One of my Big Ideas is the notion that the left, far from being a progressive force, is in fact a movement of nostalgia, a Great Reaction back to the good old days of perfect community and justice. I suppose that this becomes obvious in the writings of Rousseau and his celebration of the Noble Savage and the opening of his Social Contract: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains." (French: L’homme est né libre, et par-tout il est dans les fers. So, strictly speaking, "fers" should have been translated as "irons.")
But we deplorables would say that the opposite is true. Freedom is not a category in ape society or in hunter-gatherer society. Freedom only gains salience later on. But when?
I know. Let's get all Hegelian and start looking at things through their opposites, in this case, slavery.
Slavery, said someone I read recently, only begins with the agricultural age. Hunter-gatherers, he assumes, did not know slavery. I suppose that is true in the sense that back then in your average dawn raid you would kill all the men and appropriate all the women.
But why not enslave the men and put them to work? I suspect that would be because it was too dangerous. The way I understand it, men did nothing, back in the hunter-gatherer age, except hunt and prepare for war. I don't think that captured men can be trusted to be slave spear-carriers in a hunter-gatherer society where the armed forces are the entire male population. But once agriculture has started and most males are disarmed, or at least not raised as warriors, then you can afford to have subordinate men doing subordinate tasks subject to the overseer and his whip.
But then why does slavery not continue today? Max Weber argued that slavery does not pay in the modern economy. Only when the supply of slaves is plentiful and their price is cheap does slavery make economic sense. Yet clearly in the agricultural age some form of slavery is universal, if we consider feudalism as a form of slavery, where humans are bound to the land of their feudal masters. And feudalism only started to break up when the market economy began to thrive towards the end of the Middle Ages.
Now, I was reading Trollope's Last Chronicle of Barset yesterday and Trollope had some gentlewomen complaining about the men and their devotion to hunting, fishing, and shooting. Do you see what is going on here? The average gentleman of Trollope is installed in a country estate where all the work of managing the agricultural estate is done by others. So the gentleman may do as he pleases, and what he pleases is to revert to hunter behavior, as a pastime. In our age, we have men that enjoy getting up a workshop full of power tools where they can make things, as the craftsman did in olden times before the invention of machine industry.
So it is perfectly natural and physical for humans without a real job to revert to olden times. Of course we would expect Educated Youth of the 19th century to have a nostalgic regard for the good old days of the feudal estate with its comfortable fixed hierarchy about which any young sprig can imagine himself having a paternal and beneficial role.
So, of course, in our modern era, we should expect a huge Great Reaction among foolish young people. Of course we have the neo-feudalism of the welfare state and the corporate hierarchy: people imagine with nostalgia the good old days of feudal security where people actually "belonged" and the master took care of them. Of course we have the neo-tribalism of identity politics: and the comfort of belonging to the kindred. Of course we have the neo-looting-and-pillage of the modern tax system that takes 40 percent of people's work for the ruling class to reward its supporters. Looting and pillage goes all the way back to hunter-gatherers and jolly good fun it was unless you were on the receiving end.
But I remind you of the advice given in Robert Graves I, Claudius to the Roman emperor by an advisor: trust no-one, not even me. Anyone that lives in subordination to a boss, a politician, a general, or a noble lord, is a hostage. His bread and meat come from the fact of his utility to the power project of his superior. But if his utility should ever shrink, or if the superior should lose the war in his power project, well, it is curtains for his supporters.
Thus we have Marx: "A mass of free proletarians was hurled on the labour market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers[.]" Well of course, because once the feudal lords were forbidden their private armies they didn't need so many workers on their estates.
Thus we have Hobsbawm and Rudé writing about the "protests" of the agricultural laborers being shed by the farmers when the threshing machines came in.
Then we have Howard Zinn in A People's History of the United States in 1892 where at the Carnegie Homestead steel plant manager Henry Frick "decided to reduce the workers' wages and break their union." Or, as La Wik puts it: "As the mills expanded, the labor force grew rapidly, especially with less skilled workers. In response, the more-skilled union members reacted with a strike designed to protect their historic position." Of course they did.
Or my own experience, when my employer suddenly laid people off in a business downturn. How could they do this, moaned my co-workers, pointing to the employee manual that spoke about how the bosses cared about the professional development of their employees? No doubt they did care, until their business was threatened by losses.
One thing to remember about almost all "protests" and riots is to look for the guys that are losing a traditional way of life, and resorting to politics and violence to maintain it. Call it the Cornered Rat Syndrome.
If you are a subordinate then you have hitched your star to someone else's fortune. If they go down, then you go down with them.
So, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything must include something about keeping your powder dry, and your skills up to date, and an emergency kit, and a full tank of gasoline, and so on.
Because when the balloon goes up then it is every man for himself, or, in French, sauve qui peut. And every story you ever heard from another's lips is a survivor story.
And, politicians don't care about you. They only care about your vote.
The antidote to slavery, and going down when your boss goes down, is Freedom and Responsibility. It is the notion that nobody is going to be there for you when it really counts. So you'd better take care of yourself and make sure, as much as possible, that you are not a helpless victim, without an option, without a bolthole, without a way out of Dodge.
