In a recent posting on SDA, regular commenter ‘ET’ shared some most astute bits of wisdom. This prompted me to engage in an e-mail exchange with her. Out of that came a longer essay of sorts from her, which I am publishing with her permission. The primary editing I did was to put all of it in a more general context:
The two-tiered socialist system is, actually, the most basic sociopolitical system on Earth. It’s essentially tribal, set up to ensure stability. To prevent the disruption of change it moves its authority into an essentially hereditary mode. You have the ‘Anointed’ (upper tier) . . . and the ‘Unanointed’ (the vast majority in the lower tier).
There’s no means of movement between these two groups. One class, the anointed, are deemed by birth, education etc. to be Guardians, Rulers, Wise Men. These ‘Noblesse oblige‘ feel they have a duty and a right to govern the unanointed lesser people.
In days past it would be the tribal elders of one clan that ruled over the other clans. In the feudal period it would be the nobles and the church. The elite prevented the lower class from gaining power; kept them uneducated, dependent on the financial and ‘saviour’ powers of the nobles/church who owned all the means of production (the land), owned all means of hope and salvation from your supposed sins (the church), all knowledge.
Keeping the unanointed peasantry down became difficult only when the population increased beyond the ‘organizing capacity’ of such a two-tiered system. After all, you have to enforce a system where the peasantry can’t become educated, can’t get enough knowledge or fiscal power to control their own lives, can’t own land, aren’t allowed to read, can’t own businesses, etc.
Notice in the Middle East – keeping knowledge out of the hands of the ordinary people and confining them to subservience has become difficult with the electronic media. The Middle East is going through its own transition from a two-class to a three-class structure. Not easy, as the two-class is all about the security of stability, while the three-class is about risks and change.
In Canada, the Liberals were dominant for so long because Canadians were kept passive peasants by the Ottawa government which was focused around the crony big businesses in Quebec and Ontario. But with the rise of the West, the ability of Ottawa/Liberals to keep people down became weak. The Liberals were run as an Elite Governance, a set of insiders who all knew each other, were shareholders in the same big businesses located in Montréal-Toronto, used the government to subsidize themselves, and kept Canadians passive. But the West and the increased population and the rise of small businesses changed all this. The Liberals didn’t adapt; they kept to the two-tiered structure with themselves as the Elite. They simply settled in this mode, without policies or programs. That’s why they’ve imploded.
As for Layton’s NDP and Quebec – that was just a protest vote against the Bloc. Both the Bloc and the NDP are similar: Socialist. Quebec is socialist because it is cocooned within the Canadian economy. Like a spoiled teenager it can pout and insist upon special treatment, knowing that the parents will eventually give in and hand over all the treats. I think there’ll be trouble in La Belle province for Layton with Mulcair.
In our Western world, we have the Elite as the ‘intellectuals’: the arts and humanities grads who so often move into the civil service and run our world. They are isolated from reality, cocooned in their tenured government jobs, with their pensions, their untouchable isolation from accountability. Their ability to live an economically secure life isn’t dependent on their ability to run a store, bake a cake, set up a business, etc. It isn’t dependent on their willingness to take risks – and a middle class growth economy absolutely rests on individuals taking risks in setting up and competing for new business ventures.
You’ll often see these intellectuals flaunt their credentials in attempt to assert their [supposed] intellectual superiority over all around them. To that I say, so what? I’ve got a Ph.D too and I know many, many, many Ph.Ds who are ignorant, arrogant, isolated bigots, trapped in the emptiness of words. Degrees don’t mean much, quite frankly. Anyone can write their opinions and dress it up with lofty words. It doesn’t mean a thing other than a spotlight on their own vapidness.
The problem with this system is that it is rigid in its mindsets: the ‘Wise Guardians’ and the ‘Unwise Rest of Us’. This sets up a ‘no-change’ society; it has no capacity to adapt, to innovate, to invent, to change itself. That requires a middle class, a class based on individual merit, dissent, debate, & exploration. A Growth Society requires a set of people willing to take risks. The Elite are never, ever willing to take risks. They reject risk . . . and growth . . . and change.
Socialists, after all, see themselves as The Wise Guardians. They are socialists because they reject individual power, individual will and actions. After all, they are the Wise People. This is the basic set up of Plato’s Republic . . . which Aristotle rejected.
