An American Manifesto

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

The Ruling Class IV: Ruling Class and Social Type

1. Every "social type has a tendency to concentrate into a single political organism." Equally,

[T]he political organism, in expanding, almost always aims at spreading its own social type, and often succeeds in doing so.

The Assyrians did it by scattering conquered peoples among groups "that were Assyrian in spirit and nationality, and in the end were absorbed by them."

The Romans sometimes scattered conquered peoples, but not "the highly civilized populations of the East."

[I]n Gaul, Spain and Britain the empire assimilated the barbarians principally by establishing the Latin language and Roman law and spreading Greco-Roman literature and learning -- in short, by extending the benefits of an admirably organised public administration and a superior civilization.

Charlemagne "transplanted numerous colonies of Franks" to the lands of the defeated Saxons.

Or you can assimilate conquered peoples by the "offering of a higher level of culture" as the Spanish and Portuguese did in South America.

2. But often times a different social type will survive despite the heavy weight of the conqueror's hegemony. In the Persian empire subject populations "kept their beliefs, habits and customs intact."

We find different social types existing side by side even in modern states. "Turkish cities used to have their Greek, Armenian, and Jewish quarters... In India Brahmans, Mohammedans, Parsees and Europeans live side by side." The East seems to be "a museum for collecting and preserving the loose ends of social types that are elsewhere absorbed and vanish."

When a state is made up of a mixture of social types, the ruling class should be recruited almost entirely from the dominant type; and if that rule is not observed, because the dominant type is too weak either in numbers of in moral and intellectual energies, then the country may be looked upon as a sick country that stands of the brink of serious political upheavals.

This happened to the Ottoman empire in its last century. And the British in India used natives in public administration and in the army. If this continued, "it is doubtful whether European rule can long endure in that country.

In a country with mixed social types, one will become predominant. Sometimes this is the conquered ruling class that is absorbed in order to retain some power and privileges. "More often, traditions of an ancient greatness... are strong enough to overcome personal interests, and then the upper strata in the vanquished classes become the most unassimilable element." The Copts in Egypt remain Christian; the highest castes in India "supplied the fewest converts" to the Islamic Mughal empire.

3. Now Mosca examines the case where the political formula of the ruling class does not penetrate the entire society,

when the complex of beliefs and moral and philosophical principles that underlie the formula have not sunk deeply enough into the consciousness of the more populous and less well educated strata of society.

E.g., slaves in Rome and the "Indian pariah... regarded as outside every caste."

Usually political formulas and their beliefs and sentiments soak into the lower classes in time. But

when rapid flows of ideas agitate the higher classes, or... intellectual centers... in large cities... the lower classes... are likely to be left behind.

Then, Mosca says, "differing social types tend to form inside the society."

When a society enjoys "spiritual unity among all classes" it means that the lower classes will support even the most corrupt regime. People will "make the utmost sacrifices" if their beliefs coincide with their rulers' beliefs as expressed in the regime's political formula. Mosca cites the devotion of the Russian soldiers during Napoleon's invasion, the peasants of the Vendée uprising in 1793, the Spanish resisting the French invader in 1808.

But in 1798-99 the upper class of Naples was enthusiastic about the "French gospel of freedom" while the lower classes hated the French Jacobins. The result was the treasonable surrender to Napoleon's army by upper-class republicans and subsequent reprisal by royalists and the lower classes.

4. Now Mosca investigates "differences in intellectual cultivation and differences in language, habits, and family customs."

In the first place, "intellectual cultivation" is a new phenomenon, a result of advanced education of a few in the last two centuries. There are still no distinctions between the intellectual and the rest in the Muslim East. In Czarist Russia the distinction between the "intelligentsia" and the muzhiks could not have existed in the time of Peter the Great.

In France... Voltaire declares, that when Louis XIV actually assumed the throne, in 1660, the French nobility were rich in natural intelligence but ignorant and crude in manners.

In England, toward the end of the eighteenth century, Cobbett pointed to the difference between the farmers of the good old days... and those of the time he was writing. Formerly, he says, farmers had lodged and fed all their peasants... Then customs changed. The wage earner drew his pay and went to eat his meal alone in some tavern. The farmer became a "gentleman.. His sons would, if necessary, be clerks, copyists, shop-boys, but in no case farmers.

