It's all very well to rail against the liberals and their unjust rule over culture, politics, education, entertainment and I know not what in the present age. But what can replace it as a ruling class? That's what I woke up with this morning.
The answer, of course, is obvious. But let us first examine the nature of the ruling classes thus far.
Reading How We Got Here by C.R. Hallpike, I get the impression that the hunter-gatherers really didn't have a ruling class. The hunter-gatherer bands were too spread out and unconnected with each other. And most significant, if people got into a tussle with the other folks in their band they just upped and left and joined another one. To use a military metaphor, desertion was normal and routine. Obviously it is very difficult to rule a power outfit where people can just up and quit. No ruling class to speak of.
The pre-state agricultural village was headed by a Big Man. But typically he was elected because of his leadership and military and speechifying and feasting skills. And his sons didn't get to inherit the title. Let's give the rulers the benefit of the doubt and say that the pre-state agriculturalists had a proto-ruling class and it was based on ability not class membership and inheritance.
But then comes the agricultural era that we know, with kings and warrior lords and temple priests. Here, I think, we can see the corruption of the village Big Man concept into a more ideological era, where there is a conscious cult of the Pharaoh or Son of Heaven that is consciously massaged by the ruler operatives with bylines in the temples.
In our era, I think it is fair to say, a new ruling class has replaced the old kings and lords. Really the new ruling class is the priests, but secularized into philosophers and intellectuals. What I am saying is that the heavy lifting to produce the modern age was done by thinkers that proposed limits on the political power of the old monarchs and aristocrats. When you think about it, there is no difference between the early thinkers, the Lockes and Humes and Voltaires and Kants, and the 19th century lefties like Marx and the Fabians. They were all proposing an era where military charisma would be replaced by ideological charisma.
And like the ruling class of military charisma, the kings and warrior lords, the new ruling class of ideological thinkers and revolutionaries saw that the ruling class should be composed of people like them. What a surprise!
So here we are, 200-odd years later, with a corrupt and failing ruling class. Its ideological concepts have all been bent and warped out of all recognition as it changed the rules to keep itself in power through various crises.
So what comes next?
It's obvious, innit. What comes next are successful businessmen like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Donald Trump in the US. And the reasons are many:
But here is another thing. Who are the guys that create jobs for the workers? Politicians? Ideologues? Activists? Yeah, right.
The chaps that create jobs are businessmen and entrepreneurs. The biggest lie in history was the left telling the workers "don't trust the boss." Well, sure, if the business tanks then the workers lose their jobs and the businessman and the bankers are all to blame. But the fact is that a modern economy without businessmen is an economy that doesn't do too well, as in Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela. And if the politicians merely lift their dead hand for a moment you never know what kind of nobodies will come out of the woodwork and create an economic revolution that will spawn jobs all over.
So, given that the Big Thing in modern politics is how to keep the economic engine roaring, rather than how to keep the pirates and plunderers out of our grain stores or how to keep the kings and lords on a leash, you would think that we need chaps around that are good at sparking business growth.
So I say let's have more Trumps and Berlusconis and Jacob Rees-Moggs (Mogg used to run an investment bank).
Hey! We did all the ideological spadework for modern governance a couple centuries ago. Those guys told us how to do it. And then we had the Marxian turn that did the ideological work to show how not to do it. Today we don't need no stinkin' thinkers telling us how to do it and how not to do it. Their time has come and gone.
We just need guys that know how to get things done. Oh, and let the more nerdly billionaires figure out how to get to Mars.
The answer, of course, is obvious. But let us first examine the nature of the ruling classes thus far.
Reading How We Got Here by C.R. Hallpike, I get the impression that the hunter-gatherers really didn't have a ruling class. The hunter-gatherer bands were too spread out and unconnected with each other. And most significant, if people got into a tussle with the other folks in their band they just upped and left and joined another one. To use a military metaphor, desertion was normal and routine. Obviously it is very difficult to rule a power outfit where people can just up and quit. No ruling class to speak of.
The pre-state agricultural village was headed by a Big Man. But typically he was elected because of his leadership and military and speechifying and feasting skills. And his sons didn't get to inherit the title. Let's give the rulers the benefit of the doubt and say that the pre-state agriculturalists had a proto-ruling class and it was based on ability not class membership and inheritance.
But then comes the agricultural era that we know, with kings and warrior lords and temple priests. Here, I think, we can see the corruption of the village Big Man concept into a more ideological era, where there is a conscious cult of the Pharaoh or Son of Heaven that is consciously massaged by the ruler operatives with bylines in the temples.
In our era, I think it is fair to say, a new ruling class has replaced the old kings and lords. Really the new ruling class is the priests, but secularized into philosophers and intellectuals. What I am saying is that the heavy lifting to produce the modern age was done by thinkers that proposed limits on the political power of the old monarchs and aristocrats. When you think about it, there is no difference between the early thinkers, the Lockes and Humes and Voltaires and Kants, and the 19th century lefties like Marx and the Fabians. They were all proposing an era where military charisma would be replaced by ideological charisma.
And like the ruling class of military charisma, the kings and warrior lords, the new ruling class of ideological thinkers and revolutionaries saw that the ruling class should be composed of people like them. What a surprise!
So here we are, 200-odd years later, with a corrupt and failing ruling class. Its ideological concepts have all been bent and warped out of all recognition as it changed the rules to keep itself in power through various crises.
So what comes next?
It's obvious, innit. What comes next are successful businessmen like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Donald Trump in the US. And the reasons are many:
- Successful businessmen are men that have learned to survive in the topsy-turvy world of international business. They are battle-tested. Unlike most graduates of elite schools that have never really had to live and work in a high-stakes world like today's business world.
- Successful businessmen know how to navigate the world of politics. They have to deal with politicians, regulators, activists as part of their business. And most of them have to deal with foreign governments too.
- Successful businessmen already made a name for themselves. So the ego trip of high politics is not quite the aphrodisiac that it is for graduates of elite colleges for whom politics is the only way to get their name up in lights.
- Successful businessmen, like the bourgeoisie in general, are not that interested in power. Oh sure, they are quite happy to corrupt politicians and regulators and live a quiet life untroubled by new competitors. But power is not the be-all and end-all of their life. I think that this is not because they are better people than your average elite-college community organizer, but because the nature of business is that you don't make your bones as a power fanatic. You have to figure out how to serve the consumer.
- Etcetera.
But here is another thing. Who are the guys that create jobs for the workers? Politicians? Ideologues? Activists? Yeah, right.
The chaps that create jobs are businessmen and entrepreneurs. The biggest lie in history was the left telling the workers "don't trust the boss." Well, sure, if the business tanks then the workers lose their jobs and the businessman and the bankers are all to blame. But the fact is that a modern economy without businessmen is an economy that doesn't do too well, as in Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela. And if the politicians merely lift their dead hand for a moment you never know what kind of nobodies will come out of the woodwork and create an economic revolution that will spawn jobs all over.
So, given that the Big Thing in modern politics is how to keep the economic engine roaring, rather than how to keep the pirates and plunderers out of our grain stores or how to keep the kings and lords on a leash, you would think that we need chaps around that are good at sparking business growth.
So I say let's have more Trumps and Berlusconis and Jacob Rees-Moggs (Mogg used to run an investment bank).
Hey! We did all the ideological spadework for modern governance a couple centuries ago. Those guys told us how to do it. And then we had the Marxian turn that did the ideological work to show how not to do it. Today we don't need no stinkin' thinkers telling us how to do it and how not to do it. Their time has come and gone.
We just need guys that know how to get things done. Oh, and let the more nerdly billionaires figure out how to get to Mars.
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