"Why Liberalism Works" for the Gentry

In her magnificent "Bourgeois Era" books Deirdre McCloskey celebrates the achievements of the western bourgeoisie, and I have written about it. As La Wik says, the bourgeoisie, contrary to its self-advertisement as "prudence only" actually practiced all the Seven Virtues. And its appetite for innovation provoked the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years, from $3 per person per day to $100 per person per day. In today's dollars.

In her new book, Why Liberalism Works: How true liberal values produce a freer, more equal, prosperous world for all, McCloskey advertises an inclusive libertarianism, and proposes to reclaim the word "liberal" from the progressives.

McCloskey argues for "the continuing desirability of a liberalism conceived in the eighteenth century" and how it has created good things like "economic success" the "arts and sciences" plus "its kindness, toleration, its inclusiveness, its cosmopolitanism, and especially its massive liberation of... people from violent hierarchies ancient and modern." Then there are the critics.

Progressives and conservatives and populists retort that liberalism and its rhetoric also explain numerous alleged evils, such as the reduction of everything to money and markets or the loss of community and God of the calamity of immigration by non-whites and non-Christians. But they are mistaken.

Twenty years ago and more I might have agreed with her. But then I read F.S.C. Northrop, who wrote:

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.

"Inadequate?" Everything I believed? But what does that mean? At the time I was perfectly happy with the world view of the British Enlightenment. And yet. For one thing didn't German thought lead directly to Nazism?

So I gradually embarked on the study of the Germans. For instance, Kant. He famously developed his philosophy from problems in Hume, especially Hume's showing that there is no warrant for our faith in cause and effect. And so Kant proposed that, contrary to the Newtonian era's confidence in matter and mechanics, we do not know "things-in-themselves" but only appearances, and we construct a world view from information coming in through our senses. Then there were the German Romantics that argued that we know directly that there is more to life than facts and reason. That's what all those Romantic paintings of a young German looking out into a prospect of magnificent nature were about.

Then there was Hegel (that McCloskey dismisses as an inspiration for authoritarianism and national-socialism). Does anyone understand Hegel? I certainly don't. But I rather like his Master and Slave analysis, which suggests that the Master is not exactly master, and the Slave not exactly helpless. And his notion of dialectic proposes that we humans proceed by lurching from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, rinse and repeat.

Then there was German physics that drove the relativity-quantum mechanics revolution. What was that all about?

And Freud-Jung and the mostly German developmental psychologists that invented modern psychology that, amongst other things, reminds us that our fabled rational minds sit on top of an undiscovered country of the unconscious. And it may be that our conscious mind is just a fake image projected like a movie from the unconscious to make us feel good.

Now, I reckon that out of all this came my reductive Three Peoples theory that owes a lot to the developmentalists. And then there is Curtis Yarvin's three-layer picture of modern society as Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.

So tell me "Why Liberalism Works" for the Gentry. And "Why Liberalism Works" for the Commoners. And "Why Liberalism Works" for the Clients.

See, I believe with McCloskey that liberalism and the discoveries about how markets work for all of us and have driven the Great Enrichment are true -- as far as anything can be true, given that as far back as Nietzsche we have to understand that our understanding of the world are remarkably constrained by, say, the need of every living thing to stay alive when danger strikes.

The fundamental world view of my People of the Subordinate Self and Yarvin's Clients is that to survive in this world you have to have a patron, a powerful man that can protect you from a cruel world. How does McCloskey's liberalism speak to them?

The fundamental world view of my People of the Responsible Self and Yarvin's Commoners is to accept that it is your job to get on in the world, to obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules, but that in return you expect some sort of protection from the rulers. How does McCloskey speak to them?

The fundamental world view of my People of the Creative Self and Yarvin's Gentry is that life is a creative project and a fine thing it is: it is their creative innovation that gave us the Great Enrichment. But the Gentry also seem to believe that the scope for their creativity should be almost limitless and that the plebs should not have the right to oppose their brilliant ideas. Yes, of course, McCloskey is a creative and naturally thinks that creatives should rule the world with "kindness... toleration... inclusiveness... cosmopolitanism" and so forth. But whatabout the people that experience the "kindness" etc. as mere patronizing bossiness?

I call my Three Peoples theory "reductive" partly out of irony, because of course all human knowledge is reductive. Nietzsche: "a priori 'truths' are for me -- provisional assumptions" Or this:

Within the mechanistic view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time), that concept is reduced to the formulas of mathematics -- with which as one must emphasize again and again, nothing is ever comprehended, but rather designated and distorted. Will to Power §554.

The mistake of the original 18th century liberals was to assume that everyone would identify with the creative bourgeois ethos. And that ethos is certainly my culture and feels comfortable to me.

But humans are not like that. We humans are social animals that find safety and survival in groupish behavior and instincts. Most humans down the ages, I think, experienced themselves as subordinates in the hierarchy; they submitted to power to enjoy the benefits and safety of being in a community.

And, of course, one of the basic facts of life was that land was life. You, or your group, had to possess food-yielding land, or else. So you had to belong to a group.

Now I think that modern socialism as a prescription for groupishness is a disaster. But clearly there are a lot of people that think it delivers community and safety.

I notice that everyone these days is shocked, shocked by slavery. I ask, instead, why has slavery become, in the last centuries, a scandal? What changed?

I even think I get the Death of God. It is because modern Gentry believe that they are the creators. No God needed.

So I think that the modern problem is how to deal with the fact that people have different ideas of community, of work, of wealth, of rules, of morality. And the place to start, to be able to look at the world from different perspectives, I believe, is with a reductive Three Peoples or three layers theory.

How to make a better world that subordinate Clients will appreciate?

How to make a better world that reponsible Commoners will appreciate?

How to make a better world that creative Gentry will appreciate?

It's a problem!