Disparities increase in bureaucratized societies. In the feudal society the ruling class is sprinkled out among their followers, their natural leaders, and the "baron knew his vassals personally."

In the Middle Ages the first peasant revolts broke out not when feudalism was harshest but when the nobles had learned to associate with one another, when the courts of love -- a conscious quest of good manners (the gai saber) -- had begun to give them polish and alienate them from the rustic ways of the lonely castle.

The fact is that the peasants hated the educated people that had abandoned the old ways of the countryside.

5. Mosca takes exception to the notion that humans are guided by "self-interest" alone. Interest is not just "pounds and pence:"

Interest is suited in each individual to the individual's own tastes, and each individual interprets his interest in his own individual way. For many people, to satisfy their pride, their sense of personal dignity, their vanities great and small, to humor their personal caprices and rancors, is worth far more than pleasures that are purely material.

For the lower classes, "more bitter by far than physical privation is the existence of a higher world from which they are excluded." So, in the city, rich and poor are hostile to each other. But, when it comes to wars against foreigners, the poor usually go for soldiers, especially if the foreigner has a different religion. Social democracy decrees that the proletarians of all countries are allied against the capitalists of the whole world. But Mosca reckons that if it were a Chinese invasion or a Russian invasion, the workers would "eagerly cooperate with the ruling classes.

There comes a point "where differences in social types as between members of different countries becomes greater than difference in social type as between classes in the same country."

6. The isolation of the lower classes from the ruling class often results in the formation of an intermediary ruling class to rule over the lower class and this new class is often "antagonistic to the class that holds possession of the legal government." This clandestine government can often be better loved, feared, and obeyed than the legal government. [E.g., American city political machines]

Often, when a section of the ruling class tries to overthrow the government it seeks the support of the lower class and gets it if the lower class is hostile or indifferent to the legal order. But the opposite can occur, when the ruling class seeks the support of the lower class in fighting some "revolutionary current."

But the most dangerous consequence of the differences in social type between the classes and their mutual isolation is

a decline in energy in the upper classes which grow poorer and poorer in bold and aggressive characters and richer and richer in "soft," remissive individuals.

This decline is virtually impossible in a feudal society where local leaders have "to be energetic, resourceful men." But when the state is bureaucratized the ruling class need not keep up to the mark, and can indulge in sentimental theories about the "innate goodness of men."

[C]ertain it is that when the ruling class has degenerated in the manner described, it loses its ability to provide against its own dangers and against those of the society that has the misfortune to be guided by it. So the state crashes at the first appreciable shock.

Mosca approves of the ruling class of 19th century England.

[I]n the course of the nineteenth century England adopted peacefully and without violent shocks almost all the basic civil and political reforms that France paid so heavily to achieve through the great Revolution.

England had a ruling class with "the greater energy, the greater practical wisdom, the better political training.

Next: Juridical Defense

Or return to Contents.

The Ruling Class III: Feudal and Bureaucratic Systems

1. In societies with a certain amount of civilization, ruling classes do not justify their power simply by possessing the power,

but try to find a moral and legal basis for it, representing it as the logical and necessary consequence of doctrines and beliefs that are generally recognized and accepted.

So, in a Christian nation the ruler will rule as God's anointed; in a Muslim nation the ruler will be the caliph of the Prophet; in China the mandarins interpret the will of the Son of Heaven. Even the Roman emperor was supposed to have received a mandate from the people. In the US powers emanate from the will of the voters.

This principle is what Mosca calls the "political formula" and it differs from society to society. Although these justifications are hardly scientific, they fill a real need.

[T]hey answer a real need in man's social nature; and this need, so universally felt, of governing and knowing one is governed not on the basis of mere material or intellectual force, but of the basis of a moral principle, has beyond any doubt a practical and a real importance.

For if the divine right of kings was the superstition of the ages, then popular sovereignty is the superstition of our age. The question is whether any society can hold together without some universal illusion.

2. Societies are held together by a belief in common brotherhood and hold apart from other groups by a sense of antagonism. The political formula must be based on the special beliefs of the group it serves. The sense of brotherhood no doubt originated in the primitive belief in a common ancestor, but Mosca suspects that affinity by race today is a mere pretext. What defines community is more likely "community of language, of religion, of interests, and the recurring relationships that result from geographical situation." They all contribute to the "development of a conscious social type." This "social type," once formed, serves as a kind of "crucible" in which we become who we are because of who we were born and bred.

