Russia began to be carried out on a broad front. To paraphrase the words of a now unpopular classic, Russia has “suffered” for elitology. It suffered greatly from the rule of an unqualified, authoritarian (and even more so, totalitarian), often corrupt political elite, which resulted in an urgent need for a scientific discipline that would identify optimal approaches to improving the quality of the elite, the principles of its recruitment, democratic control over the elite, elite education.

In addition, there were other important prerequisites for the formation of a school of modern Russian elitology. She could rely on the powerful traditions of Russian pre-revolutionary and emigrant philosophy, political science, law, sociology, represented by such outstanding figures of science and culture as N. A. Berdyaev, M. Ya. Ostrogorsky, P. A. Sorokin, I. A. Ilyin , G.P. Fedotov, who made an invaluable contribution to the development of elitology. And in the second half of the twentieth century

The Russian school of elitology has been developing rapidly in the last two decades; its representatives published about a hundred monographs and thousands of articles on the most important aspects of elitology11. The school of Russian elitology has rightfully taken a leading place not only in the study of Russian elites (a couple of decades ago about Russian elites could only be learned from the works of foreign Sovietologists and Russian political emigrants), but also from the history of elitology, elitological regional studies (where we came to one of the first places in the world, if not first), and a number of general theoretical problems of elitology.

Elitological thesaurus. Like any emerging science, elitology needs to comprehend and clarify its conceptual apparatus, develop a general theory and methodology, translate theoretical concepts to the operational level, the development of empirical studies of elites, comparative elitological studies. Let's start by distinguishing between such concepts (which are still confused) as elitology, elitism, elitism. The confusion of these terms is, first of all, the result of the fact that elitology originated as elitism, for its theorists were spokesmen for the interests of those segments of the population from which members of the elite were recruited, and who acted as ideologists (and thereby apologists) of these strata.

Elitism is a concept based on the fact that the division of society into the elite and the masses is the norm. social structure, an attribute of civilization (the absence of such division is a sign of savagery, underdevelopment of society). The more aristocratic a society is, the higher it is as a society (F. Nietzsche). The elite in this understanding is a stratum that is more or less closed, whose members do not accept or despise the nouveau riche. Thus, elitism is an aristocratic and deeply conservative worldview. Accordingly, the writings of his supporters are a reflection on the very highest social stratum to which they belong or whose values ​​they are guided by.

Elitism is a phenomenon close to elitism, but not an identical concept to it. Taking as the initial postulate the same elite-mass dichotomy, its supporters, however, do not treat the masses with contempt; they are more liberal, respect the masses, recognizing their rights to a place “under the sun.” In any case, in their understanding, the elite should not be a closed stratum of society, but, on the contrary, open to the most

capable people from non-elite strata, including those from the lower social classes. Recognized as legal and even desirable high level social mobility. Any society is subject to social stratification, which is caused by the unequal distribution of abilities; in the competition for elite positions, those more prepared for managerial activities win. Elitists are characterized by a meritocratic approach to the elite (however, this approach is by no means a monopoly of elitists; it is inherent in both a number of moderate elitists and moderate egalitarians).

Elitology is the broadest concept that unites all researchers of the elite, regardless of their methodological attitudes and value preferences, including supporters of the egalitarian paradigm, for which the presence of an elite is a challenge to the fundamental value of society - equality. Among the egalitarians there are supporters of rough egalitarianism, up to complete equality of property, egalitarians for whom it is intolerable that among the “equals” there are people who, in the words of J. Orwell, are “more equal than others” (radical egalitarians). But significantly larger number egalitarians justify the admissibility of a certain degree of inequality in accordance with the abilities and, most importantly, the merits of people, their contribution to the development of society, that is, they demonstrate elements of a meritocratic approach (moderate egalitarians).

Most elite researchers proceed from the fact that the elite is the determining force of the historical (including political) process, its subject. This approach is fraught with rather arbitrary postulation. To avoid confusion between different interpretations of the elite and its role in the development of society, we introduce a distinction between such concepts as elitology, elitism, elitism. The first is a broader concept than the second and third. Of course, all elitists and elitists are elitologists, but not all elitologists are either elitists or elitists. Such a distinction helps us, in particular, to avoid a common mistake, especially characteristic of American political scientists, who classify the outstanding American sociologist R. Mills as an elitist on the formal basis that he used the elite-mass dichotomy for analysis. political system USA. Mills did not consider the presence of a ruling elite to be either an ideal or a norm of the political system, rightly believing that the concentration of power in the hands of this elite is evidence

the undemocratic nature of this political system. Thus, while undoubtedly an elitologist, and an outstanding elitologist at that, Mills was neither an elitist, much less an elitist. The elitist paradigm (uniting elitists and elitists) includes those sociologists and political scientists who, like L. Field and J. Higley, consider the identification of the elite as a subject of social management and its privileged position as the law of the social process, its norm. But an elitologist who studies a really existing elite can be critical of the very fact of the existence of this social stratum, considering it a threat to democracy (even an alternative to democracy); his ideal social organization there may be a self-governing society, a society without an elite, or (which, in essence, is the same thing), a society in which all members will rise to the level of the elite, will be a real subject, the creators of the historical process. As for elitists and elitists, they consider such views to be a kind of social utopia, and the presence of an elite for them is an immanent element of civilized societies.

In recent years, interest in the elitist paradigm has increased - primarily in political science (and this paradigm is usually considered in relation to the egalitarian, pluralistic and other paradigms). It is precisely this issue—the confrontation and change of different paradigms in political science with an emphasis on the elitist paradigm—that the above-mentioned Field and Higley study. Here is the diagram they draw. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, an elitist paradigm emerges (with this term they combine elitism and elitism) and displaces the egalitarian paradigm and challenges the liberal and Marxist paradigms. At the same time, it is recognized that the founders of elitism were not completely hostile to the liberal system of Western values ​​and saw the main enemy in the Marxist paradigm. In the second and third quarters of the twentieth century, there was a decline and stagnation of the elitist paradigm12, and interest in it increased again in the fourth quarter of the century. It seems that this scheme is not entirely correct: it does not fully take into account, in particular, the explosion of interest in the elitist paradigm in the 1950s, which was caused by the books of R. Mills “The Power Elite” and F. Hunter “Supreme Leadership in the USA” , which caused heated controversy in American and Western European political science, generally aimed at discrediting the left-radical concept of Mills and his followers and defending the pluralistic paradigm. This scheme also does not take into account

a conservative and aristocratic paradigm that came into the 20th century from the 19th century. In short, this scheme greatly simplifies the situation that developed in the twentieth century. Field and Higley's position about the growing role and significance of the elitist paradigm in the third quarter of the twentieth century and further at the beginning of the twenty-first century is also disputed by many political scientists and sociologists. However, they have no less number of supporters. K. Lash writes about the “revolt of the elites” in America13, J. Devlin writes about the revolution of the elites in post-Soviet Russia; A similar position is taken by D. Lane, K. Ross, and U Zimmerman14. The Field and Higley scheme is supported, in particular, by the growing influence of the “neo-elitists” T. Dye, H. Zeigler and others (including J. Higley himself), in American political science.

The growth of elitist concepts in modern political science reflects, first of all, the increasing role of elites in the modern political process. The famous Russian elitologist O.V. Gaman rightly notes the significant increase in the influence of the power of national and transnational elites in relation to mass groups. She considers the peak of elitism to be the period after the Second World War and, in particular, the period of the reign of George W. Bush15.

Is Field and Higley’s scheme confirmed by the example of Russian political science? To a certain extent, yes. A number of Russian political scientists write about the radical turn of Russian political science and sociology from the egalitarian, anti-elitist paradigm, which certainly prevailed in the Soviet period, to the elitist paradigm. But in Russia at the end of the twentieth century a special, unique political situation arose. And it is unlikely that the example of Russian social sciences can illustrate the global trend of growing influence of the elitist paradigm. In Russia, the undoubted growth of the influence of the elitist paradigm, in our opinion, is not the result of the natural evolution of scientific views, it is rather the result of political reasons, it is a reaction to the censorship, ideological persecution of elitism carried out in the Soviet years and decades. It is known that a spring, which is compressed by external forces, tends to straighten, tends to oscillatory motion in the opposite direction.

And in Russia there really was a turn away from Soviet-type egalitarianism, a largely pharisaical egalitarianism that denied the presence in the USSR of a totalitarian elite endowed with institutional privileges and hid the real inequality of the ruling elite and masses, in other words, pseudo-egalitarianism, propagated by apologists

one-party system, to an elitist paradigm. This turn is often interpreted as part of a general turn from totalitarianism to democracy.

It seems, however, that there are too many moments here that reflect the specifics of the Russian situation at the end of the twentieth century for the Russian turn to the elitist paradigm of this period to be considered a confirmation of the correctness of Field and Higley’s hypothesis about a global paradigm shift in political science. In science, the transition from one paradigm to another (see: T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, M., 1975) is the result of the consistent accumulation of facts and data that do not fit into the generally accepted scientific community paradigm, and as a result, the accumulation of quantitative changes leads to a change of paradigms (which is identical to revolutions in science). In the Russian situation at the end of the twentieth century, everything happened differently. Firstly, the fact of the simultaneity and almost complete unanimity of Russian political scientists in the transition from one paradigm to another is alarming. This transition resembles not a natural process of development of science, but the result of some command from above (rather, the anticipation of this command, the readiness to guess and carry out the will of the “new authorities”). This is reminiscent of the existing navy command when the admiral commands a squadron of ships sailing in the wake: “Right (left) rudder!” and adds: “All of a sudden!” When such a turn takes place in science, this does not at all indicate an atmosphere of freedom and democracy in it. This is too similar to totalitarian times, when “all Soviet biology” began to fight together against Mendelism-Morganism, or all the sciences in the country - from mathematics to philosophy - fought against cybernetics. Or when physicists loyal to Nazi Germany “refuted” the theory of relativity created by the “non-Aryan” Einstein. So, perhaps, taking into account historical experience, it would be appropriate to assume that the judgment about a change in paradigms is a certain simplification of the process of development of modern Russian consciousness, perhaps such a turn is another sway from one extreme to another, so characteristic, unfortunately, for Russian life in the last century; maybe such a sharp movement is unsafe, being a movement between the Scylla of egalitarianism and the Charybdis of elitism. So, maybe real movement political thought flows between these two extremes, in their struggle and, at the same time, their interpenetration, with mutual consideration of these opposites. Humanity has been around for centuries

painfully seeks a balance between federalism and unitarism, between administrative-legal and civil-legal spaces, between elitism and egalitarianism, looking for ways to create sustainable non-violent civil power and build a civil society.

Elitology has a complex structure. It includes philosophical elitology, sociology of the elite, political elitology, history of elitology, elitological psychology (including the motivation of power, psychological characteristics of the elite layer), cultural elitology (the elite as the creative part of society, creating cultural values, analysis of elite and mass culture) , comparative elitology, which studies the general patterns and features of the functioning of elites in different civilizations, different countries, different regions of the world, elite education and elite pedagogy. Of course, this list of elitological disciplines is far from complete. Philosophical elitology16 represents the highest level of generalization in elitology. It, in turn, has a complex structure. In it one can distinguish elitological ontology, elitological epistemology (including ancient secret science, esoteric epistemology), elitological philosophical anthropology, elitological personalism.

Elitological philosophical anthropology and elitological personalism is a tradition coming from Confucius, Pythagoras, Plato to N. A. Berdyaev, M. Scheler and E. Mounier, turning to a comprehensive study of human problems, paying special attention to the issue of self-improvement of the individual, ascending the stages of perfection to the level of an elite individual. The mode of human existence is possibility; a person is a project (M. Heidegger), a person is what he creates (A. Camus). Hence his path to self-improvement, the opportunity to go beyond his limits, to rise above them (elitization of the individual). Philosophical anthropology can be seen as identifying the limits in which it can be described human nature(equally, the question can be raised about the absence of this fixed nature, that is, understanding it as plasticity), the possibility of going beyond these limits (which can be understood as the phenomenon of elitization of the individual). Personalism comes from close premises: personality - higher meaning civilization. N. Berdyaev’s personalism is called “eschatological”, but it can rightfully be called elitological

personalism: a person is the likeness of God, he acquires the features of godlikeness in the process of creativity, thereby realizing his calling. Berdyaev argued that the most important characteristic of a person is that he is not satisfied with himself, strives to overcome his limitations, to superhumanity, to the ideal. Personalism strives to create pedagogy, the purpose of which is the awakening and development of personal principles in a person, stimulating the self-elevation of the individual, his elitization, i.e., elite pedagogy. The focus of her attention is not just a personality, but a bright personality, a subject creative activity, innovative personality.

Socio-philosophical elitology is aimed at finding a normative approach to the elite, which, perhaps, most corresponds to the etymology of the term “elite,” which requires that the elite include the most creative people, outstanding in their moral and intellectual qualities. Close to this approach is the meritocratic concept, based on the fact that the true elite are not just those who, by the will of birth or chance, ended up “at the top”, but the elite of merit, the elite of intelligence, education, intellectual and moral superiority, erudition, and creative potential .