A book I strongly recommend is Karl Popper’s ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies‘. It outlines the tribal socialist framework and the open society. It examines Plato, Hegel, and Marx who were all socialists and supporters of this two-class elitist society.
If you calculate the number of days peasants were required to work for their lord in England, it is actually less than the number of days we currently work for the government. In the middle ages, the non-nobility held rank, owned land, had trades and were blessed by the benefits of capitalism. Honestly, I think communism is worse, and there is little comparison.
Thanks for posting that Robert. Over the years I’ve learned a lot from ET at SDA and much of those posts should be taught in our universities instead of the anti-capitalist, anti-American envy we get now from our tenured Professors. It is unfortunate to read conservatives here bashing ET’s optimism about mankind’s ability to adapt to changing environments. It is quite frankly similar to the BDS we got from the progressives as they deemed W an idiot for being optimistic about the universality of the desire and need for democracy.
Interestingly, regarding Karl Popper (whose 2 volumes on Open Society I’ve tried to read but while his ideas are great, his style is incredibly detailed to the point of boredom sometimes) is used by George Soros on his site “Open Society” at Soros.Org where this quote appears by Soros:
“Popper’s philosophy made me more sensitive to the role of misconceptions in financial markets and the concept of reflexivity allowed me to develop my theory of bubbles. This gave me a leg up as a market participant.”
To make it more interesting, Glen Beck went after Soros day after day last Fall. But Beck totally misinterpreted Karl Popper and deemed him to be a bad guy simply because Soros had championed Popper on his site. When in fact it was Soros who had twisted Popper to suit his own image.
Trudeau was often known as a Philosopher King, a title taken directly from Plato. (Interesting also the name of a prominent British newspaper.)
I prefer the approach of Solon, who reformed ancient Athens, then sailed off into exile. Predictably, the Athenians failed to hold to his reforms. But at least they had to work this out themselves, and learn from the experience. The Guardian model perpetuates and entrenches the entitlement of the few and the ignorance of the many.
Society is stronger when the many gain responsibility, experience, and capacity. That’s something the elitist Guardian model eschews.
Ya know I endorse ET’s views…..on this….
The current growing rejection of the DemocRATs and OBOZO is the rejection of elites.
Where I part company with ET is although the ME must reject the elitist 2 class system for a 3-class capitalist/democratic model….although they must…they won’t.
It’s the old saw of taking the horse to water…
Horses are generally smarter than muzzies….
But sasquatch, my point is that the ME nations have no choice. They can’t sustain their populations using the two-class economic mode.
In the West, in the 13th century, it was the same problem. And boy, did the old guard rulers, the nobles and the church, fight against any change. The result?
1)Repeated famines and plagues. These would reduce the populations for a bit and then, they’d increase again;
2)Repeated wars as the govts tried to get more resources. These would deplete both the population and also, destroy the current economies;
3)Periods of rigid authoritarianism as the church fought back against the ‘heresy’ of individuals questioning the ‘knowledge base’ of the time, and fought for more freedom.
Until finally, the massive population increases meant that the old economic mode crumbled, they had to enable private individual market businesses and trade, they had to move economic production off the fiefdom, out of the control of the landed gentry and into a market trade economy based on surplus for trade.
At the same time, the intelletual mindset was changing. There’s Abelard’s famous ‘dubitando’; I doubt. Allowing doubt to emerge, allowing questions to emerge (see the famous 12th c tale of Perceval who was chastized for not questioning what was going on)…allowing individuals to examine and explore the objective world..Galileo, Da Vinci.
Acknowledging that there WAS such a thing as an objective material world to examine..this led to science and technological change. [Notice how the Islamic world is akin to the 12th c in Europe with its rejection of individualism, questions, dissent, and the reality of the objective external world.]
I’m saying that the Islamic world has no choice but to change its economic and political infrastructure. It can’t sustain its population using its current method.
Certainly, as did the Church and nobles in Europe, the religious powers and the tribal dictators of the ME will try to retain their power. But..it’s like a tipping scale; the weight of the population increases have tipped the scale…and the infrastucture must change.