(Definition: A "social type" is a community of like-minded people with the same language, religion, interests, that propagates itself down the generations unless interfered with).

3. In the dawn of history each civilized people was an "oasis in a desert of barbarism" and did not have much interaction with other civilized peoples. E.g., Egypt and China. Thus each civilized people was a single "social type."

[E]ach social type had an absolute originality that was virtually unaffected by infiltrations and influences from outside.

Even though a people may have a common belief and a common identity it doesn't stop them from squabbling and trying to dominate each other. Thus ancient China was always broken up into many semi-independent states, ancient Egypt was always breaking up and recombining, and the cities of ancient Greece were forever trying to impose an hegemony on each other.

But each ancient people had a simple political formula that was wholly identified with its religion.

Their god was preeminently a national god. He was the special protector of the territory and the people. He was the fulcrum of its political organization. A people existed only as long as its god was strong enough to sustain it, and in his turn the god survived only as long as his people did.

Mosca uses the ancient Hebrews and their Jehovah as an example, and compares them with nearby Moab, Babylon, and Thebes, and he notes that when these nations warred against each other they were conscious of the power of the opposing god. In due course these battling states and empires came to accept that other peoples had different gods, and rulers even "found it politic to recognize and worship the god of the vanquished. Thus Alexander sacrificed to Ammon and the Romans "admitted all conquered deities into their pantheon." The long periods of peace and lulling of rivalries permitted a new phenomenon, the rise of universal religions -- Buddhism, Christianity, Islam -- "that sought to extend the influence of their doctrines indiscriminately over the whole world."

4. The new religions, each with their "complete body of doctrine," changed the rules completely. Now disparate peoples under different political entities could experience community with their coreligionists across the border. But equally as the new religions

served wonderfully to bind their cobelievers together in brotherhood... they also act as estranging forces of great potency between populations that cherish different beliefs.

The Romans might not have bound their peoples together had they created their empire after the foundation of the new universal religions; the Jews, of course, never allowed themselves to be assimilated to Rome. In particular, Muslims have proved resistant to assimilation.

5. The rise of the new religions introduced a new complication, the "struggle between church and state."

The political organization still tries to justify its own existence by the tenets of the existing religion, but the religion, on its side, is always trying to obtain control of, and to identify with, political power in order to use the latter as an instrument of its own ends and propaganda.

Thus in Islam politics and religion are most closely united; in China of 1920 Buddhism "lives meekly under the protection of the state;" in Christian states the relationship varies. In Russia state and church are almost one; under Protestantism the dominant sect has dominant political power; Catholicism once hoped to unite all Christians, but now "gets along by compromises."

In those countries where the population is divided among several sects, the political problem is complicated, and requires the ruling class to invent a moral or legal basis for its rule to balance the divisive demands of the religions with a "national feeling," such as a long tradition of independence, or an age-old dynasty, so that e.g., a good Catholic may also be a good German.

For Mosca, a ruling class that is vigorous and soundly organized can deal with the competition of the universal religions. But if it is weak and feeble then "the state ends by becoming a plaything of one of the universal religions or doctrines" -- including social democracy.

6. Feudal states come in different flavors. But they are small, less developed, less complex that bureaucratic states.

By "feudal state" we mean that type of political organization in which all the executive functions of society -- the economic, the judicial, the administrative the military -- are exercised simultaneously by the same individuals, while at the same time the state is made up of small aggregates, each of which possesses all the organs that are required for self-sufficiency.

For us, the Europe of the Middle Ages is the familiar example; but similar feudal states existed all over the world, and many great states, including Egypt and China switched between feudal and bureaucratic form. Even small political units that were not agricultural, such as the trading cities of Tyre and Sidon, Genoa and Venice, Bremen and Hamburg were feudal and their leaders combined management of banks, commerce, trading posts, command of ships in peace and war, and governed their cities.

7. In the "bureaucratic state" not all executive functions need to be concentrated in the bureaucracy.

The main characteristic is... that... the central power conscripts a considerable portion of the social wealth by taxation and uses it first to maintain a military establishment and then to support a more or less extensive number of public services.

The more the number of officials with public duties, "the more bureaucratic a society becomes." There is always a greater specialization of functions, of which the first is the "withdrawal of administrative and judiciary powers from the military element" and the fact of greater discipline in all grades of service. The feudal state, on the other hand, depends much more on the charisma of the leader, so that the death of the leaders can lead to the end of the state.

