Back to the Solid South

Last Saturday, with the defeat of Sen. Mary Landrieu in a runoff election in Louisiana, the South lost its last Democratic Senator.

That's not surprising, since the South is racist and couldn't be expected to vote for a Democrat anyway. Because racism. Lots of liberals are writing angry screeds about this, in the aftermath of Landrieu's defeat, here and here.

It's the number one article of faith among liberals. Here's how the Narrative goes: President Johnson signed the civil rights acts of the 1960s sighing that Democrats had lost the South for a generation. Then Richard Nixon, courtesy of Pat Buchanan, formulated a Southern Strategy to court white southern voters angered by the end of Jim Crow. Therefore Republicans are racists.

This is the point where a conservative writer typically declares: No We're Not!

But let's face it; there's no defense from the charge of racism, so let's not even try. Let us merely invoke German sociologist Georg Simmel, who wrote that while people appealed to as individuals are intelligent and evolved, in the mass they can only be appealed to in their basest instincts. That's why politics is always about race and identity and ethnicity and loot and free stuff.

So let us stipulate that all Republicans and white southerners are racists, sexists, homophobes. Then what?

Then, does it really make political sense that liberals and Democrats make such a big deal about it? Should Democrats make a point of telling conservative white southerners that they are pond scum?

Let's turn it around. Republicans are often accused of hating, or at least writing off, African Americans. A perennial op-ed topic is declaring the need for the Republican Party to conduct "outreach" to African Americans that vote 90 percent for Democrats. Ditto women and Hispanics. The moral is that a political party exists to win elections; it is political malpractice to write off any group of voters as unreachable.

So why is it OK for Democrats to put white southern voters beyond the Pale? Or white working-class voters. Or white Christian voters?

Back in 2006 the wily Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recruited a bunch of Democratic candidates and ran them for the US Senate. He carefully chose moderates, people with military service, in order to appeal to red-state voters. In short, he decided to court white middle-class voters. He was so successful that the Dems won the Senate in 2006, increased their majority in 2008, and used those moderate votes to ram Obamacare down our throats in 2009-10.

Ahem. Maybe, Chuck, it would have been a good idea not to sacrifice those moderates as cannon fodder in the Big Push for universal health care, as you now seem to recognize. In your speech to the National Press Club on November 25, 2014 you recognized that most Americans already had health insurance and that the uninsured rarely voted. You recognized that politically, Obamacare had a lot of potential downside and precious little upside. And it's not as if HillaryCare, in 1993-94, was wildly popular.

But my basic point is this. If it's considered to be stupid for Republicans not to reach out to blacks, women and minorities, why is it not considered to be stupid for Democrats to write off the white South and stigmatize them as racists? Not to mention the white working class, the white middle class, white Christians, and white Tea Partiers?

I know that politics is the art of division, but isn't that taking division a bit too far?

In fact, why does it make sense for liberals and Democrats to keep calling anyone that doesn't agree with them racists, sexists, homophobes and bigots?

Just asking.

Georg Simmel: Knowledge Truth and Falsehood

In order to live and thrive as social animals we humans have to have knowledge about each other, writes Georg Simmel in The Sociology of Georg Simmel translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolff. That knowledge can be expressed by the price of a merchant's goods, his knowledge of his customers, by the teacher challenging her students, knowing their capabilities. Of course, we do not know the full truth about other people; much of other people is hidden from us. Failing perfection, we assemble a "personal unity" out of the "fragments" that other persons permit us to see, knowing also that often they deliberately conceal parts of themselves. Still, we know enough to get on.

Back to start: The Unknown Sociologist.

The interaction between individuals is "based upon the pictures which they acquire of one another." But it is the very interaction between individuals under which the conception each has of the other takes shape and is legitimated. In science this is called circular logic; but between people it is life. We act based upon our overall knowledge of people and reality, yet our knowledge is shot through with error and distortion. Not only is complete truth impossible but untruth, even the Noble Lie and conscious self-deception, seems necessary in order to maintain life. It seems "we obtain the exact amounts of error and truth which constitute the basic of the conduct required of us, error and truth are psychologically coordinate".

