The Top Crust
Every society, no matter how egalitarian, has a Top Crust.
The Top Crust forms government, runs corporations, designs great buildings, invents stuff that amazes us, leads the civil service, the police and the armed forces, wins acclaim for art, is sought for its expertise and generally enjoys the highest status. In a prosperous society, the thread binding the Top Crust is competence; the ability to accomplish difficult tasks.
Only a minority of societies in the world could be described as prosperous. North America, Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are prosperous. That’s less than 10% of the global population. The remaining 90% live in poverty.
Latin American societies remain perpetually troubled by stark divisions of wealth, corruption, gangster violence and dodgy money. The not-especially-successful UK has a GDP greater than that of India, yet India has a population more than twenty times as great. Even in China, the per-capita GDP in 2026 was just $14.5k, one sixth that of the USA (at around $90k). Why is Iran so notoriously meddling and belligerent? Why is North Korea a caricature of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four?
Evidently these differences result from each Top Crust wielding power. But why do the top crusts of poor nations show so little inclination to join the rich set? Consider that in 1854, Japan was an agrarian society that had no answer to the Paixhan shell cannon of Commander Perry’s famous black ships. Yet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyed Imperial Russia’s Baltic Fleet, for the first time proving an Asian nation could defeat a European ‘great power’. If Japan could accomplish this leap into the front rank of nations, why have so few others followed?
I believe this question can be answered. In this essay, I propose a periodic table of the elements of power.
The basic idea of elemental analysis is that societies fall ill and fail due to an unhealthy mix of power elements at the top.
On Bigotry
But first, a digression into the nature of competence.
At the kernel of every bigot is a frightened child. Once upon a time, the child glimpsed the truth and got such a fright it threw a mattress over reality and passed a comfortable life of repose. The mattress could be religious devotion, political dogma, the rituals of academe, or upper-middle class materialism. The child leads an apparently secure, smug existence (pontification is a symptom of bigotry), but passes across life without ever achieving adulthood and dies still a child.
There are compensations. The child-bigot evades the facts of life. We do not know why the universe exists and we probably never will. Our existence is meaningless. What happens after death is a mystery, although oblivion will not be a surprise. All you ever accomplish will be blown away in the dust of time. Time will claim every triumph—eventually, even Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony will vanish from the universe. Time is the ultimate conqueror. Only you can invest meaning into your life. The courage to live productively in the face of these truths is the only chance of adulthood.
Secretly the bigot knows they are living a lie. If an event or person casts doubt on that lie, the bigot senses an existential threat and reacts with fury. Hence the burning of religious heretics, the hatred between communists and fascists, between Catholics and Protestants, the xenophobia of nationalists and so forth.
As we discuss power, the bigot becomes a significant factor. The bigot chose to believe a lie to escape unbearable truth. However, truth is a persistent hunter. Having only masked rather than faced their fears, the bigot passes life as a fugitive from those very fears. Anxieties surge back with a vengeance when events lay pressure on the bigot. That is why bigots make decisions to evade reality, not to resolve a crisis. Bigots are incompetent. That is what makes them dangerous.
This is the basis of my analysis of power. When bigots gain power, there follows a descent into barbarity and penury. Ergo, prosperity is the flower of competence.
The Elements of Power
I’ll introduce my ‘periodic table’ of the elements of power, of which there are nine. In no particular order:
- the Landed Aristocracy
- the Rent-seekers
- the Clerics
- the Mob
- the Gangsters
- the Functionaries
- the Trade Unions
- the Intellectuals
- the Capitalists
The elements are elaborated below.
The Landed Aristocracy
The power gained from the possession of land has been fundamental since humans settled to pursue agriculture. The Landed Aristocracy is typically clannish, with power descending by right of birth usually down the male line, although some of the more sophisticated systems evolved a limited form of democracy (such as the Holy Roman Empire).
The Landed Aristocracy draws rents from tenants, peasants, serfs and slaves, however, they are not Rent-seekers. On the contrary, the Landed Aristocracy is the bitter enemy of the Rent-seekers. The Landed Aristocracy is rooted in the abiding, plain old earth and is therefore characterised by a deep-seated conservatism in matters of cultural tradition, religion and military duty.
This identification with, and legitimisation by, tradition makes the Landed Aristocracy a natural habitat for bigotry, especially against the disturbing impacts of trade, invention and intellectualism—hence the animosity towards the Rent-seekers (especially Jewish ones), the Capitalists (especially Jewish ones) and the Intellectuals (especially Jewish ones).
The British Landed Aristocracy was prepared to yield to pressure for political reform from the Intellectuals and Trade Unions. This goes a long way to explain why there were revolutions in France, Russia and Germany but not Britain. Anti-Semitism was nonetheless pervasive.