There is no doubt that an important, one might even say central place in elitology belongs to the sociology of the elite (let us recall once again that the subject of elitology is broader than the subject of the sociology of the elite; they are related as a whole and a part). In contrast to the philosophical-sociological approach, which is focused primarily on normativity, the sociology of the elite emphasizes the study of real elites. It is known how important sociology is to the analysis of social structure and social mobility (group and individual), and of particular interest is upward mobility (primarily to the elite), and the study of the mechanisms of elite recruitment. Sociology is characterized by a view of the elite as a reference group on whose values ​​society is guided. Distracting as much as possible from moralistic assessments, she identifies the elite in society and in various social groups according to such criteria as property status, status, place in power relations. The emphasis is usually on tradition. Weber on the status approach associated with claims to prestige and privilege, with the distribution of symbolic honor. Of particular interest for elitology in this regard is the problem of prescribed status associated with inherited factors, with social

origin, race and nationality and status based on personal achievements. The first plays a decisive role in societies with a closed elite, the second - with an open one. Among the sociological methods of studying elites, the method of empirical research occupies the most important place. Widely used in sociology statistical method identification of the elite, proposed by V. Pareto.

Recognizing the important role of the sociology of the elite in the structure of elitology, we would also like to object to a number of sociologists who believe that elitology as an independent discipline is not needed, since, in their opinion, the sociology of the elite covers elitological issues. Claiming to solve all the problems of elitology within the framework of sociology, they thus demonstrate a kind of “sociological expansionism.” Being a relatively young science (compared to philosophy and history), sociology was forced, in identifying its object and subject of research, to “conquer” territory for itself from other, previously established disciplines. Such “expansionism” of sociology can be seen as a “childhood disease” of a developing discipline. The fact that the sociology of the elite exists and is developing fruitfully does not mean at all that elitology is not needed, just as the presence of the sociology of culture does not deny or replace cultural studies17, just as the presence of the sociology of politics does not cancel or replace political science.

As scientific statistics show, from all sections of elitology greatest number researchers are attracted to political elitology. Attention to this issue is a response to broad public interest in it, to a social order, to the need to understand who is the main subject of politics - the masses or a narrow elite group, to understand who is behind the most important strategic decisions that affect the fate of millions of people, on questions of war and peace, who these people are, whether they rightfully take their positions, how skillfully they solve political problems. Using data from political sociology, they examine the social affiliation and origin of members of the political elite, age, level of education and professional preparedness, value orientations, and the main types of the political elite

(caste, class, class, nomenklatura, meritocratic), groupings, clans within the elite, issues of formation and change of elites, analyze opposition paradigms: elitism and egalitarianism, elitism and pluralism, elitism and democracy. Of particular interest are comparative studies of various types of elites, analysis of relations between political elites and the masses, the possibility of optimizing these relations, and problems of political leadership. A significant and growing branch of political elitology is the study of regional political and administrative elites in various countries of the world (we note in this regard that more than a hundred studies have been conducted on this issue in post-Soviet Russia alone).

Certain sections of elitology - the study of economic, cultural, religious, military elites. Since almost every sphere of human activity has its own elite, if we even try to list the various elites, we will not succeed, we will go into infinity. In each of the sections of elitology, along with their specificity, it is possible to isolate certain general patterns, create a general theory, a methodology of elitology that “works” in all these specific areas, being refracted in a unique way in them.

We began our review of the structural elements of elitology with those that have attracted little attention from researchers in recent decades (philosophical elitology), and ended with the one that has been especially intensively studied (political elitology). I would like to somewhat correct this imbalance by drawing the attention of elitologists to the fundamental problems of philosophical elitology, which are poorly covered in the literature, which is the basis on which general theory elitology, its metatheory.

Gennady K. Ashin. Elitology in the System of Social Sciences.

The term “elitology” is a Russian innovation of the end of the 20th century. It was introduced to meet the needs of a complex discipline dealing with the elite phenomenon which integrates the achievements and methods of philosophy, political science, sociology, history, psychology, cultural studies. The article emphasizes the role of philosophy as the theoretical basis for solving elitological problems.

1. “Disciplinarily organized sciences,” writes academician V.S. Stepin, “... pose the problem of synthesizing the ideas about the world developed in them... The difference between interdisciplinary and disciplinary research lies in the scale of generalization... In interdisciplinary research, they are connected with each other seemingly separate subject areas" (Self-Development

evolving systems and post-non-classical rationality) // Questions of Philosophy. 2003. No. 8. P. 13).

2. However, any science is, in a certain sense, elitist, and its development is the selection of the best possible option; history of science itself general view- this is the identification and preservation of the best (and discarding the worst, which has not justified itself). This best becomes the level of development of science achieved at a certain moment, at which the best, new, progressive is again revealed, selected, that is, the development of science is the choice of the elite and, in a certain sense, it is - practical use laws of elitology.

3. See: Bogdanov A. Tectology. General organizational science. In 2 volumes. M., 1989.

4. See: Kotarbinsky T. A treatise on good work. M., 1975; It's him. Development of praxeology // Bulletin international institute A. Bogdanova. 2000. No. 2.

5. Shishkin M. A. Biological evolution and the nature of morality // Shishkin A. F. MGIMO. 2003. P. 143. The considerations of MGIMO (U) professor M.V. Ilyin are interesting: “The biological analogy for the human community is natural “communities” in the form of ecosystems of biosociogenoses... it is possible and necessary to distinguish not only biological and social evolution, but also the evolution of (indi)species and oikos of any variety from the simplest biocenoses to the world system of states” // Polis. 2009. No. 2. P. 188.

6. Elitology can perform methodological functions in relation to private sciences and act as a metatheory (for example, in relation to such an important section of political economy as the theory of competition).

7. Ashin G.K. Course on the history of elitology. M, 2003.

8. Let us note the following works: Afanasyev M. N. Ruling elites and statehood in post-totalitarian Russia. M.-Voronezh, 1996; Ashin G.K. Modern theories of the elite. M., 1985; (in this book the term “elitology” was used for the first time). Let us also note: Ashin G. Elitology: formation, main directions. M., 1995; Fundamentals of elitology. Almaty, 1996; Ashin G., Berezhnaya L.N., Karabuschenko P., Rezakov R. Theoretical basis elitology of education. Astrakhan, 1998; Ashin G., Okhotsky E., Course of Elitology, M., 1999; Ashin G., Ponedelkov A., Ignatiev V., Starostin A. Fundamentals of political elitology. M., 1999; Ashin G. Elitology. Tutorial for humanitarian universities. M., 2005; Ashin G. World elite education. M., 2008; Gaman-GolutvinaO. B. Political elites of Russia. M., 1998 (2nd ed., 2006); Ponedelkov A.V. Political and administrative elites of Russia. Rostov-on-Don, 2005; Karabuschenko P. Plato’s Elitology. Astrakhan, 1998; Kryshtanovskaya O. Anatomy of the Russian elite. M., 2003; MokhovV. P. Elitism and history. Problems of studying Soviet regional elites. Perm, 2000; Regional elites of the North-West of Russia: political and economic orientations. St. Petersburg, 2001; Power elites and nomenklatura. Annotated bibliography of Russian publications of 1990-2000, ed. Duki A.V. (The book contains an annotated list of 460 publications on this issue); Power elites modern Russia. Rostov-on-Don, 2004. The book is equipped with a bibliography of publications on the problems of elitology (716 titles). A modern bibliography may contain more than 2000 titles.

10.FitldL. andHigleyJ. Elitism. L., Boston, 1980.

11. Moscow elitologists M. N. Afanasyev, G. K. Ashin, O. V. Gaman, O. V. Kryshtanovskaya, E. V. Okhotsky, A. E. Chirikova, N. V. made their contribution to Russian elitology. Lapina and others, Rostov elitologists A.V. Ponedelkov, V.G. Ignatov, S.E. Kislitsin, A.M. Starostin, St. Petersburg residents A.V. Duka, V.Ya. Gelman, Astrakhan residents P.L Karabuschenko, N.B. Karabuschenko, Permian V.P. Mokhov, M.Kh. Farukshin (Kazan), A.K. Magomedov (Ulyanovsk), elitologists from Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Tatarstan and many other regions of Russia. It was in Russia that elitological journals began to be published for the first time in the world - “Elitological Research” (a theoretical journal, now published in electronic form), “Russian Elite” (an illustrated popular publication), “Elite Education”. Currently, Russian elitology is one of the leading in the world. This is not just a set of some individual theories or concepts, but a single science with a common methodological basis. Over the past 20 years, the number of elitologists in Russia has increased by two orders of magnitude.

12.FieldL. andHigleyJ, Elitism, L., 1980, Pp. 4.117-130.

13. Book by K. Lash (S. Lash, “The Revolt of Elites.”), NY-L, 1995.

14. DevlineJ. The Rise of the Russian Democracy. The Causes and Consequences of the Elite Revolution, 1995; LaneD. and Ross S., The Transition from Communism to Capitalism. Ruling Elites from Gorbachev to Yeltsin, N.Y., 1999; Zimmerman W., Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives 1993-2000. N.Y., 2002.

15. See: Gaman-GolutvinaO. V. Processes of modern elitogenesis: world and domestic experience // Polis. 2008. No. 6. P. 68-69.

16. Ashin G.K. Philosophical component of elitology // Questions of philosophy. 2004. No. 7.

17. See: KempleT. Culture and Society, L., Los Ang., 2007.

Chapter 1. Elitology as a science................................................……..3

Chapter 2. Genesis of elitology. Proto-elitology.................……. 26

Chapter 3. Classics of elitology of the late 19th – early 20th centuries...73

Chapter 4. The evolution of elitology and its typology......................…..98

Chapter 5. Methodological guidelines of elitism.....………….. 132

Chapter 6. Elite: controversy over the term...............................................….174

Chapter 7. On the history of Russian elitology..........................…..222

Chapter 8. History of American elitology...............................243

Chapter 9 Dispute over US power structure and elite structure….. 269

Chapter 1. Elitology as a science

Subject of elitology. The 20th century sharply spurred the process of differentiation and integration of sciences. Moreover, new scientific disciplines are increasingly being formed not just as specialized areas of already established scientific disciplines, but precisely as disciplines that integrate the achievements of different, mainly related sciences (and sometimes very distant from each other), and often the methods and concepts of one science turn out to be heuristic when solving problems facing another scientific discipline. It is precisely such a complex scientific discipline that is increasingly claiming independent status that is elitology. It was formed in line with social and political philosophy, but it integrated the achievements and methods of other related disciplines. Elitology has developed as a complex interdisciplinary knowledge lying at the intersection of political science, social philosophy, political science, sociology, general history, social psychology, and cultural studies.

By the way, science as such is always elitist, and its development is the preservation of the best (and discarding the worst), which becomes the achieved level at which the best, new, progressive is again revealed - that is, the development of science is the choice of the elite and, in a certain sense, it is the practical application of elitology.

Elitology in an extremely broad sense can be considered as the science of differentiation and hierarchization of being, its orderliness, structuralization and evolution. It is known that the movement from chaos to order - the content of the development process - includes the differentiation of being, with which its hierarchization is inextricably linked (the key problem for understanding the phenomenon of the elite). But we will not expand the subject of elitology, if only because as a result it will lose its specificity. Perhaps it would be much more accurate to say that elitology in the broad sense is based on the doctrine of the systemic nature of being (and, consequently, on the general theory of systems), its differentiation and hierarchization, on the laws of thermodynamics (entropy and negentropy), synergetics. General systems theory has an extremely wide scope of application. Almost every subject can be represented as a certain system, i.e. a certain integrity, consisting of elements that are in relationships, connections with each other, constituting a certain unity; Moreover, it is possible to identify the hierarchy of these relations, their subordination (each element of the system can be considered as a subsystem, that is, a system of a lower order, as a component of a broader system).

Of course, these dependencies do not reveal the specifics of elitology; they rather indicate the knowledge and principles from which elitology starts and on which it is based. At best, they can only be preliminary remarks about what methodological principles elitology is based on.

Note that hierarchy is characteristic not only of the morphology of a certain system, but also of its functioning: individual levels of the system are responsible for certain aspects of its behavior, the functioning of the system as a whole is the result of the interaction of all its levels, and the control of the system as a whole is carried out by its highest level. Thus, in complex dynamic systems, it is possible to distinguish the control and controlled subsystems, to record the phenomenon of subordination - the most important point that explains the problem of elite and elitism. Among the most complex dynamic systems, biological and, of course, social systems are of particular interest, and the latter, in fact, are the specific subject of consideration by elitologists. Let us note that one of the founders of the approach to society as a system in a state of dynamic equilibrium was the recognized classic of elitology V. Pareto. In this regard, I would also like to note the development of a systematic approach in the tectology of A.A. Bogdanov and the praxeology of T. Kotarbinsky, which are especially fruitful in relation to understanding the functioning of the political and administrative elite.