But a bureaucratic state can maintain its identity as leaders come and go, and can even change its political formula and modify its structure, as Rome did when it adopted Christianity. Our modern nations have nearly all shifted from "a divine right formula to parliamentary forms of government."

8. Bureaucratic control does not necessarily mean centralization: e.g., China. The main characteristic is that its functions are exercised by salaried employees, and when a state spreads over huge territories and millions of individuals "nothing short of bureaucratic organization seems capable of" directing traffic for a ruling class to "make its influence effective and powerful beyond its own frontiers."

Under a feudal organization the authority which a given member of the ruling class exerts over individuals of the subject class... may be more direct... Under a bureaucratic organization society is influenced less by a given individual leader than by the ruling class as a whole.

Egypt was bureaucratized in the seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties but suffered because it had no coinage. Rome was "highly bureaucratized" and spread Greco-Roman civilization over large parts of the ancient world.

But "history shows no instance of a society in which all human activities have been completely bureaucratized:" justice, public administration, education, roads, canals, railroads, and public works. But not production, which seems to "lend itself ill to bureaucratic regulation."

[W]e have fairly strong evidence that the extension of bureaucratic control to the production and distribution of wealth would be fatal.

(This was written before the example of the Soviet Union).

Of course, a bureaucratic state can tax the wealth-producing class so heavily that profits are markedly reduced, and production falls off.

As wealth declines, emigration and higher death rates thin out the poorer classes, and finally the exhaustion of the entire social body ensues. These phenomena are observable whenever a bureaucratic state declines.

We have seen this in the decline of Egypt, Rome, and even France.

9. Mosca now deals with competing theories of government, including those of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer.

[Comte] stressed three stages in the evolution of human intelligence, the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive, with three different types of social organization corresponding to them, the military, the feudal and the industrial.

Indeed, mankind can attribute phenomena to the gods, to first causes, or, as now, to natural laws. But Mosca thinks that Comte is wrong to think that historical periods map directly to specific stages in human evolution. To him, all three intellectual processes occur in all historical periods. Even the savage, on his hunt, does not rely on the gods, but on "observations that have been accumulated and systematized by himself and his fathers.. in accord with the dictates of sound science."

10. The fact is that mankind lives in all three intellectual worlds: "even when he believes and hopes that God is going to interfere in his behalf, he is careful to keep his powder dry." Comte's doctrine comes down to the commonplace that the more science, the less metaphysical thinking and the less interference from the gods.

Comte is wider of the mark when he parallels his intellectual stages with "his three types of political organization, the military, the feudal, and the industrial." The military function is found in all human societies. Nor is the feudal system necessarily associated with "the predominance of metaphysics in human thought." In fact, according to Mosca, the Middle Ages were full of theological thought, more so than the earlier classical period, and "the marvelous and the supernatural were elements and familiar as the air they breathed."

11. Nor, in Mosca's opinion, is there a correspondence "between the industrial system and positive science." Actually Comte thought that industrialism would only develop in the remote future

when the managerial functions of society would be entrusted to a priesthood of positivistic scientists and to a patriciate of bankers and businessmen[.]

Comte was also opposed to the parliamentary system as being a manifestation of anarchy.

Spencer, on the other hand "divided human societies into two types, the militant (i.e., military), based on force, and the industrial, based on contract and the free consent of the citizens." His basic idea is that the militant society is based on status and the industrial society on contract. But for Mosca this is naive, because every ruling class, including our present one, rules, and enjoys the status of the ruler. And he does not agree that states where the rulers obtain the assent or acquiescence of the ruled should be considered industrial and the states that do not achieve that acquiescence are militant. Ancient Greece and Rome demonstrated elective systems, but they were hardly industrial peoples under Spencer's definition.

12. Mosca sets up Spencer as arguing this:

[A]s militarism decreases and industrialism increases proportionately, a social organization in which the individual exists for the benefit of the state develops into another organization in which the state exists for the benefit of the individual.

In fact, we cannot say whether the brain exists for the body or the body for the brain. Spencer finds government supervision of irrigation as militant; Mosca considers it over-bureaucratization. Spencer finds the private vendetta as a symbol of militancy; Mosca defines it as a state where central authority is weak.