The Rent-seekers
The Rent-seekers are money-lenders. Their natural habitat is the sea port, the market town, the capital city, the shoulders of monarchs raising cash for war. The Rent-seekers produce nothing at all—they are two-faced dealers. They are good actors; they buy with a scowl and sell by charming promises. Yet the Rent-seekers are not useless. They are the water in the canal of trade. Without them, nothing moves, trade is dead and so are 90% of us.
Especially since the collapse of the gold-based Bretton Woods system of international trade in the early 1970s, the Rent-seekers have mobilised into giant banks that create and (supposedly) manage the money supply. The Rent-seekers mass-produce out of thin air the most coveted asset in any society: money! This makes them powerful. The instability of floating exchange rates allows massive turnovers of socially useless but lucrative trading. The modern financial system is the natural habitat of freeloaders, cream-skimmers and speculation bandits.
Note that all corporations listed on stock markets fall under the scope of the Rent-seekers. This is because the board of directors of any listed corporation serves the shareholders first (by law) rather than customers, employees, or the communities in which the corporation does its business. The board of directors is therefore a colonial administration of Functionaries managing assets to suit the interests of remote Rent-seekers.
The Rent-seekers are greedy, but mentally agile, competitive, and innovative. They are not perfect human beings, but their world is not a natural habitat for bigotry.
The Clerics
The Clerics are the custodians of religious dogmas that define correct beliefs and behaviours as well as the consequences of failing to adhere to those beliefs and behaviours. The Clerics rule in the name of a divine entity or entities, often but not always with one hand on a thick book deemed to have been revealed in some way by the divine entity or entities. Historically the Clerics chose who, and how many, had to be murdered (or ‘sacrificed’ in their terminology) in ghastly ways to please the divine entity or entities (such as cutting out beating hearts). Their hold over a population wanes as education and income levels rise and a life awash with the pleasures of consumption beckons (the United States being an exception).
The Clerics identify with, and gain legitimacy from, a story that provides meaning to simple people. The story may have some independent historical confirmation, but its assertions of miracles and eternal life are just a matter of opinion held with a particular conviction called ‘faith’. The power of the Clerics therefore rests on hypnosis. If that hypnosis is contradicted by another story, it’s an existential threat that must be destroyed.
In short, the Clerics are the natural habitat of an especially toxic bigotry. They are dangerous if they gain power. They will not bring prosperity. Just look at Afghanistan under the Taliban.
The Mob
When the poor bloody infantry of this world get too pissed-off with the insolent complacency of the Top Crust, they take to the streets and smash everything they can lay their hands on. The Mob is an ephemeral element of power, since it amounts to such a spectacular increase in entropy that no society can suffer it for any length of time. Either the Mob is placated or else that society ceases to exist.
As for the degree of bigotry that might exist in a Mob, typically any society will have its popular scapegoats. In medieval times and then again during the eighty years or so prior to 1945 it was the Jews. Today I suppose it might be cyclists, immigrants and bankers.
An unusual development can occur if abuse by the Top Crust is sustained against a population. In this case, the Mob can crystallise into a criminal organisation with a hierarchy, modus operandi and vision (see ‘Gangsters’ below).
If such an organisation becomes the Top Crust of a country, what follows will almost certainly be a most unpleasant experience.
The Gangsters
Organised crime can occur for a number of reasons.
The Prohibition era of the United States is widely credited with having enabled numerous scattered groups of small-time thugs and racketeers to coalesce into large, powerful organisations with sophisticated financial arrangements that rendered them virtually beyond the law (a.k.a. the Cosa Nostra). Many argue that the ongoing ‘prohibitions’ of cannabis, LSD, amphetamines and so forth likewise sustain criminal empires.
As noted in the previous section, organised crime can also occur after sustained oppression by a top crust. The Irgun in post-WW2 Palestine , the IRA in Northern Ireland, Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East are examples. These groups are classed as ‘terrorist’ as they are not the Functionaries of a nation state recognised by the international community. Since these organisations are born of bigotry, they are natural habitats for bigotry also.
The Nazi Party prior to 1933 exhibited many characteristics of organised crime. Violence was used to intimidate political opponents (notably the Communists). After Hitler’s rise to power, the Nazi Party transitioned into sovereign gangsters, larcenous and murderous, stealing an estimated $7Bn (1940s dollars, that is) from the Jewish population of Europe while murdering at least 6 million of them.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Stalin was similarly a gangster operation, albeit one with a better sense of self-preservation than Hitler and his Nazi Party (Stalin was never dumb enough to declare war on the USA).
With the possible exception of the Clerics, the Gangsters form the most dangerous form of top crust. The main difference is that the Clerics do terrible things out of ‘virtue’, whereas Gangsters are lured by the delights of vice.