There is a long middle period in which the third level flourished. The revolutions of 1776 and 1789,
and the English Civil War, were not without effect; nor was the rise of Protestantism. The consequences were good educational systems,
open to everyone; and indeed, increased social mobility. We now have punitive taxation on the middle class, and the destruction of the public educational systems.
This to some extent has been accompanied by the
destruction of religion. We have no more Scotch presbyterian teachers doing their duty to God by
educating His people.
Of course these developments have occurred in very different ways in different jurisdictions.
The public educational system is not and has not been the same in England as in France, for example.
But in any event, the thrust is clear: many want the reversion to a two level system.
ET wrote:
“Until finally, the massive population increases meant that the old economic mode crumbled, they had to enable private individual market businesses and trade, they had to move economic production off the fiefdom, out of the control of the landed gentry and into a market trade economy based on surplus for trade.”
Yes, this was happening in the high Middle Ages, and yes the landed gentry, and the church fought against the emergence of the third (middle) class, and the concept of upward mobility in general.
But curiously, it was the massive population decrease (and subsequent labour shortages) that came with the Black Death that busted the whole thing wide open. Because this situation brought mobility both between, and within all of the classes. Peasants could now become farm labourers for cash wages. Or they could become traders. And some of the new moneyed people were eventually elevated to the status of nobility. I think the real issue is how societies become immobile. Constipated if you will. And then things start to stagnate, until something (often some emergency) busts things open again. Sometimes it is a population increase, but sometimes it is a population decrease. But the main point is that something gets things moving again.
Just as long as you realize that there can also be conservative elitists who think the same way, that only they should run things, and that others should follow their orders and their lead. These are the sort of people who are afraid of wide-ranging discussion, who jump up and down at the first sign of deviation from the party line, and who think that they are indispensable to the effort to overthrow political correctness.
It then turns into a parallel political correctness of the right, that is well parodied on SNL with that blonde lady on the talk show who endlessly repeats one word as if she has just had an audience with the Oracle.
Getting it in balance is difficult now, the leftist brand of political correctness is so ingrained into most peoples’ thinking that when the less political folk hear the dialogue between left and right, they tend to tune out, thinking they are hearing two equal and opposite versions of madness.
A good example is with climate change, how the push back against global warming turned so readily to talk about an impending ice age. There is almost no evidence for this whatsoever, the reality remains that we are almost steady-state and showing very slight increases or decreases on a decadal time scale. But the right wing ideologues who are on steroids want to push back with the “impending ice age” equal and opposite reaction.
In this lies a lesson, we elitists of the centre are the ones who should be in charge. Then everyone can go home and we’ll close down everything, and bang on the drum all day.
Robert, thanks for this thread and your conversation with ET. It is extremely interesting to read the broad range of historical knowledge expressed here. I envy the ability of so many to articulate this knowledge. It is too bad that more of society will never read this or be taught this knowledge in the places of learning, but rather be subjected to misinformation and brainwashing.
I have to agree with sasquatch somewhat. If the ME does not adopt the 3 class system we are in big trouble as we are already being hobbled by those who would impose a 2 class system here in the west.
@ 12:24am Peter wrote: “Just as long as you realize that there can also be conservative elitists who think the same way, that only they should run things, and that others should follow their orders and their lead. These are the sort of people who are afraid of wide-ranging discussion, who jump up and down at the first sign of deviation from the party line, and who think that they are indispensable to the effort to overthrow political correctness.”
I absolutely agree! The best example I ever heard of this was a woman in the Eastern U.S. who was fed up with Obama and wanted to do something to help defeat him at the polls. She went to her local Republican constituency office and found them to be beyond arrogant and condescending. She immediately started her own Tea Party group and effected massive change in her district & state.
I apologize for not recalling all the details of this story but heard it on John Batchelor’s show about a year ago. I think it related to this though.
I cannot tell whether it was ET or Robert who wrote this comment,
“Degrees don’t mean much, quite frankly. Anyone can write their opinions and dress it up with lofty words. It doesn’t mean a thing other than a spotlight on their own vapidness.”
but it annoys the hell out of me. I think the basic ideas in the post are excellent, and they have been said before, but frankly I get sick and tired of the argument that all degrees are worthless.