Now let us narrow the subject of elitology to social elitology, which is elitology in the proper sense of the word. Elitology can be considered as the science of social differentiation and stratification, more precisely as the science of the highest stratum in any system of social stratification, its special functions related to the management of the system as a whole or certain of its subsystems, in the development of norms and values ​​that serve self-sustainment system and its development, orient it towards movement in a certain direction (towards improving the system, towards its progress). Therefore, the elite includes a part of society consisting of the most authoritative, respected people, which takes leading positions in the development of norms and values ​​that determine the functioning and development of the social system, which is the reference group on whose values, considered exemplary, society is guided. These are either the bearers of traditions that bind and stabilize society, or, in other social situations (usually crises) - the most active, passionate elements of the population, which are innovative groups. Thus, elitology is the science of elites and, consequently, of the foundations of differentiation of society, the criteria for this differentiation, and the legitimacy of this differentiation. Of course, it needs to develop an appropriate categorical apparatus, including the definition of the concepts “best” and “chosen”.

Finally, often (primarily in political science) the elite is spoken of in the narrow sense of the term as a political-administrative, managerial elite. It is this component of elitology that has become (perhaps without sufficient grounds for this) the most important, widespread, “applied” part of elitology, although this is only one of many elitological disciplines. In this narrow sense, the subject of elitology (more precisely, political elitology) is the study of the process of socio-political management and, above all, the highest stratum of political actors, the identification and description of the social stratum that directly carries out this management, being its subject (or, in in any case, the most important structural element of this subject), in other words, the study of the elite, its composition, the laws of its functioning, its rise to power and retention of this power, its legitimization as the ruling layer, the condition for which is the recognition of its leading role by the mass of followers, the study of its role in the social process, the reasons for its degradation, decline (usually due to its closedness), and departure from the historical arena as not meeting the changed historical conditions, the study of the laws of transformation and change of elites.

The structure of the subject of elitology certainly includes the history of the development of knowledge about elites, that is, the history of elitology. At the center of the subject of elitology is the study of its laws - the laws of structure (the structure of the elite, the connection between its elements, which are usually subsystems of the elite as an integral system - political, cultural, military, etc.), the laws of the functioning of elites, the interaction between the elements of this system, dependencies between its various components, the role in which each of these components acts in relation to the elite as an integral phenomenon, the laws of connection and subordination of the elements of this system, and finally, the laws of development of this system, its transition from one level to another, usually higher, to a new type of connections within this system.

Russian school of elitology. The term “elitology” is a Russian innovation. It was introduced into scientific circulation in the 80s and became widespread in Russian social sciences starting from the second half of the 90s, when a number of works on this issue were published. We can safely say that a Russian school of elitology is taking shape.

Unfortunately, foreign colleagues are in no hurry (yet?) to recognize the necessity and legality of this term (is it because this is a Russian innovation?) or its equivalent, which has not yet been proposed. It is quite possible that the term “elitology” is jarring to the ears of people for whom English is their native language. It is no coincidence that they prefer the term “political science” to political science and “cultural studies” to cultural studies. However, we do not cling to the term at all. We can say about this in the words of a Russian proverb: “even if you call it a pot, just don’t put it in the oven.”

In recent years, the author of this work has visited more than 10 universities in the USA and Germany, in many of them he gave lectures on elitological issues, as well as reports at congresses and conferences. Moreover, as a rule, I was asked to give lectures and special courses under the traditional titles for Americans and Western Europeans: “Sociology of the Elite” in sociology departments and “Political Elites” in political science departments. It took a long time to explain that the sociology of the elite and the problems of political elites are only a part, albeit a very important part of elitology. In fact, do the courses “Political Elites”, “Sociology of the Elite”, “Theories of the Elite” taught in Western universities exhaust all elitological problems? They can rather be considered as separate sections of elitology that describe certain aspects of the elite phenomenon. With such a fragmented approach, it is impossible to cover the subject of research - the elite - as a certain integrity, as a certain system, to reveal the laws of the functioning and development of this phenomenon, to exhaust all the richness of relations within the elite and relations between the elite and society as a whole. It is precisely this holistic, systemic approach to the phenomenon of the elite and the elite that elitology, in particular, the Russian school of elitology, insists on. As for the term “elitology” itself, its meaning cannot be exaggerated; it, like any scientific concept, is just a moment, even a key moment, of a certain concept. Moreover, elitology is the broadest concept, including all sciences about elites, regardless of the value orientation of a particular scientist developing this issue, regardless of whether he is an apologist, a singer of the elite, or a critic of a society that needs an elite for its governance and placing the elite in a privileged position. Elitology strives to be scientific, not ideological.

The objections of Western colleagues against the very term “elitology” and against distinguishing it as an independent science are characteristic and not without interest. Here is the opinion of one of them: “The term itself is rather clumsy, clumsy, and also consists of two roots – Latin (elite) and Greek (logos), which already speaks of its eclecticism.” I replied that one could agree with this argument, that I would with great pleasure introduce the term “aristology”, where both roots would be Greek, that the Greek “aristos” seemed to me preferable to the Latin root “elite”. But the whole point is that the term “elite”, introduced into scientific circulation by V. Pareto, is well-established, firmly established in science, and the term “aristology” would introduce even greater confusion into an already difficult problem.

Another objection to elitology. One of the participants in the discussion of this problem said: “It’s bad when the number of scientific disciplines increases,” and called for relying on the words of the famous medieval scholastic W. Ockham that “entities should not be multiplied.” In answering a colleague, I had to refer to the fact that he did not quote Ockham in full: the philosopher said that “entities should not be multiplied unless absolutely necessary.” And this is precisely the case when there is a “special need”. The role of elites in the historical process in general is too great, and Russia has suffered too much from unqualified, cruel, dishonest elites.

But let’s return to the courses taught in a number of Western European and American universities, which have as their subject one or another elite, one or another aspect of the study of elites. The course “Theories of Elites” is usually only of a historical and political science nature. A very interesting course taught by L. Field and J. Higley “Elitism” (and a book with the same title) analyzes an important paradigm that is directly related to our problems, but this is only one of the paradigms that does not take into account the egalitarian paradigm and therefore which cannot claim to be a holistic analysis of elitology. We cannot be satisfied with elitist concepts in the spirit of F. Nietzsche and J. Ortega y Gasset, if only because they all unconditionally accept the elite-mass dichotomy as an axiom, as a norm of a civilized society, ignoring the possibility of studying and interpreting the phenomenon of the elite by researchers , starting from an egalitarian paradigm and considering the presence of an elite as a challenge to democracy, leaving aside objections to the perpetuation of this division as an ahistorical approach to the very fact of the existence of an elite. Even fewer can claim to cover all elitological issues in the “Political Elite” course. It should be noted that the vast majority of modern researchers recognize the pluralism of elites (political, economic, religious, cultural, etc.). But if in any context the concept of “elite” is used without an adjective specifying which elite is meant, one can be sure that we are talking about the political elite. This very circumstance indicates that in the public consciousness it is the political elite that comes to the fore, which pushes other, non-political elites into the background (which, in our opinion, is more bad than good, because by default it presupposes the primacy of the political elite). It seems to us more fair that in the hierarchy of elites, socially dominant groups, the leading place should rightfully belong to the cultural elite, the creators of new cultural and civilizational norms. The highest place in the hierarchy of elites and leaders of mankind should not be given to Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin or Churchill, but Buddha, Christ, Socrates, Mohammed, Kant, Einstein, Sakharov.

Perhaps the closest thing to the subject of elitology is the subject of the sociology of the elite. However, the subject of the sociology of the elite is significantly narrower than the subject of elitology. The sociology of the elite does not exhaust all the richness of the content of elitology. Sociological research methods should not be absolutized either; in elitology they are supplemented by philosophical, political science, cultural, and psychological ones. A sociological approach to identifying the elite was proposed by one of the founders and classics of elitology of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, V. Pareto. In various spheres of human activity, he identified people who carried out this activity most successfully (he assigned them an index of 10, and then, descending, to zero). Suppose, according to the criterion of wealth, one should give a ten to billionaires, a one to those who barely stay on the surface, reserving 0 for a beggar, a homeless person (although, strictly speaking, according to Pareto there is always a hierarchization, and, consequently, an elite of beggars, homeless people, etc. .). But is it possible to use this criterion when determining, say, the cultural elite? What index will we assign to Van Gogh or Vermeer - geniuses of painting, not appreciated by their contemporaries, or Bach, whose genius was fully appreciated only by his grateful descendants? Obviously, specifically cultural criteria will be needed. The sociology of the elite is the most important part of elitology, but it is still only a part of it. Therefore, the systematic approach proposed by the Russian school of elitology seems to us more promising.

It’s time to loudly declare the formation of a Russian school of elitology. This school emerged in the last decade and a half of the twentieth century (mainly the last ten years). And this is quite understandable. It is known that in Soviet times, elitological issues were taboo. Research on the Soviet elite was impossible for ideological (and, therefore, censorship) reasons. It is no coincidence that Russian elitology was formed during the years of Russia’s democratic transition. When censorship barriers were removed, elitological research in Russia began to be carried out on a broad front.

In addition, there were other important prerequisites for the formation of a school of modern Russian elitology. It could rely on the powerful traditions of Russian pre-revolutionary and emigrant philosophy, political science, law, sociology, represented by such outstanding figures of science and culture as N.A. Berdyaev, M.Ya. Ostrogorsky, P.A. Sorokin, I.A. Ilyin , G.P. Fedotov, who made an invaluable contribution to the development of elitology. .

The Russian school of elitology has been developing rapidly in the last decade; its representatives have published more than twenty monographs and hundreds of articles on the most important aspects of elitology. Moscow elitologists M.N. Afanasyev, G.K. Ashin, O.V. Gaman, E.V. Okhotsky and others, Rostov elitologists A.V. Ponedelkov, V.G. Ignatov, S. E. Kislitsin, A. M. Starostin, Astrakhan resident P. L. Karabuschenko, St. Petersburg residents S. A. Kugel, A. V. Duka, elitologists from Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Tatarstan and many other regions of Russia. It is in Russia - for the first time in the world - that elitological journals are published - "Elitological Research" (theoretical journal), "Russian Elite" (illustrated popular publication), "Elite Education". The school of Russian elitology has rightfully taken a leading position not only in the study of Russian elites (a couple of decades ago, Russian elites could only be learned from the works of foreign Sovietologists and Russian political emigrants), but also in a number of general theoretical problems of elitology.

Elitological thesaurus. Like any emerging science, elitology needs to comprehend and clarify its conceptual apparatus, develop a general theory and methodology, transfer theoretical concepts to the operational level, develop empirical studies of elites, and comparative elitological studies.

Let's start by distinguishing between such concepts (which are still confused) as elitology, elitism, elitism. The confusion of these terms is primarily the result of the fact that elitology originated as elitism, for its theorists were spokesmen for the interests of those segments of the population from which members of the elite were recruited, and who acted as ideologists (and thereby apologists) of these strata. Elitism is a concept based on the fact that the division of society into the elite and the masses is a standard of social structure, an attribute of civilization (the absence of such a division is a sign of savagery and underdevelopment of society). The more aristocratic a society is, the higher it is as a society (F. Nietzsche, H. Ortega y Gasset). The elite in this understanding is a stratum that is more or less closed, whose members do not accept or despise the nouveau riche. Thus, elitism is an aristocratic and deeply conservative worldview. Accordingly, the writings of his supporters are a reflection on the very highest social stratum to which they belong or whose values ​​they are guided by.

Elitism is a phenomenon close to elitism, but not an identical concept to it. Taking as an initial postulate the same dichotomy between the elite and the masses, its supporters, however, do not treat the masses with open or poorly hidden contempt (which is typical for such elitists as Plato or Nietzsche), they are more liberal, they can respect the masses and recognize their rights to a place in the sun. In any case, in their understanding, the elite should not be a closed stratum of society, but, on the contrary, should be open to the most capable people from non-elite strata, including those from the lower social classes. They generally accept high levels of social mobility as legitimate and even desirable. Any society is subject to social stratification, which is caused by the unequal distribution of abilities; in the competition for elite positions, those who are functionally more prepared for managerial activities win. Elitists are characterized by a meritocratic approach to the elite (however, this approach is not a monopoly of elitists; it is inherent in both a number of moderate elitists and moderate egalitarians).

Finally, elitology is the broadest concept that unites all researchers of the elite, regardless of their methodological attitudes and value preferences, including supporters of the egalitarian paradigm, for which the presence of an elite is a challenge to the fundamental value of society - equality. Among the egalitarians there are supporters of rough egalitarianism, up to complete equality of property, egalitarians for whom it is intolerable that among the “equals” there are people who, in George Orwell’s words, are “more equal than others” (radical egalitarians). But a much larger number of egalitarians act as fighters for “justice,” by which they usually mean a more adequate system of social inequality, justify the admissibility of a certain degree of inequality in accordance with the abilities and, most importantly, the merits of people, their contribution to the development of society, that is, they demonstrate elements meritocratic approach (moderate egalitarians).