The Functionaries
Functionaries are generally well-educated, intelligent people whose survival strategy rests on obedience. Through serving power, they seek security and prestige. On the whole, this survival strategy has stood the test of time. Ask any lawyer, accountant, banking executive, plc director or senior civil servant.
There are two basic variants of Functionary: those who specialise in violence (militarists), and those who specialise in words (flunkies).
The flunkies are servile, cunning, duplicitous and good actors. They do not recognise objective truth and lies. Rather, they defend orthodoxy as laid down by the Top Crust and condemn heresy as laid down by the Top Crust. In this respect they are like the Clerics, except that they lack the murderous vengefulness of the Clerics.
The principal vice of the flunkies is snobbery. Because they had to crush themselves into the discipline of their chosen warren, they are intensely status-conscious and materialistic. They must have compensations for their sacrifice. The flunkies are thus inherently bigoted. With their aversion to violence and servility to power, they are content to let ‘official’ violence proceed against the enemies of the Top Crust. Sadly, experience shows they will tolerate criminally negligent, larcenous or even murderous abuses of power by the Top Crust.
The armed forces, the police, the secret services and private military contractors comprise the militarists. They inflict threats of violence or actual violence to meet the demands of the Top Crust.
The UK Top Crust has never created a gendarmerie, although occasionally it has used military force against its people, as in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and in the General Strike of 1926. The British Top Crust is generally cautious towards militarists, perhaps having retained a collective aversion to Cromwell’s enforcers during the Interregnum.
Other countries at other times have displayed quite different inclinations. Stalin’s NKVD murdered more than 800,000 Soviet citizens and foreign nationals. Stalin’s chief executioner Vasili Blokhin was personally responsible for the execution of 7,000 Polish officers and officials in the Katyn Forest in 1940. Despite being the most prolific killer in recorded history, Blokhin remains largely unknown.
I’m not even going to talk about Hitler’s militarists.
Militarists are capable of dreadful callousness, but they are not likely to be bigots. The armed forces long ago learned that incompetent leaders invite disaster. The classic example was the entirely avoidable collision of two Royal Navy battleships in 1893 (HMS Camperdown and HMS Victoria) during peacetime manoeuvres in fine visibility. HMS Victoria sank with 358 sailors.
Militarists are trained, and by inclination disposed, to solve problems through violence. This means the rule of militarists is harsh whether it is bigoted or not.
The Trade Unions
Anyone who lived in the UK through the 1970s will be well aware of union power and what happens when it gets out of hand. They will probably be less aware that managerial incompetence and the apathy of the City of London’s Rent-seekers created fertile ground for union militancy, but I shall not digress.
Trade Unions are just what it says on the tin: the collectivisation of non-managerial employees to confront the interests of the Capitalists and Rent-seekers. Through collective bargaining Trade Unions hope to increase wages and improve working conditions. Experience showed that in the absence of Trade Unions, most Capitalists of the nineteenth century took advantage of their power (there were honourable exceptions, such as New Lanark).
In this context, any collective representation of the working people counts as a ‘trade union’. The Petrograd Soviet counts as a trade union in my periodic table, even though it called itself a ‘city council’.
The Trade Unions seek to let everyone have a voice. All workers are ‘equal’. Because of this, Trade Union power tends not to be intelligently or consistently directed. The main danger is that the Trade Unions provide a ladder by which Gangsters or Intellectuals gain power and thereby form a tyranny (the Soviet Union being a case in point).
The Intellectuals
The Intellectuals promote reasoning on the basis of what they consider to be evidence, as opposed to what they consider to be prejudice or blind faith. The problem is that the Intellectuals come in such great variety. At their best, the Intellectuals warn us about the dangers of Climate Change, cigarette smoking, obesity, and keep an eye out for incoming asteroids. At their worst, they float dangerous ideas. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was an Intellectual. His warped credo appealed to anti-Semites, racists and Germanic chauvinists. This gained him influence with extremists like Adolf Hitler.
In this vein, the Intellectuals may form the kernel of an alternative top crust that challenges the Top Crust. Should the Top Crust fail, this alternative top crust can form the ideology of the next Top Crust.
In general, Intellectuals are ignored unless they are useful to the Top Crust. The more objective the Intellectual, the less likely the Top Crust is to heed them. Governments pay lip service to Climate Change by promoting wind turbines and ‘the hydrogen economy’ (ha-ha-ha-ha-hydrogen, I can’t stop laughing) whilst doing nothing to address cheap air travel or the grotesque moral and financial subsidisation of road transport.
Economists who rationalised the power-grab of the Rent-seekers during the 1980s under Reagan and Thatcher rose in status. Such Intellectuals are like minstrels playing tunes to please the monarch.