The question of truth and deception have particular importance in relation to "the inner life of the individual with whom we interact. He may, intentionally, either reveal the truth about himself to us, or deceive us by lie and concealment." Our own inner lives, anyway, are a "chaotic whirling of images and ideas" of which we are rarely conscious, and we are even more selective about what we reveal of our inner life to others. "Whatever we say... is never an immediate and faithful presentation of what really occurs in us... but is a transformation of this inner reality... stylized by selection and arrangement." All interactions between humans necessarily lie somewhere on a line between "sincere revelations and mendacious concealments."

So we come to the lie, "the fact that the liar hides his true idea from the other." This is particularly important in modern society. No doubt lies have always been a part of human interaction, but in the primitive face-to-face society it is much harder to bring off. In our modern society of strangers we are less able to evaluate the truth of others' discourse, yet we rely enormously "upon the faith in the honesty of the other", for instance in the economy and its credit system, in science where scientists take for granted the ideas of other scientists. The lie in the modern world is a big deal, "for modern life is a "credit economy" in a much broader than economic sense."

Yet the lie also is permissible. The intellectually stronger tend to club the intellectually weaker with the lie, and the retail trade uses the arts of of the lie in boosting its merchandise. And even the most intimate relations, defined by nearness, "lose the attractiveness, even the content of their intimacy, as soon as the close relationship does not also contain, simultaneously and alternatively, distances and intermissions." All "relationships... presuppose a certain ignorance and a measure of mutual concealment". The lie thus occupies the aggressive end of a whole spectrum of social actions "attained by mere secrecy and concealment."

Thus social humans do not just live by communication and cooperation; social relations also necessarily involve distance, concealment, and at the extreme, the lie.

Next: Types of Relationship and Reciprocal Knowledge

Georg Simmel: Degrees of Domination

We moderns worship at the altar of freedom and equality, but Georg Simmel in The Sociology of Georg Simmel translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolff warns us that domination and subordination are an inescapable part of being social. In almost every relation, one person is a little less equal that the other.

Back to start: The Unknown Sociologist.

Simmel has previously gone into excruciating detail about "superordination and subordination" by type, that is, subordination to an individual, to a group, to a principle. Now he looks at the degree of subordination or domination.

But first he examines a peculiar case, that of superordinates without subordinates. He means a group of people that does not even think about subordinates. Examples are the Spartans, that just called themselves homoioi, or similar ones. Their subordinates were subject peoples, and they never talked about them. Plato speaks about the"born king" who is kingly whether or not he has a kingdom to rule. In the Salvation Army, everyone is an officer, and the Freemasons are all "sovereigns and born princes of the whole order." Whether such people live in the real world or an imagined world is a separate question.

Another question is the relation of superordination and freedom. People in a subordinate position naturally long for a liberation from that domination, and they often express their longing as a desire for freedom. We may describe this a desire for "equality with the superior". The proletarian naturally wants to climb up a rung to equality with the bourgeois. But then what? What happens next is a struggle for supremacy, a desire to be superior, for, as Simmel says, we want not only freedom, but "to use it for some purpose." In other words, domination. A peculiar instance of this drive for superiority is for an elite group to have its own laws. It may seem like domination for a group to subject its members to special laws, but that specialness or separation is a measure of the group's freedom and contributes to the sense among its members of their superiority.

However, a successful drive for freedom among a coalition of groups will immediately expose disagreement: As soon as feudalism was abolished in Bohemia in 1848 the differences between the poor peasants and well-to-do peasants came to the fore. The stronger group in a coalition may appropriate most or all of the gains from a political struggle for freedom.