Most elite researchers proceed from the fact that the elite is the determining force of the historical (including political) process, its subject. This approach is fraught with rather arbitrary postulation. To avoid confusion between different interpretations of the elite and its role in the development of society, we introduce a distinction between such concepts as elitology, elitism, elitism. The first is the broadest concept. Of course, all elitists and elitists are elitologists, but not all elitologists are either elitists or elitists. Such a distinction helps us, in particular, to avoid a common mistake, especially characteristic of American political scientists, who classify the outstanding American sociologist R. Mills as an elitist on the formal basis that he used the elite-mass dichotomy to analyze the US political system. Mills did not consider the presence of a ruling elite to be either an ideal or a norm of a political system, rightly believing that the concentration of power in the hands of this elite is evidence of the undemocratic nature of this political system. Thus, while undoubtedly an elitologist, and an outstanding elitologist at that, Mills was neither an elitist, much less an elitist. The elitist paradigm (uniting elitists and elitists) includes those sociologists and political scientists who, like L. Field and J. Higley, consider the identification of the elite as a subject of social management and its privileged position as the law of the social process, its norm. But an elitologist who studies a really existing elite can be critical of the very fact of the existence of this social stratum, considering it a threat to democracy (even an alternative to democracy); his ideal of social organization may be a self-governing society, a society without an elite, or (which is essentially the same thing), a society in which all members will rise to the level of the elite, will be a real subject, the creators of the historical process. As for elitists and elitists, they consider such views to be a kind of social utopia, and the presence of an elite for them is an immanent element of civilized societies.

In recent years, interest in the elitist paradigm has increased, primarily in political science (and this paradigm is usually considered in relation to the egalitarian, pluralistic and other paradigms). It is precisely this issue – the confrontation and change of different paradigms in political science with an emphasis on the elitist paradigm – that the above-mentioned Field and Higley study. Here is the diagram they draw. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, an elitist paradigm emerges (with this term they combine elitism and elitism) and displaces the egalitarian paradigm and challenges the liberal and Marxist paradigms. At the same time, it is recognized that the founders of elitism were not hostile to the liberal system of Western values ​​and saw the main enemy in the Marxist paradigm. In the second and third quarters of the twentieth century, there was a decline and stagnation of the elitist paradigm, and interest in it increased again in the fourth quarter of the century. It seems that this scheme is not entirely correct: it ignores, in particular, the explosion of interest in the elitist paradigm in the 50s, which was caused by the books of R. Mills “The Power Elite” and F. Hunter “Supreme Leadership in the USA”, which caused heated controversy in American and Western European political science, generally aimed at discrediting the left-radical concept of Mills and his followers and defending the pluralistic paradigm. This scheme also does not take into account the conservative and aristocratic paradigm that came to the 20th century from the 19th century. In short, this scheme greatly simplifies the situation that developed in the twentieth century. Field and Higley's position about the growing role and significance of the elitist paradigm in the last quarter of the twentieth century and further at the beginning of the twentieth century is also disputed by many political scientists and sociologists. However, they have no less number of supporters. K. Lash writes about the “revolt of the elites” in America, J. Devlin writes about the revolution of the elites in post-Soviet Russia; A similar position is occupied by D. Lane, K. Ross, and W. Zimmerman. The Field and Higley scheme is supported, in particular, by the growing influence of the “neo-elitists” T. Dye, H. Zeigler and others in American political science.

Is Field and Higley’s scheme confirmed by the example of Russian political science? To a certain extent, yes. A number of Russian political scientists write about the radical turn of Russian political science and sociology from the egalitarian, anti-elitist paradigm, which certainly prevailed in the Soviet period, to the elitist paradigm. But in Russia at the end of the twentieth century a special, unique political situation arose. And it is unlikely that the example of Russian social sciences can illustrate the global trend of growing influence of the elitist paradigm. In Russia, the undoubted growth of the influence of the elitist paradigm, in our opinion, is not the result of the natural evolution of scientific views, it is rather the result of political reasons, it is a reaction to the censorship, ideological persecution of elitism carried out in the Soviet years and decades. It is known that a spring, which is compressed by external forces, tends to straighten, tends to oscillatory motion in the opposite direction.

And in Russia there really was a turn from Soviet-type egalitarianism, egalitarianism to a large extent pharisaical, which denied the presence in the USSR of a totalitarian elite endowed with institutional privileges and hid the real inequality of the ruling elite and the masses, in other words, pseudo-egalitarianism, propagated by apologists of the one-party system, to the elitist paradigm . This turn is often interpreted as part of a general turn from totalitarianism to democracy.

It seems, however, that there are too many moments here that reflect the specifics of the Russian situation at the end of the twentieth century for the Russian turn to the elitist paradigm of this period to be considered as confirmation of the correctness of Field and Higley’s hypothesis about a global change of paradigms in political science. In science, the transition from one paradigm to another (see: T. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, M., 1975) is the result of the consistent accumulation of facts and data that do not fit into the paradigm generally accepted by the scientific community, and as a result, the accumulation of quantitative changes leads to a change paradigms (which is identical to revolutions in science). In the Russian situation at the end of the twentieth century, everything happened differently. Firstly, the fact of the simultaneity and almost complete unanimity of Russian political scientists in the transition from one paradigm to another is alarming. This transition resembles not a natural process of development of science, but the result of some command from above (rather, the anticipation of this command, the readiness to guess and carry out the will of the “new authorities”). This is reminiscent of the command existing in the navy, when the admiral commands a squadron of ships heading into the wake: “Right (left) rudder!” and adds: “all of a sudden!” When such a turn takes place in science, this does not at all indicate an atmosphere of freedom and democracy in it. This is too similar to totalitarian times, when “the entire Soviet biology” began to fight together against Mendelism-Morganism, or all the sciences in the country - from mathematics to philosophy - fought against cybernetics. Or when physicists loyal to Nazi Germany “refuted” the theory of relativity created by the non-Aryan Einstein. So, perhaps, taking into account historical experience, it would be appropriate to assume that the judgment about a change in paradigms is a certain simplification of the process of development of modern Russian consciousness, perhaps such a turn is another sway from one extreme to another, so characteristic, unfortunately, of Russian life in last century; Perhaps such a sharp movement is unsafe, being a movement between the Scylla of egalitarianism and the Charybdis of elitism. Perhaps the real movement of political thought occurs between these two extremes, in their struggle and, at the same time, their interpenetration, the mutual consideration of these opposites. For centuries, humanity has been painfully searching for a balance between federalism and unitarism, between administrative-legal and civil-legal spaces, between elitism and egalitarianism, ways to create sustainable non-violent civil power, and build a civil society.

What has been said above is only, at best, the beginning of an elitological thesaurus, which we will try to supplement with other terms that deepen and expand the elitological problematics. This will primarily relate to the term “elite” itself, its relationship with such terms as ruling class, ruling group, ruling clique, clan, etc.

C structure of elitology. Elitology has a complex structure. It includes philosophical elitology, sociology of the elite, political elitology, historical elitology, as well as the history of elitology, elitological psychology (including the motivation of power, the psychological characteristics of the elite layer), cultural elitology (the elite as a creative part of society, creating cultural values, analysis elite and mass culture), comparative elitology, which studies the general patterns and features of the functioning of elites in different civilizations, different countries, different regions of the world, elite education and elite pedagogy. Of course, this list of elitological disciplines is far from complete. An interesting classification of elitological disciplines is proposed by P.L. Karabuschenko. In addition to theoretical elitology, he distinguishes practical and applied elitology.

Philosophical elitology represents the highest level of generalization in elitology. It, in turn, has a complex structure. In it one can distinguish elitological ontology, elitological epistemology (including ancient secret science, esoteric epistemology), elitological philosophical anthropology, elitological personalism.

Ontological elitology reveals heterogeneity, differentiation, hierarchy of existence. At this level, the problem of elitism and the elite is most widely posed. Let us note that the problems of heterogeneity and hierarchization of being were the focus of attention of ancient (Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato) and medieval philosophy (Augustine the Blessed, Thomas Aquinas), they were discussed in the philosophy of modern times, in the philosophy of the twentieth century (N.A. Berdyaev , H. Ortega y Gasset). The development process includes differentiation and hierarchization of being, and with it the identification of the elite. This especially applies to the development of complex dynamic systems, which is always accompanied by an increase in their internal differentiation, hierarchization, and complexity (and specialization in organic and social systems).

This problem has long become a general scientific issue. It is included, for example, in the subject of theoretical biology. The development of organic populations is accompanied by an increase in their internal differentiation, complexity, and hierarchization; the growth of internal differences leads to the selection of the most perfect individuals, the qualities and properties of which correspond to the tendencies of the system (population) towards its development. These more advanced individuals can be called elite in the population system. Elite elements are the leading element in the process of natural and artificial selection. In essence, all biological evolution - in accordance with Darwin's teachings - is the elitology of living things, the identification of the best (most adapted to the conditions of their existence) individuals, the extinction of the less adapted, the transformation of the elite into the norm, the identification of a new elite in the population (i.e. the elite of elites ) and, further, a new turn of the spiral. Both sociobiology and eugenics deal with the problem of elitism. It is known that Plato, extrapolating the processes of artificial selection to societies, was the theoretical father of eugenics, which, as a holistic doctrine, was formulated in the second half of the 19th century by F. Galton. And it doesn’t matter that the author of this work does not share the ideas of eugenics. What is important is that biology addresses elitological issues.

Elitological epistemology Let's start with the fact that in this problem the difference between elitism, characterized by closedness, and elitism is especially clearly revealed. Elite epistemology is an esoteric theory of knowledge for the “chosen”, initiated, possessing a “divine gift”, with an emphasis on occult knowledge, intuition and “insight”. During the period of the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the emergence of class society, its stratification was based not only on belonging to the clan aristocracy, but also to become familiar with sacred knowledge and sacraments, the bearers of which were mainly the priestly caste. This secret knowledge constituted the symbolic capital of the proto-elite and legitimized its claims to a privileged position in society. Elite esoteric knowledge has been developed for more than three millennia - from the Brahmans, the first philosophical schools ancient india And ancient China(including Taoists), “occult science” developed by the Pre-Socratics, the hierarchical “theory of perfection” of Pythagoras, Plato’s concept of elite consciousness (states of minds that are closest to the world of ideas), “eidetic vision”. On the threshold of the New Age, elite esoteric epistemology was developed by theosophy - a mystical knowledge of God, revealed to the “chosen ones”. Meister Eckhart (1575–1624) set the task of understanding divine wisdom, symbolically encrypted, the knowledge of the self-revelation of God. For the Swedish mystic E. Swedenborg (1688–1772), the task of selected thinkers is to comprehend the true symbols of the Word of God, first of all, the “Pentateuch,” and to identify the symbolic correspondence between the earthly and the “otherworldly.” In the 19th century, the tradition of theosophy was developed by H. P. Blavatsky (1831–1891) and her followers. She sought to synthesize religion, philosophy, occultism, relied on the traditions of Brahmanism, the teachings of Hinduism about karma, sought to establish the identity of all religious meanings, create a universal religion, setting the task of achieving occult knowledge and supernatural abilities, the bearers of which are “initiates” who have mastered the secrets esoteric knowledge. R. Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of anthroposophy, devoted his works to the development of speculative mysticism in the traditions of theosophy. This mystical, occult-oriented esoteric (and at the same time elitist) theory of knowledge can be contrasted with scientific epistemology (which in this regard can be called elite in the sense of its depth, critical nature and openness to criticism), the classical theory of knowledge, fertilized by the genius of I. Kant.

Elitological philosophical anthropology and elitological personalism- a tradition coming from Confucius, Pythagoras, Plato to N.F. Berdyaev and E. Mounier, turning to a comprehensive study of human problems, paying special attention to the issue of self-improvement of the individual, ascending through the stages of perfection to the level of an elite personality, Elitization of the individual is in the center a number of areas of religious philosophy, starting with Buddhism (the problem of an “enlightened” personality). Philosophical anthropology seeks the answer to the question of what a person is, what is his essence, integrity. The mode of human existence is possibility; a person is a project (M. Heidegger), a person is what he makes of himself (A. Camus). Hence - his path to self-improvement, the opportunity to go beyond his limits, to rise above them (elitization of the individual). Personalism comes from similar premises: personality is the highest meaning of civilization. N. Berdyaev’s personalism is called “eschatological,” but it can rightfully be called elitological personalism: a person is the likeness of God, he acquires the features of Godlikeness in the process of creativity, thereby realizing his calling. Berdyaev argued that the most important characteristic of a person is that he is not satisfied with himself, strives to overcome his limitations, to superhumanity, to the ideal. Personalism strives to create pedagogy, the purpose of which is the awakening and development of personal principles in a person, stimulating the self-elevation of the individual, his elitization, i.e., elite pedagogy.

Social and philosophical elitology is aimed at finding a normative approach to the elite, which, perhaps, most corresponds to the etymology of the term “elite”, which requires that the elite include the most creative people, outstanding in their moral and intellectual qualities. Close to this approach is the meritocratic concept, based on the fact that the true elite are not just those who, by birth or chance, ended up “at the top”, but the elite of merit, the elite of intelligence, education, intellectual and moral superiority, erudition, and creative potential.