But, though Spencer speaks through "cloud of... misunderstanding" Mosca approves him for

we cannot fail to see that by a "militant state" he means a state in which juridical defense has made little progress and by an "industrial state" another type of society in which justice and social morality has much better safeguarded.

In other words, Spencer makes sense if understood through Mosca's theoretical framework!

Mosca also thinks that Spencer is upside down in considering "war and the need of military organization... the causes of all violence." For Mosca war is just one way in which humans tyrannize over their fellows. Instead, Mosca says, the real curb on violence is the realization in highly developed societies that war infallibly harms both victor and vanquished.

Mosca also disapproves of Spencer's idea that armies should be manned by volunteers -- the kind of people that, for Mosca, are most inclined towards violence and therefore oppressing their fellows.

Next: Ruling Class and Social Type

Or return to Contents.

The Ruling Class II: The Ruling Class

In all societies there are two classes, the ruling class and the class that is ruled.

The first class, always the less numerous, performs all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings, whereas the second, the more numerous class, is directed and controlled by the first, in a manner than is now more or less legal, now more or less arbitrary and violent, and supplies the first, in appearance al least, with material means of subsistence and with the instrumentalities that are essential to the vitality of the political organism.

Our own country has such an arrangement and, as far as we know, so does every other country. There are two things to keep in mind:

First, there is always "one individual who is chief among the leaders of he ruling class... and stands... at the helm of the state." This individual is not necessarily the formal head of state.

Second, whatever the political setup,

pressures arising from the discontent of the masses who are governed, from the passions by which they are swayed, exert a certain amount of influence on the policies of the ruling, the political, class.

In addition, the man at the head of the state requires the support of "a numerous class to enforce respect for his orders and have them carried out." Moreover, in the case when the masses might overthrow the ruling class it would have to have a minority within them to replace the existing ruling class.

Currently, we classify states into three types: absolute monarchies, constitutional monarchies, and republics, as set up by Montesquieu. Of course, no two states of each type are exactly alike; "there are important differences between the political organizations of the United States and France, though both are republics." Aristotle classified states into monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies, although his democracies were really aristocracies with "fairly broad membership."

But Rousseau came up with a different definition of democracy, to mean a majority of people participating in political life under the notion of "popular sovereignty." It is Mosca's purpose in his book "to refute this democratic theory."

The first reason why the majority cannot rule is that the minority, the ruling class, is organized and it typically exerts its power against individuals in the unorganized majority one by one. The larger the nation the easier it is for the ruling minority to exert power, because it is smaller relative to the whole of society and more united.

Moreover, members of the ruling class are normally distinguished from the common herd by qualities that confirm their superiority, and if they don't have it themselves they usually inherited it.

In primitive societies the ruling class superiority is military valor as the distinguishing characteristic. This intensifies as societies progress from hunting to agriculture; "the warrior class gets to oppress the agriculturalists with impunity, and typically get to "acquire almost complete ownership of the land."

But as civilization progresses, land rent increases, and great centers of consumption -- the capital and other cities -- arise, and a very important transformation occurs.

Wealth rather than military valor comes to be the characteristic feature of the dominant class: the people who rule are the rich rather than the brave.

In this transformation social organization becomes perfected enough so that "the protection offered by public authority is considerably more effective than the protection offered by private force:" In other words it is not the power of the feudal lord that keeps the peace but the "efficacy of the laws" and their administration.

This comes about through a series of gradual alterations in the social structure whereby a type of organization, which we shall call the "feudal state," is transformed into an essentially different type, which we shall term the "bureaucratic state."

In the bureaucratic state "wealth produces political power just as political power has been producing wealth." Thus, even though the rich hesitate before "entering public life, and the poor [have] a certain aversion to choosing the rich for elective office," there is an unquestionable "music of clinking dollars" with respect to elections and public life.

And, the road to to social influence is easier for the rich than for the poor.

Where religious belief is strong there is a tendency for a "priestly aristocracy to obtain an important share of wealth and political power: e.g., ancient Egypt, Brahmin India and medieval Europe. There is a tendency for the priests to monopolize education and access to written books. Specialized knowledge and science only get picked up by the ruling class when they produce economic benefits to the public and the state.

In present day Europe and America the class that applies the findings of modern science to war, public administration, public works and public sanitation holds a fairly important position[.]