In other words, "the quest for freedom... has, as its correlate or consequence, the quest for domination". But both "socialism and anarchism deny the necessary character of this connection." They argue that super-subordination will disappear once society is organized as the "coordination of all elements." Of course, it is almost impossible to implement such a plan because nothing "can eliminate natural difference among men" nor eliminate the need for "leaders and executors." But it might be possible to eliminate the feeling of "degradation and oppression" in the subordinates. Simmel suggests that this is possible by a "differentiation of objective and subjective life-elements, whereby subordination is preserved as a technical organizational value" that is not felt subjectively as degradation. Thus people may perform as subordinates at work but greet their boss as an equal in social situations. The elimination of degradation is also achieved by rotation of offices in small organizations and by short terms and term limits for elected offices.

Another way in which super-subordination is diminished is by the normal operation of democracy in which ordinary people, who have no expertise in governing, are supposedly the source of power, while the magistrates and representatives are the servants of the people. A similar threading of power was achieved in Britain after the Glorious Revolution. The clergy, opposed to parliamentary power, was given power over marriages and testaments and sanctions over Catholics; in return it recognized "that the divine world order had room for a parliamentary world order." Similarly in a bureaucracy the superior is often dependent upon the technical knowledge of the subordinate.

In general, we can view social domination in part as a form of the "objective organization of society." But domination also expresses "differences in personal qualities among men." We can imagine that social domination begins with purely personal qualities, such as force, piety, skills, that define superiority. As objective government structures developed the king had to be perfect: King David was said to be "singer and warrior, a layman and a prophet" and had the skills to meld secular power with "spiritual theocracy." But the development of the state and the division of labor makes the personal omnipotence of the ruler unnecessary, and develops into an objective form where the position not the person defines super-subordination. Outside of politics it is clear that the mere possession of money implies a certain social position. The modern economy creates an abundance of positions for which many people are qualified, while creating remarkable opportunities for the exceptionally gifted.

Against this tendency, socialism proposes a completely centralized and articulated hierarchy and presupposes, by its doctrines of equality, that all are equally qualifies for positions. It ought to implement a system of appointment to positions by lottery. And yet the existence of a cenralized government hierarchy destroys the principle that all are equal.

A related problem applies to any aristocracy, or rule by the "best." Artists commonly prefer aristocracy, where internal excellence is revealed in outer appearance.  Yet who is to determine the "best?" Neither the breeding of the best nor a free struggle for position has yielded the best, so perhaps the lesser evil of a general equality is best. Or maybe, failing any method of selecting the "best" and granting the necessity of government, perhaps the "best" superordinate is the "subjectively adequate individual." This is not as scandalous as it seems. Elections of the "medieval English parliament seem to have been conducted with astonishing negligence and indifference." All that mattered was that someone was elected from each district.

Earlier, Simmel has written that absolute coercion is rare; there is always some degree of freedom even for the most abject slave. Now he notes the ubiquity of some level of coercion in social relations, for instance in marriage laws. The coercion may make life unbearable, but it may also encourage people to make their life in common "at least as bearable as possible." There is in human life a constant drama between freedom and subordination, and the routine coercions of social life bring them into focus.

In the final analysis there is a basic problem in super-subordination, that "there are always more people qualified for superordinate positions than there are such positions." Moreover many people appointed to superior positions are less capable than those left behind as subordinates. It is telling that modern government and its perfect hierarchy tends to presuppose an infallibility in its functionaries that contrasts with the inadequacy of its actual executives. In fact, the absence of constant disaster indicates that many people of average ability can do the jobs of a governing hierarchy. In Athens, as today, people are more interested in personal qualities such as friendliness and caring about people like me than objective qualifications when selecting their representatives. Yet once elected, we accord our representatives respect. Even in the 17th and 18th century it was assumed that the subject, permanently in need of royal guidance, immediately acquired the necessary insights and public spirit on being appointed to public office.

Next: Knowledge, Truth and Falsehood

What Middle-Class Programs, Chuck?