There is no doubt that an important, one might even say central place in elitology belongs to elite sociology(At the same time, let us recall once again that the subject of elitology is broader than the subject of sociology of the elite; they are related as a whole and a part). In contrast to the philosophical-sociological approach, which is focused primarily on normativity, the sociology of the elite emphasizes the study of real elites. It is known how important sociology is to the analysis of social structure and social mobility (group and individual), and of particular interest is upward mobility (primarily to the elite), and the study of the mechanisms of elite recruitment. Sociology is characterized by a view of the elite as a reference group on whose values ​​society is guided. Distracting as much as possible from moralistic assessments, she identifies the elite in society and in various social groups according to such criteria as property status, status, and place in power relations. The emphasis is usually placed in the traditions of M. Weber on the status approach associated with claims to prestige and privilege, the distribution of symbolic honor. Of particular interest to elitology in this regard is the problem of prescribed status associated with inherited factors, social origin, race and nationality, and status based on personal achievements. The first plays a decisive role in societies with a closed elite, the second - with an open one. Among the sociological methods of studying elites, the method of empirical research occupies the most important place. In sociology, the statistical method of identifying the elite, proposed by V. Pareto, is widely used.

Recognizing the important role of sociology in the structure of elitology, we would like, at the same time, to object to a number of sociologists who believe that elitology as an independent discipline is not needed, since, in their opinion, the sociology of the elite covers elitological issues. Claiming to solve all the problems of elitology within the framework of sociology, they thus demonstrate a kind of “sociological expansionism.” Being a relatively young science (compared to philosophy and history), sociology was forced, in identifying its object and subject of research, to “conquer” territory for itself from other, previously established disciplines. Such “expansionism” of sociology can be seen as a “childhood disease” of a developing discipline. The fact that the sociology of the elite exists and is developing fruitfully does not mean that sociology is not needed, just as the presence of the sociology of culture does not deny or replace cultural studies, just as the presence of the sociology of politics does not cancel or replace political science.

As scientific statistics show, of all the branches of elitology, the largest number of researchers is attracted by political elitology. Their attention to this issue is a response to broad public interest in it, to a social order, to the need to understand who is the main subject of politics - the masses or a narrow elite group, to understand who is behind the most important strategic decisions that affect the fate of millions of people , on issues of war and peace, who these people are, whether they rightfully take their positions, how skillfully they solve political problems. Using data from political sociology, they explore the social affiliation and origin of members of the political elite, age, level of education and professional preparedness, value orientations, the main types of political elite (caste, class, class, nomenklatura, meritocratic), groupings, clans within the elite, issues of formation and changes in elites, analyze oppositional paradigms: elitism and egalitarianism, elitism and pluralism, elitism and democracy. Of particular interest are comparative studies of various types of elites, analysis of relations between political elites and the masses, the possibility of optimizing these relations, and problems of political leadership. A significant and growing branch of political elitology is the study of regional political and administrative elites in various countries of the world (we note in this regard that more than a hundred studies have been conducted on this issue in post-Soviet Russia alone).

We have noted only some areas of elitology. It is impossible not to note such important sections of elitology as the study of economic, cultural, religious, and military elites. Since almost every sphere of human activity has its own elite, if we even try to list the various elites, we will not succeed, we will go into infinity. This means that the subject of elitology will constantly expand. But it is only important to emphasize that each of the sections of elitology is a structural element of the study of the elite as an integral phenomenon, that in each of these sections, along with their specifics, it is possible to isolate certain general patterns, create a general theory, a methodology of elitology that “works” in all these specific areas, being refracted in a unique way.

In conclusion, we note that we began our review of the structural elements of elitology from the area that has least attracted the attention of researchers in recent decades - philosophical elitology, and ended with the one that has been especially intensively studied - political elitology. I would like to correct this imbalance by drawing the attention of elitologists to

the problems of philosophical elitology, poorly covered in the literature, and it is the foundation on which the general theory of elitology is built.

See: Bogdanov A. Tectology. General organizational science. In 2 volumes. M., 1989.

See: Kotarbinsky T. Treatise on good work. M., 1975; his: Development of praxeology // Bulletin of the International Institute of A. Bogdanov, 2000, No. 2. This problem is considered in the doctoral dissertation of Yu.V. Yarmak “Praxio-tectological foundations of the professional activity of the elite.” M., 2002.

We note the following works: Afananasyev M.N., Ruling elites and statehood of post-totalitarian Russia, M.-Voronezh, 1996; Ashin G.K. Modern theories of the elite, M., 1985; his: Elitology: formation, main directions, M., 1995; Elitology. Political elite, M., 1996; Fundamentals of elitology, Almaty, 1996; Elitology. Change and recruitment of elites, M., 1998; Ashin G., Berezhnaya L.N., Karabuschenko P., Rezakov R., Theoretical foundations of elitology of education, Astrakhan, 1998; Ashin G., Okhotsky E., Course of Elitology, M., 1999; Ashin G., Ponedelkov A., Ignatiev V., Starostin S., Fundamentals of political elitology, M., 1999; Gaman-Golutvina O.V. Political elites of Russia, M., 1998; Ponedelkov A. Elite (political_administrative elite) Rostov-on-Don, 1995; Karabuschenko P., Plato’s Elitology, Astrakhan, 1998; his: Anthropological elitology, Astrakhan, 1998; Power elites and nomenklatura. An annotated bibliography of Russian publications from 1990–2000, Ed. A. Duka, St. Petersburg, 2001. The book provides an annotated list of 460 publications on this topic. Currently, this number exceeds 600. Since 1998, the journal “Elitological Research” began to be published.

Field L. and Higley J, Elitism, L., 1980, p.p.4, 117-130.

K. Lash's book “The Revolt of the Elites” is clearly opposed to the famous book by X Ortega y Gasset “The Revolt of the Masses”. See: C. Lash, “The Revolt of Elites”, 1995.

Devline J. The Rise of the Russian Democracy. The Causes and Consequences of the Elite Revolution, 1995; Lane D. and Ross C., The Transition from Communism to Capitalism. Ruling Elites from Gorbachev to Yeltsin, N.Y., 1999; Zimmerman W., Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives 1993 – 2000, N.Y., 2002.

Karabuschenko P.L., Anthropological elitology, M.-Astrakhan, 1999, pp. 21-26.

Let us note that by the end of the twentieth century, the problem of hierarchization recedes into the background and is lost in postmodernism.

See: Karabuschenko P.L., Plato’s Elitology, Astrakhan, 1998, p. 184.

41. Analysis of official structures and formal decision-making rules

characteristicFor…( 1 answer option)

A. system method; V. behaviorist method;

b. institutional method; d. comparative method.

97. American political scientist D. Eastondeveloped a theory of political

concept based systems… …(1 answer option)

A. "legality - legitimacy" V. « entrance– exit»

b. “stability – instability” d. “decision – action”

A. absolute control of power over all spheres of life of society and citizens

b. aspirationauthorities control only the political process

V. government's desire to control the economy

120. Ancient democracy was…

A. straightb. representative

289. Anti-war peacekeeping movement, opposing all

wars, regardless of their nature and goals, are called…

A. cosmopolitanism

b. pacifism

V. pauperism

d. expansionism

52. Behavioristtheories of power analyze…( 1 answer option)

A. systemic nature of power

b. unconscious motives influencing decision-making

V. behavioral aspects of power relations

d. gaming aspect of power relations

104. Bolshevism– this is a variety…

A. right-wing totalitarianism

b. left totalitarianism

2. The Department of Political Science first appeared in…( 1 answer option)

A. England V. USA

b. Germany France

11. Is it true, that Plato considered democracy the best form of government?

A. Yes b. No

18. "War of all against all» – This, according to T. Hobbes

characteristic…( 1 answer option)

A. state of people

b. social condition of people

V. naturalstates of people

19. First introduced the concept« state», distinguished the state and

society…( 1 answer option)

A. T. Hobbes V. N. Machiavelli

b. J. Locke C. Montesquieu

37. It is not included in the structure of political science…( 1 answer option)

A. theory of international relations

b. cratology

V. ontology

d. theory of the rule of law

55. Power, based on massive media influence,

called…( 1 answer option)

A. gerontocracy V. mediacracy

b. meritocracy g. Plutocracy

69. Leading theorists of politicalelitology…( 2 answer options)

A. IN. ParetoV. G. Mosca

b. M. Weber Mr. R. Kjellen

73. Select the key principles of the elitist approach to politics( 2

answer option)

A. politics is a struggle for power

b. most people shouldn't be involved in politics

V. the population in the state is divided into managers and governed

d. the majority of people should have access to essential political

tools and means.

87. Politic system– This…( 1 answer option)

A. set of government agencies

b. set of political organizations exercising power

V. a set of government and public organizations , norms and

principles for the exercise of power

d. system of political and public organizations exercising power

95. The institutional subsystem of the political system includes…( 2

answer option)

A. ideology c. political culture

b. stateG. political parties

98. Is the statement true?, that a democratic political system

is open?

A. Yes b. No

99. Is the statement true?, that totalitarian political systems

belong to closed systems?

A. Yesb. No

121. IN modern world widespread form of democracy…

A. straight b. representative

132. IN To competence of executive bodies state power

included… (3 answer options)

A. implementation of foreign policy

b. implementation of adopted laws

V. human rights monitoring

d. abolition of extra-legal acts

d. development and execution of the state budget

134. High degree of government intervention in economic life

society– This…(1 answer option)

A. secession c. autarky

b. statismG. Liberalism

140. In a presidential republic, the government has political responsibility

responsibility to…(1 answer option)

A. parliament

b. president

V. parliament and president

142. INsemi-presidentialrepublic the government bears political

responsibility to…( 1 answer option)

A. parliament

b. president

V. parliament and president

164. The upper house of the Russian parliament is called…

A. Federal Assembly

b. Council of the Federation

V. Legislative Assembly

State Duma

169. The highest executive body in the Russian Federation– This

A. parliament c. presidential administration.

b. government Supreme Court

181. In those cases, when the President of the Russian Federation is unable to fulfill his

powers, performs them temporarily…(1 answer option)

A. speaker of parliament

b. Chairman of the Federation Council

V. head of the presidential administration

G. Prime Minister

197. Depending on participation in the exercise of state power, all

political parties are divided into…( 1 answer option)

A. ruling and opposition

b. legal and illegal

V. opposition and legal

ruling and illegal

199. Is the statement true?, that some political parties

limit their activities to participation in election campaigns?

A. Yes b. No

200. Choose the correct judgment:

A. all parties are divided along class lines

b. every political party has a program and charter

V. all political parties have the goal of state power

d. all parties have individual fixed membership

201. In a modern democratic state, parties…(1 answer option)

A. lobby the interests of the oligarchy

b. reflect the political interests and goals of different sectors of society

V. are representative institutions

d. are engaged exclusively in propaganda activities

213. Possibilities of a one-party system…(1 Possible answer)

A. lack of real diversity in society's political leanings

b. unilateral advantages in access to media

V. dominance of forceful methods of conflict resolution

G. all listed

214. Select the correct judgment:

A. Russia has a proportional electoral system

b. The USA has a multi-party system

V. China has a two-party system

Russia has a two-party system

215 . Elections to the State Duma are carried out according to…(1 answer option)

A. majoritarian electoral system

b. proportional electoral system

V. mixed electoral system

223. The most important idea of ​​liberalism states…(1 answer option)

A. existence of a universal moral order

b. desire for change

V. the need for active government participation in the economy

G. the absolute value of the human person

224. Select V statements, corresponding to the ideology of liberalism…(2

answer option)

A. « man himself knows better than any government, what does he need»

b. “Equality is not only a legal, but also a political concept, which

must be introduced into the public sphere"

V. “The state is that without which it is impossible to establish either order or

justice, nor internal solidarity"

G. « supreme government agency Can't be compared to the head,

crowning society, and with a hat, which can be replaced painlessly»

229. Choose a statement, relevantconservative

ideology…(1 answer option)

A. « I would like to renovate it as close as possible to the style of that building, which

being repaired»

b. “man by nature is not capable of living peacefully, he is obsessed with the thirst for power,

sinful, greedy"

justice

230. Choose a statement, consistent with ideologysocial-

democracy:

A. “I would like to make the renovation as close as possible to the style of the building that

being repaired"

b. « man by nature is incapable of living peacefully, he is obsessed with power,

sinful, greedy»

V. solidarity is the interaction of all people to achieve freedom and

justice

d. “equality is one of the necessary elements of society, while

freedom is both a means and, in a sense, an end in itself.”

241. Select western characteristics political culture(3 options

A. ideals of individual freedom

b. deification of rulers and their managerial activities

V. dominance of corporatist values

d. recognition of the individual as the main subject and source of politics

d. competitive type of participation in power

e. attraction to simplified forms of power organization

Elite concept , developing the theme of political power, includes integral part into modern political science. The founders of the theory of elites are representatives of the Italian school, Italians V. Pareto (1848-1923). G. Mosca (1858-1941) and the German R. Michels (1876-1936), who moved from Germany to Italy. Their views belong to the “Machiavellian” school, since it is believed that the elite as a ruling group in society was first considered in the works of their compatriot Machiavelli.

G. Mosca - Italian researcher, general, one of the founders of political science. The main works of Gaetano Mosca are “Theory of Government and Parliamentary Government”, “Fundamentals of Political Science”, “History of Political Doctrines”.

