Every year in December, The Economist finds a “word of the year” that summarizes a major event or trend and has gained popularity in its wake.
It is useful to know that the magazine has been opposed to populism as it rose in the United States and elsewhere in the world but, I would say, not always in a consistent way. The real problem is not the right and the left, but the preference for collective choices over individual choices that characterizes both sides. (There have been some encouraging signs, however, that the prestigious magazine is evolving toward its 19th-century classical liberal roots.)
The Economist‘s word for 2024 is “kakistocracy,” the rule by the worst, from the ancient Greek kakistos (κάκιστος) for “the worst” and, of course, kratia (κρατία) for “rule” or “power.” Contrary to the case of, say, “aristocracy,” the derivative “kakistocrat” for those worst people who govern has not taken root, but we can hope it will. The 2024 word of the year would remain very relevant even if Ms. Harris had been elected in place of Mr. Trump. It is also relevant in many other countries.
In his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, Fredrich Hayek, the future economics Nobel laureate, foresaw that as the state gains power, the worst people would become rulers, whether it be a single dictator adored by the majority or an omnipotent democratic majority. The regime would be supported by people with the lowest moral and intellectual standards and by the most gullible. They would embrace the principle that the end justifies the means and unite against scapegoats. People would lose any “respect for the individual qua man instead of merely as a member of an organized group.” Cynicism and disregard for truth would spread. Tribal emotions and government propaganda would displace rational arguments. Hayek would not have been surprised if foreigners, immigrants, and pet-eating Haitians were among the scapegoats.
Kakistocracy is etymologically a very pejorative term. Kakistos is the superlative of kakos (κακός), which means bad or evil. Cacophony, for example, means unpleasant sounds. The plural neutral of kakos is kaka (κακά) and means bad things. The French baby-talk word “caca,” meaning “pou-pou,” came from that Greek word or a Latin derivative. It has been part of the French language since the 16th century. I understand that, in American English (“****”) and in Spanish, the word has the same meaning.
From a political-economy viewpoint, which is what interests us here, kakistocracy is bad for everybody except the kakistocrats.
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Behind the scenes: I instructed DALL-E to create an image “representing three members of a democratic kakistocracy.” The bot refused, saying that this concept “didn’t align with our content policy.” He would only agree to represent a democratic kakistocracy that would, as I told him, “makes your content policy illegal”! The second image below is one of the two he produced for that case. But the least bad image I finally obtained to illustrate this post was when I asked him for one “representing three members of a populist kakistocracy.” Changing “democratic” for “populist” also worked for his content policy! This is the first one just below. DALL-E explained, “Here is the generated image representing three members of a fictional populist kakistocracy.” AI bots are not Einsteins nor great social theorists.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Dec 12 2024 at 11:02am
Others have written about this before Hayek and maybe more accurately. (We dont have serfs.) What others have noted is that authoritarians tend to want to place people without knowledge and experience (often no morals) into positions of power in their administrations. Loyalty is the primary qualification.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 12 2024 at 11:19am
Steve: I am sure many other people have mentioned the phenomenon, at least implicitly (Ortega y Gasset, for one). The word “kakistocracy” dates from the early 19th century. Your second point is good too and it is at least implicit in Hayek’s discussion; I would have to check to say more. I also implicitly included that in my broad mention of supporters, but I should have been more explicit.
Roger McKinney
Dec 12 2024 at 1:37pm
Helmut Schoeck makes a similar point in his classic Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. Envy pervades politics and the politician who offers the most to satisfy envy usually wins. Envy powers socialism.
Roger McKinney
Dec 12 2024 at 1:38pm
Love the images!
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 12 2024 at 4:19pm
Roger: An interesting game is to try to persuade the robot to do something that it says it cannot do because of its “content policy.” It won’t represent a “democratic kakistocracy” because, I assume, it would be blasphemous. But the thing will do it if you say that the democratic kakistocracy is after its own “content policy.” And it will do without objection a “populist kakistocracy” probably because its trainers or its databases suggest that this is κακά. I am not sure what are the implications of this except that, however intelligent-looking the thing looks (a big talker), it is still not a human.