Back on November 25, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) broke from the pack and told the National Press Club that passing Obamacare was a mistake. Said he:

After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus[.]

Instead, of course, Democrats chased after their Great White Whale and passed Obamacare.

I remember thinking and writing back in 2009 that Democrats were making a strategic mistake in just executing on their 2008 platform. Sorry, chum, I thought. Before you weigh us down with new entitlements you'd probably better get the economy moving again.

But let us look at the bigger picture. Just what does Schumer mean by "middle-class oriented programs?" I mean, haven't the Democrats been passing "middle-class oriented programs" since at least the beginning of the New Deal? Isn't that what Social Security, Medicare, education, labor laws, minimum wage, unemployment compensation, training programs, disability, workers compensation is all about?  Why would there be a need for any "middle-class oriented programs" after 75 years of passing non-stop "middle-class oriented programs?"

Let's look at the reason we even needed to think about fixing the economy back in 2009. We'd just had the worst financial crash since the Crash of 1929. And why? Because of middle-class oriented programs centered on government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that had flooded the mortgage market with sub-prime loans in accordance with government policy going back to the 1970s that had been pushed aggressively by Democrats. The idea was "affordable housing" -- for the middle class. That meant lowering credit standards and lowering down payments.

Could it be that it's the middle-class oriented programs that are the problem, not the solution?

I mean this. Suppose we decide that we've got to help the middle class climb out of the Great Recession.  What does that mean? Does it mean new regulations on business? Does it mean new subsidies for employment? A higher minimum wage?

Or do we admit that, after a great crash like that we can't just go on as before; we have to change the way government does business?

Could it just possibly be that the way forward is to dismantle all the economy-distorting programs that have been gussied up to help the middle class and try to let the price system and new businesses and good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity solve the problem. How else does  the middle class get good jobs at good wages making and distributing and selling products and services that people want to buy. What a concept!

And we tell the truth to the American voters. There is no such thing as a lifetime job. That's not how capitalism works. Capitalism is revolution; capitalism is change; capitalism is new products putting old products out of business. Capitalism is new jobs putting old jobs out of business. If you want the prosperity that has lifted ordinary people from a life at $1 to $3 per day to $100+ per day then you have to accept the "creative destruction" of the modern economy.

Frankly, I don't know the way forward. The way you win elections is by waving some glittery thing in front of the voters, something to make them think that government cares about people like them. But all that does is pile more subsidies, more government spending, more distortions on to the economy on top of the existing subsidies, spending, and distortions.

Let's look at it another way, from the perspective of usgovernmentspending.com, using the overall government spending for FY 2014, federal, state, and local. We are talking $1.2 trillion in government pensions, $1.3 trillion in government health care, $1.1 trillion in government education, and $0.5 trillion in government welfare (excepting Medicaid). All of this spending is a handout; people are getting this stuff from the government without paying for it.

Do you think that the government handing out $3.9 trillion every year in various entitlements and welfare for the middle class and the poor might have something to do with the fact that the middle class is struggling in the aftermath of the Great Recession? Because the point is that before the middle class can earn money for themselves they first have to pay out the $3.9 trillion in transfer payments to seniors like me, to TANF recipients, to SNAP recipients, to Section 8 recipients, to the health care bureaucratic blob, to the education bureaucratic blob, to the welfare bureaucratic blob.

Now I understand Chuck Schumer. All he cares about is getting elected. If he can blame the Great Recession on greedy bankers, even though he is famously the "senator from Wall Street," hey, if it works, do it. If he can sucker the middle class with yet another "middle-class oriented program," hey, if it sells.

Chuck Schumer famously recruited good moderate Democratic candidates in the 2006 midterms that switched the Senate from Democrat to Republican. But then he stood by while the progressives executed their Big Obamacare Push that wasted 60 Democrats in the House in the 2010 midterms and has now swung the Senate back into the "R" column ib 2014. What was the point of recruiting those moderate candidates back in 2006, Chuck, if the Democratic Party is hard left progressive?