Elite theories - these are theories about dividing people in any society elites And masses . Mosca developed the idea that “in all societies (from the underdeveloped or those that have barely achieved the foundations of civilization to the most developed and powerful) there is two classes of people - the ruling class and the ruled class. The first, always less numerous, performs all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power gives, while the second, more numerous class is managed and controlled by the first...” Mosca G. Ruling class. // Anthology of world political thought. In 5 t. T. 2. ? M., 1997. ? P. 118.. Mosca considered the elite from the point of view of its structure, laws of functioning, coming to power, degeneration and decline, replacement by a counter-elite. One of the significant trends and dangers in the development of elites is its transformation into a hereditary, closed group, which leads to its degeneration and replacement by a counter-elite. “The ruling classes inevitably decline if they cease to improve the abilities with which they came to power, when they can no longer perform their usual social functions, and their talents and service lose their significance in society.” Mosca performed for openness And continuity in the functioning of elites as a guarantee of the stability of society and the political system.

Developing his theory, Mosca developed " law of social dichotomy ", gave the concept of a political class, defined two types of organization of political governance, the qualities of the political class and the conditions of access to it, ways of consolidating the power of the political class and its renewal, identified two trends in the development of the political class, etc.

Independently from Mosca, the concept of elites was developed Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) - Italian sociologist and classic of elitology. The most famous work is “Treatise on General Sociology”.

In the field of political science, Pareto became famous for his theories of ideology And theories of political elites . In The Rise and Fall of the Elites. “Treatise on General Sociology” he formulated the main provisions of his theory. Pareto highlights two strata of population : the lower stratum, the non-elite and the higher stratum, the elite, divided into two parts - the ruling elite and the non-ruling elite. The author gives the now classic definition political elite , the essence of which is that it is “the class of those who have the highest indices in their field of activity ... who directly or indirectly play a significant role in the management of society and constitute ruling elite , the rest form non-governing elite » .

Circulation , that is the cycle of elites, Pareto considers how the main driving force of political processes and social changes: “The history of mankind is the history of a constant change of elites; some rise, others decline.” In this process of revolutionary change of elites, many representatives of the old elite (which had fallen into decline) are killed, imprisoned, exiled, or reduced to the lowest social level. However, some of them save themselves by betraying their class, and they often occupy leading positions in the revolutionary movement. Pareto's conclusion is that the main result of revolutionary change is the emergence of a new elite with some admixture of the old.

Robert Michels (1876-1936) - German political scientist and sociologist. Researched political processes, being influenced by the works of M. Weber and Italian elite theorists G. Mosca and V. Pareto. In the field of socio-political processes, Michels was interested in the problems of socialism, fascism, and nationalism. However, his significant contribution to political science is associated with research of political parties . His work “The Sociology of a Political Party in a Democracy” appeared in Germany in 1911. In Russian, individual chapters with comments were published only in 1990-1991.

In his opinion, political parties - a necessary means for social movements to protect their core interests. However, political parties, like any large organizations, are forced to entrust their leaders with monopoly power. Michels came to the conclusion that oligarchization - an inevitable form of life for large social structures. The rise of the party oligarchy over political parties and social movements is a consequence of a number of factors: the incompetence of the masses, the lack of knowledge and skills of political work, the need for effective leadership in conditions of inter-party struggle. The party oligarchy, skillfully using various resources, begins to exist not for social movements, but at the expense of these parties and movements. this implies "The iron law of oligarchization" Michels: “In all parties, regardless of their type, democracy leads to oligarchy,” according to which, democracy, if it were possible, would inevitably degenerate into oligarchy.” This conclusion contradicts the conclusion of Plato, in whose classification, on the contrary, oligarchy turns into democracy. According to Michels, democracy as a state system is in principle impossible. Civilized humanity, according to Michels, cannot exist without a ruling political class. “The majority of humanity, doomed by the cruel fatalism of history to eternal “minority,” will be forced to recognize the dominance of an insignificant minority that has emerged from its own environment and come to terms with the role of a pedestal for the greatness of the oligarchy” Michels R. Sociology of political parties in a democracy. // Anthology of world political thought. T. 2. ? pp. 189-190..

The law of oligarchization presupposes the replacement of one ruling layer by another as a pre-established form of human coexistence in large unions. “Socialists can win, but not socialism, which dies at the moment of the victory of its adherents... The masses are satisfied that, without sparing their strength, they change their masters” Ibid. ? P. 190..

Class struggle takes place in society as a whole and in individual parties, even workers, who are a mixture of classes. Each party has its own leadership layer, which is also inevitably subject to the process of oligarchization. Michels cites a saying among French workers: “If you are chosen, then you are lost.” The larger and more heterogeneous a party becomes, the stronger the process of oligarchization in it.

The same applies to trade unions. “How insignificant are the differences between the development trends of state oligarchies (government, court, etc.) and proletarian oligarchies” Ibid. ? P. 193.. The “representative”, who feels his complete independence, turns from a servant of the people into a master over them - both a state “servant” and a party one.

Michels’ general conclusion: “Democracy gets along very well with a certain degree of tyranny for other psychological and historical reasons: the mass tolerates domination more easily when each of its individuals has the opportunity to get closer to it or even join it.” Ibid.? P. 196.. Michels’ merit is that he extended the concept of the elite to all major social groups and, generalizing, proclaimed one of the few laws in sociology and political science.

At the same time, Michels noted that without parties in modern era it is impossible to achieve success in the political struggle, the struggle of various social strata for the distribution and redistribution of public resources. Despite the fact that the struggle for democracy takes on oligarchic forms, inter-party competition, according to Michels, contributes to the selection and promotion of the most worthy to power in the state.

The theories of the Machiavellian school were widespread in Italy, Germany, and France between the First and Second World Wars. But they became widely known on the American continent. In the 30s A seminar on the study of Pareto was held at Harvard University (his theory of social action was later reworked by structural functionalism). G. Mosca's ideas about the empirical approach to understanding political phenomena, that the object of research is living reality, also contributed to the formation of the Chicago School of Political Science. The World Congress of Political Scientists (Munich, 1970) noted the special role of the Italian school, which served as the starting point for numerous studies of political elites.

G. K Ashin

Course on the history of elitology

Chapter 1. Elitology as a science................................................... .……..3

Chapter 2. Genesis of elitology. Proto-elitology......................... 26

Chapter 3. Classics of elitology of the late 19th – early 20th centuries...73

Chapter 4. Evolution of elitology and its typology.....................................98

Chapter 5. Methodological guidelines of elitism.....………….. 132

Chapter 6. Elite: dispute about the term.................................................. .....….174

Chapter 7. On the history of Russian elitology.....................................222

Chapter 8. History of American elitology....................................243

Chapter 9. The dispute about the structure of power and the structure of the US elites..... 269

Chapter 1. Elitology as a science

Subject of elitology. The 20th century sharply spurred the process of differentiation and integration of sciences. Moreover, new scientific disciplines are increasingly being formed not just as specialized areas of already established scientific disciplines, but precisely as disciplines that integrate the achievements of different, mainly related sciences (and sometimes very distant from each other), and often the methods and concepts of one science turn out to be heuristic when solving problems facing another scientific discipline. It is precisely such a complex scientific discipline that is increasingly claiming independent status that is elitology. It was formed in line with social and political philosophy, but it integrated the achievements and methods of other related disciplines. Elitology has developed as a complex interdisciplinary knowledge lying at the intersection of political science, social philosophy, political science, sociology, general history, social psychology, and cultural studies.

By the way, science as such is always elitist, and its development is the preservation of the best (and discarding the worst), which becomes the achieved level at which the best, new, progressive is again revealed - that is, the development of science is the choice of the elite and, in a certain sense, it is the practical application of elitology.

Elitology in an extremely broad sense can be considered as the science of differentiation and hierarchization of being, its orderliness, structuralization and evolution. It is known that the movement from chaos to order - the content of the development process - includes the differentiation of being, with which its hierarchization is inextricably linked (the key problem for understanding the phenomenon of the elite). But we will not expand the subject of elitology, if only because as a result it will lose its specificity. Perhaps it would be much more accurate to say that elitology in in a broad sense is based on the doctrine of the systemic nature of being (and, consequently, on the general theory of systems), its differentiation and hierarchization, on the laws of thermodynamics (entropy and negentropy), synergetics. General systems theory has an extremely wide scope of application. Almost every subject can be represented as a certain system, i.e. a certain integrity, consisting of elements that are in relationships, connections with each other, constituting a certain unity; Moreover, it is possible to identify the hierarchy of these relations, their subordination (each element of the system can be considered as a subsystem, that is, a system of a lower order, as a component of a broader system).

Of course, these dependencies do not reveal the specifics of elitology; they rather indicate the knowledge and principles from which elitology starts and on which it is based. At best, they can only be preliminary remarks about what methodological principles elitology is based on.

Note that hierarchy is characteristic not only of the morphology of a certain system, but also of its functioning: individual levels of the system are responsible for certain aspects of its behavior, the functioning of the system as a whole is the result of the interaction of all its levels, and the control of the system as a whole is carried out by its highest level. Thus, in complex dynamic systems, it is possible to distinguish the control and controlled subsystems, to record the phenomenon of subordination - the most important point that explains the problem of elite and elitism. Among the most complex dynamic systems, biological and, of course, social systems are of particular interest, and the latter, in fact, are the specific subject of consideration by elitologists. Let us note that one of the founders of the approach to society as a system in a state of dynamic equilibrium was the recognized classic of elitology V. Pareto. In this regard, I would also like to note the development of a systematic approach in the tectology of A.A. Bogdanov and the praxeology of T. Kotarbinsky, which are especially fruitful in relation to understanding the functioning of the political and administrative elite.

Now let’s narrow the subject of elitology to social elitology, which is elitology in the proper sense of the word. Elitology can be considered as the science of social differentiation and stratification, more precisely as the science of the highest stratum in any system of social stratification, its special functions related to the management of the system as a whole or certain of its subsystems, in the development of norms and values ​​that serve self-sustainment system and its development, orient it towards movement in a certain direction (towards improving the system, towards its progress). Therefore, the elite includes a part of society consisting of the most authoritative, respected people, which takes leading positions in the development of norms and values ​​that determine the functioning and development of the social system, which is the reference group on whose values, considered exemplary, society is guided. These are either the bearers of traditions that bind and stabilize society, or, in other social situations (usually crises) - the most active, passionate elements of the population, which are innovative groups. Thus, elitology is the science of elites and, consequently, of the foundations of differentiation of society, the criteria for this differentiation, and the legitimacy of this differentiation. Of course, it needs to develop an appropriate categorical apparatus, including the definition of the concepts “best” and “chosen”.

Finally, often (primarily in political science) the elite is spoken of in narrow the meaning of this term as a political-administrative, managerial elite. It is this component of elitology that has become (perhaps without sufficient grounds for this) the most important, widespread, “applied” part of elitology, although this is only one of many elitological disciplines. In this narrow sense, the subject of elitology (more precisely, political elitology) is the study of the process of socio-political management and, above all, the highest stratum of political actors, the identification and description of the social stratum that directly carries out this management, being its subject (or, in in any case, the most important structural element of this subject), in other words, the study of the elite, its composition, the laws of its functioning, its rise to power and retention of this power, its legitimization as the ruling layer, the condition for which is the recognition of its leading role by the mass of followers, the study of its role in the social process, the reasons for its degradation, decline (usually due to its closedness), and departure from the historical arena as not meeting the changed historical conditions, the study of the laws of transformation and change of elites.

The structure of the subject of elitology certainly includes the history of the development of knowledge about elites, that is, the history of elitology. At the center of the subject of elitology is the study of its laws - the laws of structure (the structure of the elite, the connection between its elements, which are usually subsystems of the elite as an integral system - political, cultural, military, etc.), the laws of the functioning of elites, the interaction between the elements of this system, dependencies between its various components, the role in which each of these components acts in relation to the elite as an integral phenomenon, the laws of connection and subordination of the elements of this system, and finally, the laws of development of this system, its transition from one level to another, usually higher, to a new type of connections within this system.

Russian school of elitology. The term “elitology” is a Russian innovation. It was introduced into scientific circulation in the 80s and became widespread in Russian social sciences starting from the second half of the 90s, when a number of works on this issue were published. We can safely say that a Russian school of elitology is taking shape.

Unfortunately, foreign colleagues are in no hurry (yet?) to recognize the necessity and legality of this term (is it because this is a Russian innovation?) or its equivalent, which has not yet been proposed. It is quite possible that the term “elitology” is jarring to the ears of people for whom English is their native language. It is no coincidence that they prefer the term “political science” to political science and “cultural studies” to cultural studies. However, we do not cling to the term at all. We can say about this in the words of a Russian proverb: “even if you call it a pot, just don’t put it in the oven.”