There are many examples of people with "practice in directing military and civil organization" developing a real art in governing "that is better than crude empiricism." Of course, only people of higher status are considered for higher stations, and it is seldom possible to determine who possesses such art before appointment to high office.

Some countries restrict the governing class to a hereditary aristocracy. Indeed almost every country has been ruled at some time by a hereditary aristocracy. Usually such aristocracies are established in fact before being enforced in law, by monopolizing all political power for a period. And it is obviously easier for the sons of the aristocrats to acquire the qualifications for office since they often enjoy "a certain familiarity with them since childhood."

And even absent a restricted access to high office, mere intellectual stature is not a sufficient qualification for powerful office. It is telling that aristocracies have always emphasized instead their "superiorities in character and wealth." And this makes sense, because high office often requires will power, courage, pride, and energy. It helps to be raised and live among people that prize these traditions.

We generally become indifferent to danger or, perhaps better, to a given type of danger when the persons with whom we daily live speak of it with indifference and remain cool and imperturbable before it.

Thus,

Courage in battle, impetuousness in attack, endurance in resistance -- such are the qualities that have long and often been vaunted as a monopoly of the higher classes.

However, the record of the 19th century indicates that people from all classes can obtain these leadership qualities, notably in the France of the Revolution and Empire, even though "such talent for command had been considered an exclusive prerogative of the nobility.

However the hereditary principle does not persist forever.

As soon as there is a shift in the balance of political forces... then the manner in which the ruling class is constituted changes also.

It may be a new source of wealth, the decline of an old religion, a new current of ideas, whatever, "far-reaching changes occur in the ruling class. "

[It] comes down to a conflict between the tendency of dominant elements to monopolize political power and transmit possession of it by inheritance, and the tendency toward a dislocation of old forces and an insurgence of new forces[.]

In other words, the stability of a ruling class is a measure of the lack of change challenging it. But once change comes, whether by "commerce with foreign peoples, forced emigrations, discoveries, wars" then new "beliefs come to the fore and upset" the status quo that had kept the masses obedient. In such an environment individuals who have started from nowhere and reach high positions and fire "new ambitions, new greeds, new energies" that rejuvenates the ruling class until a new stability takes hold.

And when the new stability takes hold,

those who belong to the [new] ruling class will begin to acquire a group spirit. They will become more and more exclusive and learn better and better the art of monopolizing their advantage... [in] acquiring power and holding it.

Are people happier "during periods of social stability" when everyone keeps their station from generation to generation? Who knows? Mosca is "careful not to venture any answer of our own" on this question. Besides, who knows what causes the ending of a ruling class or the beginning of a historical period and new rulers.

Next: Feudal and Bureaucratic Systems

Or, return to Contents.

The Ruling Class I: Political Science

People have long wanted to think that social phenomena are not mere chance, or God's will, but "rather the effects of constant psychological tendencies determining the behavior of the human masses." Aristotle wrote in his Politics.

Another approach was the Macchiavellian, to learn by what arts an individual or class "might succeed in achieving supreme power in a given society and in thwarting the efforts of other individuals or groups o supplant them."

It turns out that a good half of the field of human thought... may be looked upon as devoted to political science.

The most highly developed part of political science is political economy, an effort that began at the end of the 18th century, investigating "the production and distribution of wealth" apart from the mass of other social phenomena. This led by the middle of the 19th century to "a tendency to explain all political events in human history on the basis of economic considerations," a reference, no doubt, to Marx.

But this book is devoted to the organization of political authority apart from economic considerations.

Of course, everyone wants knowledge to be "scientific" but political science is not yet one of them, owing not least to the great complexity of human societies. Typically, political science suggests either the operation of the will of God or "the free and spontaneous expression of the will of the people" or at least a majority of them. Two methods of analysis have dominated: the effect of climate and the effect of the physical differences "between the various races of men."

Mosca accepts the climate, or environmental argument: obviously a favorable location in respect of "temperature and rainfall" is beneficial. But these factors "diminish with the growth of [a] civilization." He then goes on to analyze northerners vs. southerners and "the superiority of certain races" and rejects them, with an aside to Darwin and Spencer. Nor is he inclined to give much weight to the idea that "each race has special intellectual and moral qualities" -- and this a century ago! For one thing he suggests, even when one race conquered another, the defeated people were not all slain, but "reduced to servitude" and thus survive, but as part of the conqueror's realm.