The whole point of elective politics is getting elected. Period. If we voters vote for shiny baubles, we deserve what we get. So long as voters vote for shiny things, the Chuck Schumers of the world are going to be dangling shiny things in front of us.

But sooner or later, as Margaret Thatcher said, the left runs out of other peoples' money. Because government spending is basically a waste. It is basically buying peoples' votes with other peoples' money and then giving it to them for nothing. That's not social, or economic, or fair, or just. It is just a waste. It just ends up wasting resources and wasting peoples' lives.

Here's what would really help the middle class. Privatize Social Security so that instead of paying payroll taxes people would be saving their own money for their own retirement. Privatize education so that mothers could band together to educate their children together. Privatize Medicare so that people saved their own money for their end-of-life care. Privatize welfare so that every middle class person was morally and economically contributing to the relief of the poor.

But what would be the point of that? How would a chap like Chuck Schumer ever get elected to political power if he didn't have any handouts to spread around on "middle-class oriented programs?"

Georg Simmel: Subordination under a Principle

For most of human experience we have been ruled by people. But in the modern era we are ruled also by "principle," by laws and ideas. This has an important consequence, according to Georg Simmel in The Sociology of Georg Simmel translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolff.

The individual who is subordinate to an objective law feels himself determined by it; while he, in turn, in no way determines the law, and has no possibility of reacting to it in a manner that could influence it -- quite in contrast to the most miserable slave, who, in some fashion at least, can still in this sense react to his master.

Nevertheless, modern man regard subordination to a principle as "the more dignified situation." But Simmel cites 16th century princes who "often met with considerable resistance" from rule "by administrative bodies... that is more nearly by laws." Aristotle and Plato both recommend government by law, but Plato recognizes that a ruler stands above the law and that the welfare of the community may require that he "act even against the laws laid down by him."

Back to start: The Unknown Sociologist.

There are principles other than law, for instance patrimony, as implemented in imperial Russia. This can result in "humiliatingly harsh... subordination", such as the peasant belonging to the land, and the child belonging to the father not because he fathered it but because the mother belongs to him.

Subordination under a principle raises an interesting question. A principle seems to have a dual influence, both as "an impersonal order to which we simply have to submit" and something that "our most private and internal impulses" impose on us.

But the principle is not just an objectivity "enthroned in an ideal realm above society and the individual." One can also think of society "as the third element, which solves conflicts between the individual and objectivity" whether objectivity is an abstract principle or a fact of nature. Thus the market economy mediates between the individual and nature; and breaks down the idea that a cultural value must either "spring from an individual" or come down from Heaven.

Simmel introduces two penetrating examples of society interposing between individual and objectivity. The first example is the attempts of the state to control the market as it emerges from local and informal production relationships. It "supplies the individual with a norm" before he comes to understand the norm as it presents itself in the interplay of market prices and relationships. This social function also works in the intellectual sphere. Individuals pick up "traditional, authoritative conceptions which are 'accepted by all'" without confronting reality in the raw or really understanding it. Indeed, individuals may prefer not to know the reality of nature and reality without the comfortable sheen that society gives it.

Finally, Simmel takes a look at the effect of subordination to a principle on actual people: superordinates and subordinates. It is important to remember that usually the personal superordination/subordination came first, gradually giving place to an objective ideal in which the superordinate "exerts his power" as the "representative of this ideal, objective force." Simmel relates the development of the power of the pater familias among the Aryans. Originally his power was unlimited, subject only to his whim and advantage. But then it developed into a "feeling of responsibility" to the family. The father became subject to the idea of the family, merely an "executor and obeyer." Thus the "commander subordinates himself to the law which he has made." We also see this in the modern economy where everyone, from the CEO to the line worker, seems to be "the servant of an objective, economic procedure." The interplay of the personal and the objective is illustrated in the notion of employment at will. This minimizes the personal subjection of worker to management, since the worker can leave at will, whereas a long-term contract implies a bond, or personal subjection. But the same senior manager at a large business that bullies his subordinates around will "exhibit serviceable and devout" behavior to the firm's clients.