The main roles of the Intellectuals, then, are that they supply pleasing music for the exercise of power and they may form a shadow power. Marxism is the abiding ‘shadow power’. Intellectuals of interest to the Top Crust will normally be bigoted opportunists (of both hard left and hard right) spouting emotionally-charged rhetoric.
The Capitalists
Finally we come to the Capitalists! Last but not least. Capitalists are leaders, visionaries and organisers. They are energetic people with ideas and the determination to realise those ideas. They use money, people and machines to create jobs, customers and more money. If they earn more from customers than they spent creating those customers, they are ‘in business’.
That’s what Capitalists do. They take money, people and machines and they create jobs, customers and more money.
They are distinct from the Rent-seekers, who lend money at interest. Capitalists are action-people working in the complex, dirty jungle at ground level. The Rent-seekers just lounge in glass phallic symbols shuffling bits of paper.
Capitalists must be open-minded, innovative, industrious and confident. If they do not set out with those qualities—and plenty do not—then they acquire them. They must develop the skills to cope with ambiguity, pressure, calculated risks and endless people problems. This is not the natural habitat of the bigot. A capitalist will either outgrow their prejudices or else fail by them.
None of which is to say that Capitalists are perfect human beings. They tend to be self-centred, blindly goal-oriented and disagreeable, any charm is likely to be superficial. They are good actors and like the Rent-seekers buy with a scowl and sell by charming promises.
Recap on the Elements of Power
This is the full list:
- Landed Aristocracy
- Rent-seekers
- Clerics
- Mob
- Gangsters
- Functionaries
- Trade Unions
- Intellectuals
- Capitalists
In any society that has achieved at least a modicum of industrialisation, the above elements struggle for power. The struggle will go on for as long as that society lasts.
Currently in the UK, the USA, and indeed, all Anglophone nations, the Rent-seekers hold power assisted by the Intellectuals and the Functionaries, whilst being occasionally opposed by the Mob and handling the ill-gotten gains of the Gangsters. Clerics and Trade Unions have little influence at the moment. Most Capitalists have little influence, except for a few giants of AI, whose influence may collapse with the bubble they created.
Applying Elemental Analysis of Power to Past Societies
The Soviet Union: In its stable form, Functionaries and Intellectuals ruled supreme. None of the Landed Aristocracy, Capitalists, Rent-seekers, Clerics, the Mob (except rarely), Gangsters, Trade Unions, or Capitalists had a look-in. The Soviet Union was essentially a godless theocracy, having close parallels with pre-Reformation Europe under the rule of the Roman Catholic church. It passed through a Gangster stage under Stalin, which ended with his death and the execution of Beria.
Nazi Germany: Hitler famously gained power via back-room intrigues against the Left, rather than by vote or insurrection. He and his core clique were Intellectual Gangsters with a warped analysis that gained support in the Landed Aristocracy (not just in Germany), the Rent-seekers (not just in Germany) and the Capitalists (not just in Germany) and later from the Functionaries, most Intellectuals and the Mob. The only elements not part of Hitler’s society were the Clerics and the Trade Unions (and the Jewish and Romany peoples obviously). The gamut of support for Hitler is truly shocking when viewed under elemental analysis. The dangerous lure of fascism must not be underestimated.
Questions
How is an element of power identified? The periodic table collects those features of society that have come up repeatedly as being part of the abiding competition for power.
What about the news media? For the most part the news media fall within the Functionary element, a few are Intellectuals. Journalists are generally employed by media corporations listed on stock exchanges (that is, journalists generally represent the Rent-seekers’ viewpoint). They appear to provide a range of public opinion from ‘left’ to ‘right’, but in fact only ‘fringe elements’ challenge the basic orthodoxy of the Rent-seekers.
Self-Employed People? They are not relevant in the power struggle. The self-employed are individualists by nature and have no self-conscious identity through which they could gather power to challenge the Top Crust. A self-employed person might gain influence through being a Rent-seeker, Capitalist or Intellectual, but not from being self-employed.
Academics? This varies from subject to subject and depends on the ambitions of the individual. Philosophers are unlikely to be involved in the power struggle, whereas economists may join as Intellectuals of a more or less opportunistic nature. Climate science has become politically significant; climate scientists may find it hard to avoid joining as (objective) Intellectuals. Under tyrannies, academics from a wider range of subjects may join the power struggle as Functionaries or Intellectuals (for instance, Iranian physicists working on nuclear weapons programs, or engineers like Gerry Bull creating superguns).
In Conclusion
The Elements of Power is offered as a personal view of the struggle for power. I believe it is much more useful than squabbling about ‘socialist’ societies or ‘capitalist’ societies, as these terms do not reflect the complexity of power structures that actually occur.