It was individuals with degrees that put man on the moon, it was individuals with degrees that invented the amazing electronic devices which enabled all that is possible with the Internet (including this blog), and so on and so on and so on. The bottom line is that making substantial advances in a field requires years of study – that’s just how it works in this day and age.
Stop painting those with degrees with such a broad brush! Are you suggesting that we return to the dark ages? I’d have to say that the quoted message at the start of my post pissed me off more than anything I have read on SDA in a very long time – which is saying something because I rarely find much that I disagree with here.
Yes, some degrees don’t mean much, but that is a painfully simplistic view of things. And yes, universities are not what they used to be, and they have to a large degree been hijacked by left-wing nuts. Agreed, agreed. But do you *seriously* think the world would be a better place if the desire to dig deep into certain subjects was absent from the human race? It appears that’s exactly what you think.
“…many, many, many Ph.Ds who are ignorant, arrogant, isolated bigots, trapped in the emptiness of words”
What a comment.
I know many, many, many Ph.D’s who are nothing like what you describe. Indeed I am struggling to think of a single Ph.D I know who fits your description.
We must associate with different people.
Welcome back, ET.
As Glenn Reynolds did, maybe you just needed a break.
Stick around, please, I’ve missed you.
Mad Mike
ET:
I’m saying that the Islamic world has no choice but to change its economic and political infrastructure. It can’t sustain its population using its current method.
Why should they change when they may very well be able to take over productive societies and demand tribute. It’s worked for centuries.
Yes, ET it’s nice to see they have finally released you 🙂
@ TJ at May 23, 2011 12:55 AM
There are two PH.Ds in my immediate family and although they are quite competent in their chosen field they are truly dumb as a stick when they step out of their comfort zone. Neither has a lick of common sense and they are both proof positive that education has little bearing on basic intelligence. And yes, they are both arrogant and have a superiority complex.
ET, I would be interested to hear how you reconcile your view that the ME will be able to avoid exchanging one set of elitist rulers (the dictators) for another (the Islamists). From all indications that I am aware of, the Islamists are making remarkable progress toward their goal of turning western civilization back into a two-tiered system, so why wouldn’t they be able to also take over the ME?
Exactlyl, peterj. My brother also has a PhD. In his area of expertise he’s great, but outside that he can be abysmally ignorant while imagining himself to be well informed.
“I’m saying that the Islamic world has no choice but to change its economic and political infrastructure. It can’t sustain its population using its current method.”
They don’t need to; they only need to fight enough wars to whittle the population down.
There are several different ways to deal with a massively expanding population which is faced with limited resources. The Brits did it by sending their new generations on globe-spanning missions of discovery and conquest. The Japanese dealt with it by going to war. China did it by instituting the one-child policy. North Korea is dealing with it through an iron-fisted monarchy/theocracy/generic-dictatorship. Now, granted, all such attempts seem to eventually lead to liberal capitalist democracies, but there’s no grantee on how long it will take, or how many lives and resources will be lost in the process.
ET
You wrote previously that The Iranian ‘revolution’ was decades ago and is an invalid comparison to what is going on now.
Why?
At that time Iranian population was rapidly growing, like today population of Arabic ME.
Iran had quasi-democratic ruler (shah) like today quasi-democratic rulers in ME.
Iranian revolution was democratic from the start with islamists/fundamentalist, democrats, communists and others fighting and demonstrating against shah rule. Today Arab Spring has also demonstrations in which democrats, islamists and others together demonstrate against totalitarian rulers.
And in Iran Islamists/fundamentalist were best organized among all demonstrating people. Like today in the ME.
And so it was Islamists (because Khomeini people were somewhat equivalent to today’s Sunni Islamists) who won in Iran. I hope it won’t be Islamists who win in the ME, now. But I have my doubts.
*****
You also write:In days past it would be the tribal elders of one clan that ruled over the other clans. In the feudal period it would be the nobles and the church. The elite prevented the lower class from gaining power; kept them uneducated, dependent on the financial and ‘saviour’ powers of the nobles/church who owned all the means of production (the land), owned all means of hope and salvation from your supposed sins (the church), all knowledge.Keeping the unanointed peasantry down became difficult only when the population increased beyond the ‘organizing capacity’ of such a two-tiered system
It was so, but when lower classes found that they can own means of production they choose to revolt against the nobles and impose their own tyranny, tyranny of the mases. They choose to continue doing that even when they became well educated. It seems to me that you missed the Russian Revolution, the communist rule in half of the Europe and in the majority of Asian countries and you are missing the events going on Europe. I would like to direct your attention to the events now going on in Spain which show rather different politico-economic direction from the one you are talking about.