The introduction of objective principle into social life creates wonders of social interactions and complexities that are absent from simple personal super- and subordination.

Next: Degrees of Domination.

Georg Simmel: Subordination under a Plurality

The most obvious way in which people are dominated is under a monarchy, the rule of one, as Georg Simmel writes in The Sociology of Georg Simmel translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolff. But there are other forms of social domination, including the subordination under a "plurality", or a group rather than a single individual, and here the domination reflects the characteristics of the superordinate group.

Back to start: The Unknown Sociologist.

Generally, the larger the superordinate group, the better the subordinates get treated, but not always. The deciding factor is that the personal and subjective is likely to be more important in a domination by an individual, and the objective more important in a domination by a group. The individual superordinate may be cruel or merciful, but the group superordinate will go by the book.

The foregoing assumes that the superordinate group acts homogeneously; things change when this group loses its homogeneity, either by conflict or by hierarchy. Under two warring masters the subordinate tends to "suffer severely", as a small state suffers when two large neighbor states are in conflict, or when a child suffers under two conflicting parents. Typically, there is no way out of this kind of situation, as when Antigone wrestles with the burial of her father, required by her family and forbidden by the state. Curiously, we are so used to these sorts of situations and are so used to them that we seldom experience them as conflicts. We try to compartmentalize things, rendering unto Caesar and unto God, but what if the demands conflict? This is what modern women call a dilemma.

A different situation obtains when the superordinates are not in conflict. In this case the subordinate has more room for maneuver, and can take advantage of the situation. The relationship is similar to the tertius gaudens described above in the expansion of the dyad. Thus the medieval vassal, who owed feudal loyalty to several lords, had more freedom that a bondsman. The situation is similar for a polytheist believer, who can turn from one god to another. Likewise, modern man in the city gains a certain degree of independence in the city where he can change supplier (or employer) much more easily than in a village or a small town.

A different situation obtains where the superordinates are arranged in a hierarchy, which occurs under feudalism. Under William the Conqueror, the English were both "the king's men" and subordinate to their particular lord, and the subordinate could take advantage of conflicts between his direct lord and the king. The middle rank, therefore, finds itself in conflict both with its superordinate and its subordinates. But it is also true that pressures can be transmitted all the way up and down the hierarchy. A retailer unable to sell a product pushes back against his wholesaler and so on up the supply chain. A English lord owning an estate in Ireland might increase the rent to a "head farmer", and provoke an increase, with markups, through several middlemen to the poor peasant actually tilling the field. On the other hand, a nobility interposed between state power and the individual can shield the individual from the worst excesses of state power.

Another question is that of voting. Should a dissenting group be forced to accede to a majority vote? If a minority is forced to accede to a majority vote, then it is violated by the majority. But if a rule of unanimity is required then the majority is violated by a minority that prevents action by its negative vote. The question turns upon whether the community feels that the "homogeneous will of the group" requires the agreement of each individual, or whether it obtains from the decision of the majority. This problem is best understood in the working of parliamentary democracy. "The representative feels himself to be the delegate of the whole people" even though he was elected only by a majority of those voting. In Rousseau, the group member "can want nothing else than the will of the group". Therefore the dissenting individual is "mistaken" in opposing the volonté générale.

So it is that when a group decision has been made the individual "must positively participate in the action which was decided against his will and conviction."

In this way, outvoting, far from being only the simple practical violation of the one by the many, becomes the most poignant expression of the dualism between the autonomous life of the individual and the life of society[.]

 Next: Subordination under a Principle.