Nor is Mosca much of a fan of the historical method, in particular because of the "scant reliability of historical materials." And what about Roman history? Were "Tiberius and Nero.. the rascals that Tacitus said they were"? And then basing our understanding of the more primitive human and animal societies makes us dependent on the sagacity of the traveler or reporter of an exotic location, and anyway, how relevant are primitive tribes to a more complex society where politics is a very different affair than the small society of a few families.

So Mosca turns to his own method of analysis, and that starts with the notion that all societies have "a class that rules and a class that is ruled."

Next: The Ruling Class

Or back to Contents

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

The Meaning of Life: Making It Up

Think about it. In the old days we at least had the comfortable faith that the gods knew what they were about. Then with the Axial Age religions we have the knowledge that God had created the world and it was good. Now that we have got into the Creation game ourselves we should be terrified. Plato wrote in the Phaedrus that the difference between gods and men is that the gods have two good horses pulling their chariots, but we men have only one good horse; we must spend our lives wrestling with the bad horse, and thus have no time to look upwards towards the Platonic Ideas in the empyrean. We humans are not gods; we are mortal men and women that really don’t have a clue; we spend our lives trying to keep the bad horse under control. For all our modern revolution in knowledge we still have no idea about the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything." And what do we do? We make it up.

And yet, our lefty friends have a plan to save the world, because we are destroying the climate. I wonder why? I remind you:

The primitive... cannot conceive of an unprovoked suffering; it arises from a personal fault... or from his neighbor's malevolence... but there is always a fault at the bottom of it[.]

If the climate is heating up at one degree-ish per century, this must be a personal fault of capitalism, and the sacrifice of the Commoners to the climate gods may be the only way to prevent the best people from dying.

And if there is hunger and poverty and oppression and inequality -- and blacks in America still haven't caught up with whites -- this must be the fault or the malevolence of the racist-sexist-homophobes. Because there must be a fault.

And the answer to these faults is Jobs for Gentry, tuning up huge computer models and manufacturing gigantic bureaucratic engines to save the human race from its suffering. Because there must be an answer.

I don’t think so.

But what is the answer?

The answer starts with the notion that the meaning of life for the Creative must be the journey of the Sacrificial Hero, a terrifying journey into the underworld of the unconscious, and not the Ego Hero, the simplistic ethos of the "ally" bravely advocating for the "oppressed peoples" suffering under the domination and exploitation of the "white oppressors."

The new world that is to come begins with the discovery of a new meaning of life by the Sacrificial Hero on the border between Order and Chaos. Then it is up to the prophets to prophesy new religions. Then it is up to the writers and artists and thinkers to imagine new cultures. Then it is time for politicians to teach a new generation of people how he cares about people like them, and for Anybodies to create the next technological revolution.

And that is a very big project.

But at least we start with the knowledge gained from all the monstrous mistakes of the last century and more. More than ever before we know what doesn’t work. I call these mistakes, the century-long lurch towards colossal error, the Great Reaction, where socialism is a return to slavery, the welfare state is a return to feudalism, identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism a fantasy of revolution, gentry kids putting on a school play for their professors; helpless victims are a return to sacrifice; social justice is good old loot and plunder. You could call it a lurch back to primitivism -- by the most sophisticated. And given that the epitome of primitivism is vengeance you can hardly be surprised to see that the whole agenda of the left is very close to vengeance in the grand old primitive style. I have written a bit about this vengeance culture here.

I have written also about the errors of the left, the stupidities of people that think they have the answer for everyone, and the crimes of the left, where an actual butcher's bill resulted from a lefty error. It all adds up to a Wrong Turn.

Really, you can’t blame the Gentry creatives for their foolishness. They are just falling into the old archetypes, the primitive beliefs of our primitive ancestors, yet lacking the knowledge, the experience, the wisdom to adapt them for the post hunter-gatherer, post agricultural, post-industrial world. What they should be thinking about is how to extend the patient process of replacing war with sports, duels with debates, gossip with book clubs, and activism with…

Yes, how exactly are we going to domesticate les activistes? Any suggestions?

Years ago I thought that it would take generations to work all this out. But then I thought that if a guy like me, that had read a few books, could see the blurry outline of the problem and the glimmerings of an answer then probably brighter lights had already solved the problems. Only their lights were still emerging from under a bushel. So now I have a faith that the prophets are already born, the writers are already writing, and the politicians are already rehearsing their sound bites.