Or as I like to say, don't be a "little darling" of the ruling class. Because your nostalgia for the Good Old Days is going to kill you.
But we deplorables would say that the opposite is true. Freedom is not a category in ape society or in hunter-gatherer society. Freedom only gains salience later on. But when?
I know. Let's get all Hegelian and start looking at things through their opposites, in this case, slavery.
Slavery, said someone I read recently, only begins with the agricultural age. Hunter-gatherers, he assumes, did not know slavery. I suppose that is true in the sense that back then in your average dawn raid you would kill all the men and appropriate all the women.
But why not enslave the men and put them to work? I suspect that would be because it was too dangerous. The way I understand it, men did nothing, back in the hunter-gatherer age, except hunt and prepare for war. I don't think that captured men can be trusted to be slave spear-carriers in a hunter-gatherer society where the armed forces are the entire male population. But once agriculture has started and most males are disarmed, or at least not raised as warriors, then you can afford to have subordinate men doing subordinate tasks subject to the overseer and his whip.
But then why does slavery not continue today? Max Weber argued that slavery does not pay in the modern economy. Only when the supply of slaves is plentiful and their price is cheap does slavery make economic sense. Yet clearly in the agricultural age some form of slavery is universal, if we consider feudalism as a form of slavery, where humans are bound to the land of their feudal masters. And feudalism only started to break up when the market economy began to thrive towards the end of the Middle Ages.
Now, I was reading Trollope's Last Chronicle of Barset yesterday and Trollope had some gentlewomen complaining about the men and their devotion to hunting, fishing, and shooting. Do you see what is going on here? The average gentleman of Trollope is installed in a country estate where all the work of managing the agricultural estate is done by others. So the gentleman may do as he pleases, and what he pleases is to revert to hunter behavior, as a pastime. In our age, we have men that enjoy getting up a workshop full of power tools where they can make things, as the craftsman did in olden times before the invention of machine industry.
So it is perfectly natural and physical for humans without a real job to revert to olden times. Of course we would expect Educated Youth of the 19th century to have a nostalgic regard for the good old days of the feudal estate with its comfortable fixed hierarchy about which any young sprig can imagine himself having a paternal and beneficial role.
So, of course, in our modern era, we should expect a huge Great Reaction among foolish young people. Of course we have the neo-feudalism of the welfare state and the corporate hierarchy: people imagine with nostalgia the good old days of feudal security where people actually "belonged" and the master took care of them. Of course we have the neo-tribalism of identity politics: and the comfort of belonging to the kindred. Of course we have the neo-looting-and-pillage of the modern tax system that takes 40 percent of people's work for the ruling class to reward its supporters. Looting and pillage goes all the way back to hunter-gatherers and jolly good fun it was unless you were on the receiving end.
But I remind you of the advice given in Robert Graves I, Claudius to the Roman emperor by an advisor: trust no-one, not even me. Anyone that lives in subordination to a boss, a politician, a general, or a noble lord, is a hostage. His bread and meat come from the fact of his utility to the power project of his superior. But if his utility should ever shrink, or if the superior should lose the war in his power project, well, it is curtains for his supporters.
Thus we have Marx: "A mass of free proletarians was hurled on the labour market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers[.]" Well of course, because once the feudal lords were forbidden their private armies they didn't need so many workers on their estates.
Thus we have Hobsbawm and Rudé writing about the "protests" of the agricultural laborers being shed by the farmers when the threshing machines came in.
Then we have Howard Zinn in A People's History of the United States in 1892 where at the Carnegie Homestead steel plant manager Henry Frick "decided to reduce the workers' wages and break their union." Or, as La Wik puts it: "As the mills expanded, the labor force grew rapidly, especially with less skilled workers. In response, the more-skilled union members reacted with a strike designed to protect their historic position." Of course they did.
Or my own experience, when my employer suddenly laid people off in a business downturn. How could they do this, moaned my co-workers, pointing to the employee manual that spoke about how the bosses cared about the professional development of their employees? No doubt they did care, until their business was threatened by losses.
One thing to remember about almost all "protests" and riots is to look for the guys that are losing a traditional way of life, and resorting to politics and violence to maintain it. Call it the Cornered Rat Syndrome.
If you are a subordinate then you have hitched your star to someone else's fortune. If they go down, then you go down with them.
So, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything must include something about keeping your powder dry, and your skills up to date, and an emergency kit, and a full tank of gasoline, and so on.
Because when the balloon goes up then it is every man for himself, or, in French, sauve qui peut. And every story you ever heard from another's lips is a survivor story.
And, politicians don't care about you. They only care about your vote.
The antidote to slavery, and going down when your boss goes down, is Freedom and Responsibility. It is the notion that nobody is going to be there for you when it really counts. So you'd better take care of yourself and make sure, as much as possible, that you are not a helpless victim, without an option, without a bolthole, without a way out of Dodge.
Or as I like to say, don't be a "little darling" of the ruling class. Because your nostalgia for the Good Old Days is going to kill you.
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