They show direction leftward.
I understand that it is popular not only on this blog to think that western democracy is the next stage of political life in all countries, however I think it is a fallacy. Because modern economy can well work without western-style democracy [see: China]. You may be right talking about three-layered economic structure, but it does not follow that this kind of economic structure will necessarily result in western style democracy. Or in democracy at all.
Anyway, I think I will remind you of this conversation again in a year from now.
Ta Ta.
“They don’t need to; they only need to fight enough wars to whittle the population down.”
Alex
Never thought so, but I agree. Close by they have a primary enemy state (remember: Nakba?)and some of them are really, really eager to start something.
(by the way, in Egypt the price of bread is getting up……….rapidly, and tourism is down)
well et, you forgot the part about how the humanities grads that populate the civil service sally up to the billionaires who have created, via such mechanisms as proxy voting in the boardroom, their own 3rd, uber elite class. THEY are the ones originating out of the middle class to go on to create monopolies and oligarchies. THEY are the ones who resist change by making sure no one follows in their footsteps; (zero sum games all over the place).
it has to do with capitalism is its own worst enemy; a capitalist that really succeeds in ‘creating’ wealth (actually there is a finite amount of wealth at any givien moment, they just want it all for themselves and thus steal it from the middle and lower classes) are the ones who resist change.
the ‘intellectualists’ of which you refer are merely the identifiable parties who trade away the upward mobility of their fellow citizens for their own security in the model you describe.
much like the vichy french, the eastern bloc communist leaders prior to 1989 and so forth.
how else do megacorporations wind up paying ZERO taxes from time to time? why do lobbyists outnumber members of congress?
at least socialism brought us out of the dark ages. and dont confuse it with communism which is the bizzare offshoot of socialism; it is merely where, like the grand expanse of the universe, things ‘circle around’ and you wind up where you started. under the present capitalist model the only difference with ultra extreme socialism is that all property is held in a few private hands instead of the state. but the power boys at the top in either case still enjoy all the perks of an inherited position.
in the capitalist model proposed on web sites like SDA, the much clamoured ‘tax cuts’ are merely a means to permit the theft to continue.
the uber elites will always find a way to keep ALL other challengers at bay. this is why the old saying ‘rich get richer poor get poorer’ is even more true today. you are all part of that; you gleefully celebrate the fall of socialism until one day you find yourself falling further and further behind when privatization removes access to the resources we once all had a share in.
“THEY are the ones originating out of the middle class to go on to create monopolies and oligarchies.”
ella, in a globally connected economy the only monopolies and oligarchies THEY are able to create are those goods and services supplied by government and delivered by government unions. Ironically THEY reside in big centrally planned government. THEY have turned out to be the parasites that Marx was predicting would happen while his original target, free enterprise, has been subjected to heavy competition as time and distance narrows in the global economy.
Thus the best example of elites moving society toward a 2-class system is government unions who have a monopoly on certain services and get themselves in behind the castle walls of government and behave like parasites seeking rent from the hosts in the private sector outside the walls.
ping says “the uber elites will always find a way to keep ALL other challengers at bay.” …. That can only happen now in a government monopoly.
But the economy always rights itself eventually as the graph yesterday on SDA shows with Obama’s Keynesian spending killing jobs because those in the castle sought too much rent from the productive middle class. That causes a rise of Tea Parties reminiscent of those in Boston that started the American Revolution and the cycle goes on.
Similarly the elites in the ME have taken too much from the peasants and the peasants are now revolting with Tea Parties of the ME. And while the next steps are uncertain, the thrust toward a middle class determining how they want to be ruled is a certainty. Because 2 tired tribalism cannot work in large populations in a globally competitive “Open Society”.
Pretty good read.
Basic idea that can be summed up with the neat little phrase that neo-feudalism won’t work no matter how much lipstck they put on it.