In recent years, the author of this work has visited more than 10 universities in the USA and Germany, in many of them he gave lectures on elitological issues, as well as reports at congresses and conferences. Moreover, as a rule, I was asked to give lectures and special courses under the traditional titles for Americans and Western Europeans: “Sociology of the Elite” in sociology departments and “Political Elites” in political science departments. It took a long time to explain that the sociology of the elite and the problems of political elites are only a part, albeit a very important part of elitology. In fact, do the courses “Political Elites”, “Sociology of the Elite”, “Theories of the Elite” taught in Western universities exhaust all elitological problems? They can rather be considered as separate sections of elitology that describe certain aspects of the elite phenomenon. With such a fragmented approach, it is impossible to cover the subject of research - the elite - as a certain integrity, as a certain system, to reveal the laws of the functioning and development of this phenomenon, to exhaust all the richness of relations within the elite and relations between the elite and society as a whole. It is precisely this holistic, systemic approach to the phenomenon of the elite and the elite that elitology, in particular, the Russian school of elitology, insists on. As for the term “elitology” itself, its meaning cannot be exaggerated; it, like any scientific concept, is just a moment, even a key moment, of a certain concept. Moreover, elitology is the broadest concept, including all sciences about elites, regardless of the value orientation of a particular scientist developing this issue, regardless of whether he is an apologist, a singer of the elite, or a critic of a society that needs an elite for its governance and placing the elite in a privileged position. Elitology strives to be scientific, not ideological.

The objections of Western colleagues against the very term “elitology” and against distinguishing it as an independent science are characteristic and not without interest. Here is the opinion of one of them: “The term itself is rather clumsy, clumsy, and also consists of two roots – Latin (elite) and Greek (logos), which already speaks of its eclecticism.” I replied that one could agree with this argument, that I would with great pleasure introduce the term “aristology”, where both roots would be Greek, that the Greek “aristos” seemed to me preferable to the Latin root “elite”. But the whole point is that the term “elite”, introduced into scientific circulation by V. Pareto, is well-established, firmly established in science, and the term “aristology” would introduce even greater confusion into an already difficult problem.

Another objection to elitology. One of the participants in the discussion of this problem said: “It’s bad when the number of scientific disciplines increases,” and called for relying on the words of the famous medieval scholastic W. Ockham that “entities should not be multiplied.” In answering a colleague, I had to refer to the fact that he did not quote Ockham in full: the philosopher said that “entities should not be multiplied unless absolutely necessary.” And this is precisely the case when there is a “special need”. The role of elites in the historical process in general is too great, and Russia has suffered too much from unqualified, cruel, dishonest elites.

But let’s return to the courses taught in a number of Western European and American universities, which have as their subject one or another elite, one or another aspect of the study of elites. The course “Theories of Elites” is usually only of a historical and political science nature. A very interesting course taught by L. Field and J. Higley “Elitism” (and a book with the same title) analyzes an important paradigm that is directly related to our problems, but this is only one of the paradigms that does not take into account the egalitarian paradigm and therefore which cannot claim to be a holistic analysis of elitology. We cannot be satisfied with elitist concepts in the spirit of F. Nietzsche and J. Ortega y Gasset, if only because they all unconditionally accept the elite-mass dichotomy as an axiom, as a norm of a civilized society, ignoring the possibility of studying and interpreting the phenomenon of the elite by researchers , starting from an egalitarian paradigm and considering the presence of an elite as a challenge to democracy, leaving aside objections to the perpetuation of this division as an ahistorical approach to the very fact of the existence of an elite. Even fewer can claim to cover all elitological issues in the “Political Elite” course. It should be noted that the vast majority of modern researchers recognize the pluralism of elites (political, economic, religious, cultural, etc.). But if in any context the concept of “elite” is used without an adjective specifying which elite is meant, one can be sure that we are talking about the political elite. This very circumstance indicates that in the public consciousness it is the political elite that comes to the fore, which pushes other, non-political elites into the background (which, in our opinion, is more bad than good, because by default it presupposes the primacy of the political elite). It seems to us more fair that in the hierarchy of elites, socially dominant groups, the leading place should rightfully belong to the cultural elite, the creators of new cultural and civilizational norms. The highest place in the hierarchy of elites and leaders of mankind should not be given to Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin or Churchill, but Buddha, Christ, Socrates, Mohammed, Kant, Einstein, Sakharov.

Perhaps the closest thing to the subject of elitology is the subject of the sociology of the elite. However, the subject of the sociology of the elite is significantly narrower than the subject of elitology. The sociology of the elite does not exhaust all the richness of the content of elitology. Sociological research methods should not be absolutized either; in elitology they are supplemented by philosophical, political science, cultural, and psychological ones. A sociological approach to identifying the elite was proposed by one of the founders and classics of elitology of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, V. Pareto. In various spheres of human activity, he identified people who carried out this activity most successfully (he assigned them an index of 10, and then, descending, to zero). Suppose, according to the criterion of wealth, one should give a ten to billionaires, a one to those who barely stay on the surface, reserving 0 for a beggar, a homeless person (although, strictly speaking, according to Pareto there is always a hierarchization, and, consequently, an elite of beggars, homeless people, etc. .). But is it possible to use this criterion when determining, say, the cultural elite? What index will we assign to Van Gogh or Vermeer - geniuses of painting, not appreciated by their contemporaries, or Bach, whose genius was fully appreciated only by his grateful descendants? Obviously, specifically cultural criteria will be needed. The sociology of the elite is the most important part of elitology, but it is still only a part of it. Therefore, the systematic approach proposed by the Russian school of elitology seems to us more promising.

It’s time to loudly declare the formation of a Russian school of elitology. This school emerged in the last decade and a half of the twentieth century (mainly the last ten years). And this is quite understandable. It is known that in Soviet times, elitological issues were taboo. Research on the Soviet elite was impossible for ideological (and, therefore, censorship) reasons. It is no coincidence that Russian elitology was formed during the years of Russia’s democratic transition. When censorship barriers were removed, elitological research in Russia began to be carried out on a broad front.

In addition, there were other important prerequisites for the formation of a school of modern Russian elitology. It could rely on the powerful traditions of Russian pre-revolutionary and emigrant philosophy, political science, law, sociology, represented by such outstanding figures of science and culture as N.A. Berdyaev, M.Ya. Ostrogorsky, P.A. Sorokin, I.A. Ilyin , G.P. Fedotov, who made an invaluable contribution to the development of elitology. .

The Russian school of elitology has been developing rapidly in the last decade; its representatives have published more than twenty monographs and hundreds of articles on the most important aspects of elitology. Moscow elitologists M.N. Afanasyev, G.K. Ashin, O.V. Gaman, E.V. Okhotsky and others, Rostov elitologists A.V. Ponedelkov, V.G. Ignatov, S. E. Kislitsin, A. M. Starostin, Astrakhan resident P. L. Karabuschenko, St. Petersburg residents S. A. Kugel, A. V. Duka, elitologists from Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Tatarstan and many other regions of Russia. It is in Russia - for the first time in the world - that elitological journals are published - "Elitological Research" (theoretical journal), "Russian Elite" (illustrated popular publication), "Elite Education". The school of Russian elitology has rightfully taken a leading position not only in the study of Russian elites (a couple of decades ago, Russian elites could only be learned from the works of foreign Sovietologists and Russian political emigrants), but also in a number of general theoretical problems of elitology.

Elitological thesaurus. Like any emerging science, elitology needs to comprehend and clarify its conceptual apparatus, develop a general theory and methodology, transfer theoretical concepts to the operational level, develop empirical studies of elites, and comparative elitological studies.

Let's start by distinguishing between such concepts (which are still confused) as elitology, elitism, elitism. The confusion of these terms is primarily the result of the fact that elitology originated as elitism, for its theorists were spokesmen for the interests of those segments of the population from which members of the elite were recruited, and who acted as ideologists (and thereby apologists) of these strata. Elitism is a concept based on the fact that the division of society into the elite and the masses is a standard of social structure, an attribute of civilization (the absence of such a division is a sign of savagery and underdevelopment of society). The more aristocratic a society is, the higher it is as a society (F. Nietzsche, H. Ortega y Gasset). The elite in this understanding is a stratum that is more or less closed, whose members do not accept or despise the nouveau riche. Thus, elitism is an aristocratic and deeply conservative worldview. Accordingly, the writings of his supporters are a reflection on the very highest social stratum to which they belong or whose values ​​they are guided by.

Elitism is a phenomenon close to elitism, but not an identical concept to it. Taking as an initial postulate the same dichotomy between the elite and the masses, its supporters, however, do not treat the masses with open or poorly hidden contempt (which is typical for such elitists as Plato or Nietzsche), they are more liberal, they can respect the masses and recognize their rights to a place in the sun. In any case, in their understanding, the elite should not be a closed stratum of society, but, on the contrary, should be open to the most capable people from non-elite strata, including those from the lower social classes. They generally accept high levels of social mobility as legitimate and even desirable. Any society is subject to social stratification, which is caused by the unequal distribution of abilities; in the competition for elite positions, those who are functionally more prepared for managerial activities win. Elitists are characterized by a meritocratic approach to the elite (however, this approach is not a monopoly of elitists; it is inherent in both a number of moderate elitists and moderate egalitarians).

Finally, elitology is the broadest concept that unites all researchers of the elite, regardless of their methodological attitudes and value preferences, including supporters of the egalitarian paradigm, for which the presence of an elite is a challenge to the fundamental value of society - equality. Among the egalitarians there are supporters of rough egalitarianism, up to complete equality of property, egalitarians for whom it is intolerable that among the “equals” there are people who, in George Orwell’s words, are “more equal than others” (radical egalitarians). But a much larger number of egalitarians act as fighters for “justice,” by which they usually mean a more adequate system of social inequality, justify the admissibility of a certain degree of inequality in accordance with the abilities and, most importantly, the merits of people, their contribution to the development of society, that is, they demonstrate elements meritocratic approach (moderate egalitarians).

Most elite researchers proceed from the fact that the elite is the determining force of the historical (including political) process, its subject. This approach is fraught with rather arbitrary postulation. To avoid confusion between different interpretations of the elite and its role in the development of society, we introduce a distinction between such concepts as elitology, elitism, elitism. The first is the broadest concept. Of course, all elitists and elitists are elitologists, but not all elitologists are either elitists or elitists. Such a distinction helps us, in particular, to avoid a common mistake, especially characteristic of American political scientists, who classify the outstanding American sociologist R. Mills as an elitist on the formal basis that he used the elite-mass dichotomy to analyze the US political system. Mills did not consider the presence of a ruling elite to be either an ideal or a norm of a political system, rightly believing that the concentration of power in the hands of this elite is evidence of the undemocratic nature of this political system. Thus, while undoubtedly an elitologist, and an outstanding elitologist at that, Mills was neither an elitist, much less an elitist. The elitist paradigm (uniting elitists and elitists) includes those sociologists and political scientists who, like L. Field and J. Higley, consider the identification of the elite as a subject of social management and its privileged position as the law of the social process, its norm. But an elitologist who studies a really existing elite can be critical of the very fact of the existence of this social stratum, considering it a threat to democracy (even an alternative to democracy); his ideal of social organization may be a self-governing society, a society without an elite, or (which is essentially the same thing), a society in which all members will rise to the level of the elite, will be a real subject, the creators of the historical process. As for elitists and elitists, they consider such views to be a kind of social utopia, and the presence of an elite for them is an immanent element of civilized societies.

In recent years, interest in the elitist paradigm has increased, primarily in political science (and this paradigm is usually considered in relation to the egalitarian, pluralistic and other paradigms). It is precisely this issue – the confrontation and change of different paradigms in political science with an emphasis on the elitist paradigm – that the above-mentioned Field and Higley study. Here is the diagram they draw. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, an elitist paradigm emerges (with this term they combine elitism and elitism) and displaces the egalitarian paradigm and challenges the liberal and Marxist paradigms. At the same time, it is recognized that the founders of elitism were not hostile to the liberal system of Western values ​​and saw the main enemy in the Marxist paradigm. In the second and third quarters of the twentieth century, there was a decline and stagnation of the elitist paradigm, and interest in it increased again in the fourth quarter of the century. It seems that this scheme is not entirely correct: it ignores, in particular, the explosion of interest in the elitist paradigm in the 50s, which was caused by the books of R. Mills “The Power Elite” and F. Hunter “Supreme Leadership in the USA”, which caused heated controversy in American and Western European political science, generally aimed at discrediting the left-radical concept of Mills and his followers and defending the pluralistic paradigm. This scheme also does not take into account the conservative and aristocratic paradigm that came to the 20th century from the 19th century. In short, this scheme greatly simplifies the situation that developed in the twentieth century. Field and Higley's position about the growing role and significance of the elitist paradigm in the last quarter of the twentieth century and further at the beginning of the twentieth century is also disputed by many political scientists and sociologists. However, they have no less number of supporters. K. Lash writes about the “revolt of the elites” in America, J. Devlin writes about the revolution of the elites in post-Soviet Russia; A similar position is occupied by D. Lane, K. Ross, and W. Zimmerman. The Field and Higley scheme is supported, in particular, by the growing influence of the “neo-elitists” T. Dye, H. Zeigler and others in American political science.

Is Field and Higley’s scheme confirmed by the example of Russian political science? To a certain extent, yes. A number of Russian political scientists write about the radical turn of Russian political science and sociology from the egalitarian, anti-elitist paradigm, which certainly prevailed in the Soviet period, to the elitist paradigm. But in Russia at the end of the twentieth century a special, unique political situation arose. And it is unlikely that the example of Russian social sciences can illustrate the global trend of growing influence of the elitist paradigm. In Russia, the undoubted growth of the influence of the elitist paradigm, in our opinion, is not the result of the natural evolution of scientific views, it is rather the result of political reasons, it is a reaction to the censorship, ideological persecution of elitism carried out in the Soviet years and decades. It is known that a spring, which is compressed by external forces, tends to straighten, tends to oscillatory motion in the opposite direction.

