Abstract
Táíwò’s Elite Capture is a short but exceptionally accessible book on how political movements fall apart because of the influence of the powers that be, and how to combat this phenomenon. It is particularly proficient at addressing how one specific part of identity politics, namely deference politics, fails as a system for progress and emancipation. Not without faults, the book is overly timid when it needs to be bold and, by the end of the text, spreads itself too thin.
Elite capture is the process by which elites co-opt, take over, corrupt or disarm political movements and ideas that initially went against their interests. For Táíwò, it is a process that is symptomatic of any society that contains some sort of hierarchy. Hierarchy creates tension between the elites and the non-elites, and, to compensate for this tension, elites will capture non-elite politics as a means of securing their own interests. The narrative Táíwò follows is that our current neoliberal racial capitalist world is particularly prone to elite capture. This is because neoliberalism, and liberalism more broadly, is a politics of optics. Táíwò splits this optical approach to politics in two: symbolic performance and rebranding (rather than replacing or abolishing) existing institutions. Because of the material conditions capitalism creates, any non-elite political movement will jeopardize the material supremacy of the elites. This is why a liberal optical approach is particularly well-suited to current elites; it makes use of political signals (words, symbols, rituals, etc.) but leaves behind the true politics of a movement – the substantive and concrete changes it demands. Optics, especially the kind performed by neoliberal elites, does not affect material conditions (i.e. structures of inequality and exploitation) in any meaningful way. In capturing a political movement, elites philosophically translate it: from the material to the optical; from the concrete to the symbolic; from the threatening to the harmless.
This is where identity politics comes into play. Táíwò explains that identity politics has come under harsh scrutiny by numerous groups. Fascists and far-right groups claim that it is a distortion of well-understood social roles and norms; strict liberals claim that it is an inelegant approach for problems that a more free market could solve for; Marxists call it a distraction from class struggle, an attempt to create divisions among the working class along lines of race, sexuality, gender and other meaningless features. Táíwò aims for a critique of identity politics that is unlike any of these. He is somewhat of a purist, subscribing to the identity politics of those who first coined the term, namely the Combahee River Collective. He believes that identity politics, as articulated by its founders, demands real social and material change in a meaningful way, therefore making it a viable form of non-elite politics. And because it is meaningful, identity politics is also vulnerable to elite capture which seeks to neutralize it. Táíwò’s argument can be boiled down to one sentence: it is not because identity politics is captured that we should abandon it altogether.
Táíwò thus remains a firm advocate of identity politics and focuses on material challenges to racial capitalism’s elites. Indeed, Elite Capture isn’t just a work of analysis; it places heavy emphasis on praxis and aims to serve as a political guidebook of sorts. In fact, despite what one would expect from the book’s title, the discussion on elite capture and identity politics is only a small portion of the text. Táíwò spends much more time discussing how we should conduct our politics in a neoliberal world, with the constant looming threat of our movements being captured. To illustrate his practical aspirations, Táíwò uses the very simple metaphor of the ‘house’ (i.e. the social and material conditions we inhabit) and, by extension, of ‘rooms’ (i.e. various situations within the framework of the ‘house’ we find ourselves in). A room can be a physical place, such as a classroom or public spaces; but it can also be an approach, such as deference politics.
Deference politics is the principal aspect of identity politics that Táíwò criticizes. Deference, simply put, is an approach where one ‘passes the mic’ to another; someone who has certain traits that would make them more qualified to speak on a certain subject. But deference politics is a system where passing the mic is the default social mechanism through which political discourse takes place. For Táíwò, deference politics turns marginalized people into empty symbols. It gives an individual epistemic value, even when unsuitable, just because they were the only person in the room who fit the desired identity. Additionally, it often places too much responsibility on individual marginalized people, often resulting in an emotionally taxing ‘trauma politics’ that ‘asks [them] to be less than [they] are’ (p. 120). In line with the liberal pattern, deference politics also allows people with real concrete power to take a symbolic step back and allow the powerless to speak briefly before they take the mic back for themselves – another optically progressive moment for the elite. But most important for Táíwò is the fact that deference politics is not conducive to any sociopolitical change because, under liberalism, it appears to be more of an end than a means. This is why he limits the use cases of deference politics to enclosed, often elite spaces (or ‘rooms’) like university classrooms, conferences or organized events. Being a moral philosopher, Táíwò advocates for what he calls ‘constructive politics’ (p. 12) as an alternative to deference politics. Constructive politics, to use previously mentioned metaphors, is based around building new ‘rooms’ and, eventually, a whole new ‘house’, from an authentic grassroots perspective.