If I can imagine a blurred “vision of the good life” through a glass darkly, surely the geniuses have already seen the new peaks rising vividly before them, face to face.

Back to Contents

The Hero's Journey in Each of Us

Life, especially for our educated classes, means a journey of exploration, the exploration of the inner self. Call it a Hero's Journey. But what does that mean?

Let us recapitulate. The reason that God is Dead for the Gentry and the Creatives is that they do not believe in a God that made Heaven and Earth and then created a divine law for humans to live by. In their lives it is not God but they that are in charge of creating. Ergo, per Nietzsche, they must go through decadence, nihilism, and the horror of eternal recurrence. During that eternal recurrence, like Phil Connors of Groundhog Day, they must go on a Hero’s Journey, to learn the hard way about the meaning of life through an endless encounter with a life insurance agent or, if they are lucky, with the dragons of the unconscious. This creative journey will not be the journey of today’s conventional-wisdom-breaking “creative artist;” it will be something more challenging, and more terrifying, because it will culminate in a sacrifice upon the border between Order and Chaos, as the archetypical Sacrificial Hero.

It’s OK if you are not up to that, but then you must accept that you are just an ordinary Responsible with attitude. You had better stay within the guard-rails, because you don’t really have it in you to venture into the Beyond, let along the Underworld.

Still, the Hero’s journey is not just for Creatives; it is waiting for all of us, if we choose to accept it. In the Subordinate it is offering the way out of underhood, from the Slave of the Master into the dignity of the responsible life of the citizen in the market economy of the city. But if the Subordinate chooses not to make the journey, out of fear, or even laziness, then that is his decision. It is not the business of Responsibles to force him into the responsible culture of the city.

In the Responsible the journey is a path out of the fixed universe of God's Creation and his divine plan towards the border of Chaos that may not have a Redemptive end to history as its reward. But if the Responsible chooses not to make the journey, out of fear, or even laziness, then that is his decision. It is not the business of Creatives to force him into the glorious culture of creativity.

For the Creatives, again, the choice is different: every Creative must submit to the sacrifice of the Hero’s Journey or he is nothing but a fraud. It ain’t gonna be easy, but if you don’t try you ain’t a Creative, and you won’t end up helping to figure out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. And if you opt instead for Ego Heroism, chances are that you will help add to the lefty mountain of skulls.

The larger meaning of a three-layers theory like Yarvin’s or my Three Peoples theory, is not just to provide meaning to privileged People of the Creative Self, but also to confront educated and conceited people like you and me with a world view that, after it sets forth the real challenge of the creative life, concedes that there is a world full of people outside our privileged creative bubble that are not called to be creative gods and that have a less lordly understanding of life, the universe, and everything than our own, and that the beginning of wisdom is to concede to the nincompoops that are less educated and less evolved than “us” the right to live their cramped and deplorable lives in peace. But above all, it is to establish that the world was not created merely so that educated Gentry could strut and fret their hour upon the stage to the delight of themselves and their Twitter followers.

To recapitulate, for the humble Subordinate, God is on Mount Olympus or luxuriating in an earthly palace as the local lord that once protected him against the Mongols and now protects him from the bosses or the white supremacists. That is his reality. Who are we to tell him to get a life and get into the modern age?

For the responsible Commoner, God has set the rules with his divine plan and it is up to the Commoner to make the most of the world He has given to the common man. Who are we to tell him to get out of his deplorable rut and get creative?

But with the modern Creative, God is Dead, and many of us are brimming with not-very-creative ideas for making the world anew, in our own image, just like God. So are we Creator godlings so familiar with the things-in-themselves that we deserve to preside over Creation as the God that can save the climate in 12 years and issue orders to the lesser breeds without the law -- in their own best interest, of course -- how to live their lives? We, the ignorant heirs of those that developed the settled science that could teach humans how to make LEDs with quantum mechanics: we that couldn’t design an LED if our lives depended on it and certainly don’t have a clue what is going on with that fly inside that Uncertainty Principle fly-bottle?

There are all kinds of Hero's Journeys out there. But whatabout Hero's Journeys that work?

Next: The Meaning of Life: Making it Up
We humans really don't know anything

Or back to Contents