Georg Simmel: Subordination under an Individual

Although we all live in the dream of freedom and equality, the truth is that in real life we relate to others in an unequal relationship. We are at least either slightly subordinate to them or slightly super-ordinate to them. In our modern age there is a tendency to regard all unequal relationships as scandalous, but Georg Simmel in The Sociology of Georg Simmel translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolff looks at the whole question of unequal relations are natural and social. All social relationship involves some sort of inequality.

Back to start: The Unknown Sociologist.

Now the point to keep in mind about domination is that no domination is complete. If it were, "it would annul the very notion of society." Only when "direct physical violation" is involved is there total domination; otherwise the question is merely a question of the price of freedom. Our submission to domination merely demonstrates that the price is more than we are willing to pay. Thus "coercion" is always a relative affair.

In other words, "Relationships of superordination and subordination play an immense role in social life." Take the question of "authority." In some cases a "person of superior significance or strength" may enjoy "an overwhelming weight" of power through his personal qualities. In other cases, it is the institution -- "state, church, school, family, or military" -- that "clothes a person with a reputation" for dignity and power way beyond his individual qualities. There is, in addition, a reciprocity between leader and led, which is shown in the case of the popular journalist, who must lead his readers where they want to go.

There are, writes Simmel, three kinds of subordination: under an individual, a group, or a principle. In this post we shall investigate subordination under and individual.

Subordination under an individual can be looked at in two ways. First of all there is the notion that the "will of the group has found a unitary expression or body" under its superordinate leader. Secondly, there is the resentment of the leader by the led; "the group feels itself in opposition to its head and forms a party against him." These two forces that seem in opposition are in fact both necessary, for

Man has an intimate dual relation to the principle of subordination. On the one hand he wants to be dominated. The majority of men... seeks the higher power which relieves them of responsibility... But no less do they need opposition to the leading power[.]

Thus, in politics, no matter how much people argue and conflict they have a common interest in limiting the power of the government, even in spite of the practical necessity of a strong government.

Of course, subordination under an individual does not always lead to unity. The oppression of dissidents by a central government does not necessarily unite them; the children of different mothers in a harem "are always hostile to one another."

How to unite the quarreling factions? One method is a "higher tribunal", usually an intellectual resolution of differences; alternatively the ruler can set the quarreling factions to work on a common task. Christianity, of course, subordinates all beings alike "to the divine principle." Another method is leveling, the tyrant's policy of equalizing all his subjects and preventing the emergence of any rival centers of power. The conversion of Rome from a republic to an empire reduced the Romans to the level of the peoples the republic had subjugated.

It is much easier for a single individual to dominate a large group than a small group. This is because in a large group people devolve into a "mass" but retain their individuality in a small group. Large legislatures may seem more democratic, but Alexander Hamilton pointed out that a large legislature will be run by the few.

A different dynamic applies when the ruler faces not a levelized mass but a pyramid. In this case, of course, the "power of the highest echelons withers" unless designed by the intention of the ruler, as we see in the articulation of a great army. The basic problem of a pyramid organization is that people do not always match their position in the organization, and it is hard to judge their suitability until they actually occupy their position.

But a pyramid can also grow from the bottom up, as in elective politics and business and "intellectual culture" where superior individuals move upwards in the pyramid of power. Many times downwards pushing and upwards pushing power coexist, as in feudalism, where individual small landowners might subject themselves to a local lord, and the lords use the power thus obtained to increase their power relative to the monarch.

Rule by one has an irresistible luster; the republic in the United States has its glorious president, and the republican France is ideally ruled by Rousseau's monarchical volonté générale. And even as the power of the Doge of Venice declined over the years, the Venetian elite kept the illusion of monarchy alive to prevent the emergence of a real ruler.

Yet the success of rule by one depends on the right distance of the ruler from the governed. In a small group it need not be great. But in a large group, such as a universal religion, the ruler cannot be high enough, in Heaven, so that the distance between ruler and ruled extinguishes the differences between the faithful.

Next: Subordination under a Plurality