Táíwò aspires to go beyond the classroom, or any of these pre-constructed ‘rooms’ we find ourselves in, because the reality is that all of these rooms are captured by the elite. While a seemingly clear and strong argument, this is where the book falters and starts to become confusing. On the one hand, he argues that both the ‘rooms’ and the ‘house’ are rigged in favour of the elite, and currently they are the ones with the institutional power to change them as they please. But on the other hand, Táíwò claims that elites are not the creators of the system but rather a product of it. In fact, elites are a product of any hierarchical system and they emerge from them naturally once the foundation for inequality is set. But there is one crucial question that is left unanswered: who creates these systems, these foundational hierarchies that, supposedly, in turn create their respective elites? Either it is the whole of people who create these unequal hierarchies together – which has dangerous implications for the necessity of hierarchical structures among humans if taken to be true; or that these unequal systems are, in fact, created by a group of elites to perpetuate and expand their power. Saying that elites are merely a product of unequal systems undermines the agency that elites have in creating and recreating the ‘house’ we live in. This problematic framing of the genesis of elites and the structures they stand upon is particularly strange for an author like Táíwò who so explicitly stands on the shoulders of black liberation and decolonial theorists, who, historically, were much harsher and more radical in their depiction of elites.
A large chunk of Elite Capture is spent following a few examples and case studies, such as the Cape Verdean revolutionary Lilica Boal or the black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier. It is often unclear what the exact purpose of these examples is within Táíwò’s larger argument. Within the context of the themes of the book and of Táíwò’s politics, they start to lose their weight and coherence. The relevance they have to the themes of both identity politics and elite capture are vague at times. In some instances, an example Táíwò gives will have a clear statement about elite capture, but the author does not elaborate on it, almost as if he did not notice the point. An example of this can be found in the discussion of the post-revolution decisions surrounding education in Cape Verde. Táíwò mentions that ‘Lilica Boal and her comrades felt their only option was to use existing colonial Portuguese educational materials and structures, but to “safely transform them”‘ (p. 94). In a book that is so focused on the idea of building new structures instead of using the ones that the elite have already captured, why did Táíwò choose to ignore such a detail? Surely, the Cape Verdean revolution was a constructive event, but perhaps it would have been even more successful if it had not chosen to preserve colonial structures of education. Such discussions are missing from Elite Capture.
Additionally, despite the author’s claims that the book focuses on praxis, there is a distinct lack of discussions surrounding practical applications of theory. Many pages are spent giving short biographies of Táíwò’s protagonists, and little to nothing is said about what really happened in moments of constructive politics that the author values so highly. The reader is thus left with no answers to the real question that matters: what does constructive politics look like? When discussing the recent water crisis in Flint, Michigan, Táíwò comes close to answering this question. But disappointingly, he falls back into abstract philosophical terms or platitudes. As a practical guide, there are very few positive models to follow. If one were to use Elite Capture as a guidebook for political organizing, the only truly concrete advice one could take from it is to avoid deference politics. Other than that, the reader is left with hollow statements such as ‘buil[d] a new room’ (p. 106) or ‘change […] the whole of society’ (pp. 104–105).
Instead of focusing on Lilica Boal’s return journey to Cape Verde, Táíwò’s argument would have benefitted from discussing the revolution itself. What did the Cape Verdeans do to give themselves the power to build new rooms? It seems that Táíwò is unwilling to discuss the problem of power at all. If the elites have captured the whole house and all of its rooms, then how can we go about building new rooms at all? There is an entire power struggle that precedes Táíwò’s constructive politics – both materially and philosophically – that he omits entirely. How can such an omission occur in a book that uses a violent revolution as an empirical example; that frequently cites Frantz Fanon; and that has its last chapter named after Marx’s eleventh thesis?
Perhaps, rather than omission, Elite Capture suffers from overextension. In just over a hundred pages, Táíwò attempts to (1) offer a critique of identity politics; (2) discuss elite capture; (3) engage in moral philosophy around rebuilding the whole of society; (4) be a guide for praxis; (5) use numerous empirical examples; and (6) include candid moments of ‘conviction [rather] than contention’ (p. 119). Condensing such rich topics into a single short text means running the risk of leaving too many ideas behind and too many discussions unfinished. Ultimately, Táíwò accepts this risk, but the resulting book does not live up to its own ambitions.
Given how critical this review has been of Elite Capture, it is important to highlight in what ways the book is successful. The eclectic nature of the book allows readers to grasp the complex web of interactions that defines elite capture and revolutionary action. Táíwò makes his argument with a mix of empirical data, philosophical analysis and emotive conviction; the whole tied together beautifully with perhaps the most accessible academic language one could hope to find. Elite Capture’s biggest success is how it serves as an entry point, whether for the pondering academic or the political activist.