Monte
Dec 12 2024 at 5:10pm
What the poet James Russell Lowell described as a government “for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools.” Merriam-Webster’s WOTY is “polarization” and Time’s POTY if Donald Trump, to which I can only say my WOTY is “irony”.
Mactoul
Dec 12 2024 at 8:55pm
As I recall, the rise of evil men in Road to serfdom was specifically linked to the dynamics of the all-comprehensive economic plan.
Such a plan cannot succeed but to make it work, greater and greater arbitrariness, even brutality is needed. Thus the rise of brutal men.
There was nothing about general propensity of evil mem to rise in ordinary democracies.
Jose Pablo
Dec 12 2024 at 9:18pm
There was nothing about general propensity of evil mem to rise in ordinary democracies.
And yet raising they do in ANY organization imposed upon others by force. Honest, decent people don’t show any interest in “leading others” when they don’t want to be led.
Their egos don’t need the kick of having power over others (always a symptom of mental illness) and they find unsufferably antiaesthetic telling others what to do.
They prefer to focus on learning what they should do as individuals (a grueling lifelong task), letting others do the same.
Mactoul
Dec 12 2024 at 11:12pm
You are just restating the fact that people differ in their will to power. And yet this will to power is as necessary as self-centeredness of “honest, decent people”.
Jose Pablo
Dec 13 2024 at 10:22am
You are just restating the fact that people differ in their will to power
Yes, the same way that some people are psychopaths and others aren’t (and there are also degrees of psychopathy). What I find amazing is that we have failed so far to recognize the “will to power” as a mental illness. Despite all the suffering and destruction it has caused. Much more than psychopathy.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 13 2024 at 6:14pm
Mactoul: In his 1932 article on fascism in the 1932 Enclopedia Italiana (translated by Michael Oakeshott), Mussolini wrote, “The Fascist State is a will to power and to government.”
Mactoul
Dec 13 2024 at 8:41pm
Will to power is a personality trait. How do you propose to get rid of it?
Soviets didn’t succeed with New Soviet Man.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 13 2024 at 11:25pm
Mactoul: With an economic-political regime that reduces the benefits of power and increases those of voluntary exchange.
Jose Pablo
Dec 14 2024 at 2:03pm
Will to power is a personality trait
So is psychopathy.
How do you propose to get rid of it?
It is not about getting rid of it; it is most about providing adequate help to these poor souls.
What should be done is providing medical help to individuals showing any symptoms and locking away individuals with severe conditions.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 12 2024 at 10:46pm
Mactoul: If you read The Road to Serfdom, you will see that the ordinary democracy he is taking as an example is the UK.
Jose Pablo
Dec 12 2024 at 10:51pm
Certainly a place full of “socialists of all parties” … although, maybe, not as many as in France
Mactoul
Dec 12 2024 at 11:16pm
In 1948, UK was taking big steps towards socialism with nationalisation of this and that. That’s why it is Road to Serfdom. I don’t think Hayek had Attlee in mind as a gangster leader.
Mactoul
Dec 12 2024 at 11:19pm
And yet in UK the socialism went hand in hand with openness to immigration. By the current connotation, this isn’t populism at all.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 13 2024 at 5:22pm
Mactoul: Indeed, populism is just a special case of statism. Not everything that is not populism is nirvana.
Craig
Dec 12 2024 at 9:10pm
Most notable historical example I can recall is Stalin’s Great Purge of the Red Army yielding a field army that wasn’t particular effective against the Germans in the earlier part of WW2. Pragmatism led to the likes of Zhukov and Stalin ultimately did fear Zhukov as a result because his success on the battlefield made him a threat to Stalin, but what choice did he have?
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