And in Russia there really was a turn from Soviet-type egalitarianism, egalitarianism to a large extent pharisaical, which denied the presence in the USSR of a totalitarian elite endowed with institutional privileges and hid the real inequality of the ruling elite and the masses, in other words, pseudo-egalitarianism, propagated by apologists of the one-party system, to the elitist paradigm . This turn is often interpreted as part of a general turn from totalitarianism to democracy.

It seems, however, that there are too many moments here that reflect the specifics of the Russian situation at the end of the twentieth century for the Russian turn to the elitist paradigm of this period to be considered as confirmation of the correctness of Field and Higley’s hypothesis about a global change of paradigms in political science. In science, the transition from one paradigm to another (see: T. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, M., 1975) is the result of the consistent accumulation of facts and data that do not fit into the paradigm generally accepted by the scientific community, and as a result, the accumulation of quantitative changes leads to a change paradigms (which is identical to revolutions in science). In the Russian situation at the end of the twentieth century, everything happened differently. Firstly, the fact of the simultaneity and almost complete unanimity of Russian political scientists in the transition from one paradigm to another is alarming. This transition resembles not a natural process of development of science, but the result of some command from above (rather, the anticipation of this command, the readiness to guess and carry out the will of the “new authorities”). This is reminiscent of the command existing in the navy, when the admiral commands a squadron of ships heading into the wake: “Right (left) rudder!” and adds: “all of a sudden!” When such a turn takes place in science, this does not at all indicate an atmosphere of freedom and democracy in it. This is too similar to totalitarian times, when “the entire Soviet biology” began to fight together against Mendelism-Morganism, or all the sciences in the country - from mathematics to philosophy - fought against cybernetics. Or when physicists loyal to Nazi Germany “refuted” the theory of relativity created by the non-Aryan Einstein. So, perhaps, taking into account historical experience, it would be appropriate to assume that the judgment about a change in paradigms is a certain simplification of the process of development of modern Russian consciousness, perhaps such a turn is another sway from one extreme to another, so characteristic, unfortunately, of Russian life in last century; Perhaps such a sharp movement is unsafe, being a movement between the Scylla of egalitarianism and the Charybdis of elitism. Perhaps the real movement of political thought occurs between these two extremes, in their struggle and, at the same time, their interpenetration, the mutual consideration of these opposites. For centuries, humanity has been painfully searching for a balance between federalism and unitarism, between administrative-legal and civil-legal spaces, between elitism and egalitarianism, ways to create sustainable non-violent civil power, and build a civil society.

What has been said above is only, at best, the beginning of an elitological thesaurus, which we will try to supplement with other terms that deepen and expand the elitological problematics. This will primarily relate to the term “elite” itself, its relationship with such terms as the ruling class, ruling group, ruling clique, clan, etc.

The structure of elitology. Elitology has a complex structure. It includes philosophical elitology, sociology of the elite, political elitology, historical elitology, as well as the history of elitology, elitological psychology (including the motivation of power, the psychological characteristics of the elite layer), cultural elitology (the elite as a creative part of society, creating cultural values, analysis elite and mass culture), comparative elitology, which studies the general patterns and features of the functioning of elites in different civilizations, different countries, different regions of the world, elite education and elite pedagogy. Of course, this list of elitological disciplines is far from complete. An interesting classification of elitological disciplines is proposed by P.L. Karabuschenko. In addition to theoretical elitology, he distinguishes practical and applied elitology.

Philosophical elitology represents the highest level of generalization in elitology. It, in turn, has a complex structure. In it one can distinguish elitological ontology, elitological epistemology (including ancient secret science, esoteric epistemology), elitological philosophical anthropology, elitological personalism.

Ontological elitology reveals heterogeneity, differentiation, hierarchy of existence. At this level, the problem of elitism and the elite is most widely posed. Let us note that the problems of heterogeneity and hierarchization of being were the focus of attention of ancient (Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato) and medieval philosophy (Augustine the Blessed, Thomas Aquinas), they were discussed in the philosophy of modern times, in the philosophy of the twentieth century (N.A. Berdyaev , H. Ortega y Gasset). The development process includes differentiation and hierarchization of being, and with it the identification of the elite. This especially applies to the development of complex dynamic systems, which is always accompanied by an increase in their internal differentiation, hierarchization, and complexity (and specialization in organic and social systems).

This problem has long become a general scientific issue. It is included, for example, in the subject of theoretical biology. The development of organic populations is accompanied by an increase in their internal differentiation, complexity, and hierarchization; the growth of internal differences leads to the selection of the most perfect individuals, the qualities and properties of which correspond to the tendencies of the system (population) towards its development. These more advanced individuals can be called elite in the population system. Elite elements are the leading element in the process of natural and artificial selection. In essence, all biological evolution - in accordance with Darwin's teachings - is the elitology of living things, the identification of the best (most adapted to the conditions of their existence) individuals, the extinction of the less adapted, the transformation of the elite into the norm, the identification of a new elite in the population (i.e. the elite of elites ) and, further, a new turn of the spiral. Both sociobiology and eugenics deal with the problem of elitism. It is known that Plato, extrapolating the processes of artificial selection to societies, was the theoretical father of eugenics, which, as a holistic doctrine, was formulated in the second half of the 19th century by F. Galton. And it doesn’t matter that the author of this work does not share the ideas of eugenics. What is important is that biology addresses elitological issues.

Elitological epistemology Let's start with the fact that in this problem the difference between elitism, characterized by closedness, and elitism is especially clearly revealed. Elite epistemology is an esoteric theory of knowledge for the “chosen”, initiated, possessing a “divine gift”, with an emphasis on occult knowledge, intuition and “insight”. During the period of the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the emergence of class society, its stratification was based not only on belonging to the clan aristocracy, but also to become familiar with sacred knowledge and sacraments, the bearers of which were mainly the priestly caste. This secret knowledge constituted the symbolic capital of the proto-elite and legitimized its claims to a privileged position in society. Elite esoteric knowledge has been developed over more than three millennia - from the Brahmans, the first philosophical schools of ancient India and ancient China (including the Taoists), the "occult science" developed by the Pre-Socratics, the hierarchical "theory of perfection" of Pythagoras, the Platonic concept of elite consciousness (states of minds that are closest to world of ideas), “eidetic vision”. On the threshold of the New Age, elite esoteric epistemology was developed by theosophy - a mystical knowledge of God, revealed to the “chosen ones”. Meister Eckhart (1575–1624) set the task of understanding divine wisdom, symbolically encrypted, the knowledge of the self-revelation of God. For the Swedish mystic E. Swedenborg (1688–1772), the task of selected thinkers is to comprehend the true symbols of the Word of God, first of all, the “Pentateuch,” and to identify the symbolic correspondence between the earthly and the “otherworldly.” In the 19th century, the tradition of theosophy was developed by H. P. Blavatsky (1831–1891) and her followers. She sought to synthesize religion, philosophy, occultism, relied on the traditions of Brahmanism, the teachings of Hinduism about karma, sought to establish the identity of all religious meanings, create a universal religion, setting the task of achieving occult knowledge and supernatural abilities, the bearers of which are “initiates” who have mastered the secrets of the esoteric knowledge. R. Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of anthroposophy, devoted his works to the development of speculative mysticism in the traditions of theosophy. This mystical, occult-oriented esoteric (and at the same time elitist) theory of knowledge can be contrasted with scientific epistemology (which in this regard can be called elite in the sense of its depth, critical nature and openness to criticism), the classical theory of knowledge, fertilized by the genius of I. Kant.

Elitological philosophical anthropology and elitological personalism- a tradition coming from Confucius, Pythagoras, Plato to N.F. Berdyaev and E. Mounier, turning to a comprehensive study of human problems, paying special attention to the issue of self-improvement of the individual, ascending through the stages of perfection to the level of an elite personality, Elitization of the individual is in the center a number of areas of religious philosophy, starting with Buddhism (the problem of an “enlightened” personality). Philosophical anthropology seeks the answer to the question of what a person is, what is his essence, integrity. The mode of human existence is possibility; a person is a project (M. Heidegger), a person is what he makes of himself (A. Camus). Hence - his path to self-improvement, the opportunity to go beyond his limits, to rise above them (elitization of the individual). Personalism comes from similar premises: personality is the highest meaning of civilization. N. Berdyaev’s personalism is called “eschatological,” but it can rightfully be called elitological personalism: a person is the likeness of God, he acquires the features of Godlikeness in the process of creativity, thereby realizing his calling. Berdyaev argued that the most important characteristic of a person is that he is not satisfied with himself, strives to overcome his limitations, to superhumanity, to the ideal. Personalism strives to create pedagogy, the purpose of which is the awakening and development of personal principles in a person, stimulating the self-elevation of the individual, his elitization, i.e., elite pedagogy.

Social and philosophical elitology is aimed at finding a normative approach to the elite, which, perhaps, most corresponds to the etymology of the term “elite”, which requires that the elite include the most creative people, outstanding in their moral and intellectual qualities. Close to this approach is the meritocratic concept, based on the fact that the true elite are not just those who, by birth or chance, ended up “at the top”, but the elite of merit, the elite of intelligence, education, intellectual and moral superiority, erudition, and creative potential.

There is no doubt that an important, one might even say central place in elitology belongs to elite sociology(At the same time, let us recall once again that the subject of elitology is broader than the subject of sociology of the elite; they are related as a whole and a part). In contrast to the philosophical-sociological approach, which is focused primarily on normativity, the sociology of the elite emphasizes the study of real elites. It is known how important sociology is to the analysis of social structure and social mobility (group and individual), and of particular interest is upward mobility (primarily to the elite), and the study of the mechanisms of elite recruitment. Sociology is characterized by a view of the elite as a reference group on whose values ​​society is guided. Distracting as much as possible from moralistic assessments, she identifies the elite in society and in various social groups according to such criteria as property status, status, and place in power relations. The emphasis is usually placed in the traditions of M. Weber on the status approach associated with claims to prestige and privilege, the distribution of symbolic honor. Of particular interest to elitology in this regard is the problem of prescribed status associated with inherited factors, social origin, race and nationality, and status based on personal achievements. The first plays a decisive role in societies with a closed elite, the second - with an open one. Among the sociological methods of studying elites, the method of empirical research occupies the most important place. In sociology, the statistical method of identifying the elite, proposed by V. Pareto, is widely used.

Recognizing the important role of sociology in the structure of elitology, we would like, at the same time, to object to a number of sociologists who believe that elitology as an independent discipline is not needed, since, in their opinion, the sociology of the elite covers elitological issues. Claiming to solve all the problems of elitology within the framework of sociology, they thus demonstrate a kind of “sociological expansionism.” Being a relatively young science (compared to philosophy and history), sociology was forced, in identifying its object and subject of research, to “conquer” territory for itself from other, previously established disciplines. Such “expansionism” of sociology can be seen as a “childhood disease” of a developing discipline. The fact that the sociology of the elite exists and is developing fruitfully does not mean that sociology is not needed, just as the presence of the sociology of culture does not deny or replace cultural studies, just as the presence of the sociology of politics does not cancel or replace political science.

As scientific statistics show, of all the branches of elitology, the largest number of researchers is attracted by political elitology. Their attention to this issue is a response to broad public interest in it, to a social order, to the need to understand who is the main subject of politics - the masses or a narrow elite group, to understand who is behind the most important strategic decisions that affect the fate of millions of people , on issues of war and peace, who these people are, whether they rightfully take their positions, how skillfully they solve political problems. Using data from political sociology, they explore the social affiliation and origin of members of the political elite, age, level of education and professional preparedness, value orientations, the main types of political elite (caste, class, class, nomenklatura, meritocratic), groupings, clans within the elite, issues of formation and changes in elites, analyze oppositional paradigms: elitism and egalitarianism, elitism and pluralism, elitism and democracy. Of particular interest are comparative studies of various types of elites, analysis of relations between political elites and the masses, the possibility of optimizing these relations, and problems of political leadership. A significant and growing branch of political elitology is the study of regional political and administrative elites in various countries of the world (we note in this regard that more than a hundred studies have been conducted on this issue in post-Soviet Russia alone).

We have noted only some areas of elitology. It is impossible not to note such important sections of elitology as the study of economic, cultural, religious, and military elites. Since almost every sphere of human activity has its own elite, if we even try to list the various elites, we will not succeed, we will go into infinity. This means that the subject of elitology will constantly expand. But it is only important to emphasize that each of the sections of elitology is a structural element of the study of the elite as an integral phenomenon, that in each of these sections, along with their specifics, it is possible to isolate certain general patterns, create a general theory, a methodology of elitology that “works” in all these specific areas, being refracted in a unique way.

In conclusion, we note that we began our review of the structural elements of elitology from the area that has least attracted the attention of researchers in recent decades - philosophical elitology, and ended with the one that has been especially intensively studied - political elitology. I would like to correct this imbalance by drawing the attention of elitologists to

the problems of philosophical elitology, poorly covered in the literature, and it is the foundation on which the general theory of elitology is built.