“That can only happen now in a government monopoly.”
you dont get it; it all boils down to the enormous cost of running for office.
in the great US of A that requires the candidate to sell their soul to the highest bidder via the lobbyist. that’s the link; ‘pass this bill in favour of my megacorp and you get a blank cheque to pay for all that advertising’.
they’re not stupid, the same offer is made to the incumbent and challenger, it’s a cost of doing business.
Canuckistan is no different, just a smaller scale with fewer attack ads.
as far as public service unions, well, the shrewed manager will find a way to minimize staff currying favour with the masters to the point where interaction by the public consists of unending voice messages, automated scripted responses and lonnnng lonnnng waitng lines. the only unknown here is whether a return to the middle ages where staggering wealth amongst the top 1/10th of 1% coexists with(but never has to smell the stench of) the swirling masses. but unlike that time, technology and the descendants of the patriot act will conspire to constantly nip dissention in the bud. it will happen. so SDA, what are your contingency plans with the Stasi come smashing down YOUR door for some inoccuous blog post? hmmm?
“you dont get it; it all boils down to the enormous cost of running for office.”
How much did “Vegas” spend?
Yes, well just a word from a non-intellectual here, a voice from the underclass, if you will. While it is easy to blame the Church, we should remember that although it was mainly the upper-classes that could send their children to a “university” or academy, most of it was done by private tutors, etc., it was, up until only recently in history, the Church that offered education to the masses. And Scholastica was the first woman to be allowed a university education and it was the Church that demanded “holy days” wherein it insisted the peasants be given days off in some sort of regularity, to enjoy their laborious lives. And it was royal nomination of the Church prelates that gave them control of many Church decisions. In fact, it would be a good thing, I think, were education and charities be given back to the Churches to handle.
Hear! Hear! larben!
The Church is the proverbial whipping boy, perhaps because it can stand up for itself — or, at least, God can.
Whatever faults and failures of the Church — and they are many, given that Jesus’s hands and feet are now entrusted to mere mortals, fallen, weak, frail, often self-serving, human beings — it is an institution that founded hospices/hospitals for everyone, not just Christians, and, as larben has pointed out, educational institutions for everyone.
If you check out the history, for instance, of Toronto’s public health and educational institutions, almost without exception, you will find a Christian religious foundation.
Although I agree with much of ET’s argument about elites keeping “the peasant class” down, I’m not clear that her assertion that “the Islamic world has no choice but to change its economic and political infrastructure [my emphasis] is realistic or reliable. It seems more to be wishful thinking on her part.
The Islamic world most definitely does have a choice — as we all do — and it remains to be seen whether or not they will be willing to make changes. It’s quite possible that the Muslims in the ME could decide to continue as they are, with total chaos ensuing, in which case, we’re all in deep trouble — which we are at present, because the ME is in chaos their mayhem is negatively affecting the whole world — especially as they are importing it to the West.
TJ – I wrote that sentence about PHDs. I meant arts and humanities degrees; not science degrees. And since I’m in the academic world – for many years – I can assure you of the many who fit my description of both ignorance and arrogance in the degree world.
Karl – no, I disagree that it was the “Black Death’ that caused the emergence of a middle class. The definition of a middle class is not that they earn wages; the definition is that they are able to start up independent private businesses. And no, you can’t have someone free to work on a farm or be a trader until you have an economy that functions within market trade!
Patsplace – and exactly how is an economically and militarily weak nation going to demand tribute?
Dirtman- the reason for the necessary change from a two-class to a three-class is because the two-class economic mode, which prevents the formation of a middle class private business economy…can’t sustain the population. It’s irrelevant who the Rulers of this two-class system are; it’s the economic mode that is the real problem.
Alex – yes, a first step in trying to prevent change is to reduce the population to the carrying level of the current economic mode. This can be ‘unconscious’ of course. So poor nutrition, plagues, diseases..will work for a short time. Wars do the same. Even conscious efforts will do it – and most non-industrial ancient tribes worked to keep their populations below the critical threshold. But as you also point out, this can’t be maintained. In Europe, the richest biome on the planet, the population rises eventually necessitated a change in economic and political modes – and the same is occuring in the ME, due not to a rich agricultural biome but oil!
Ella – the 1979 Iranian ‘revolution’ merely exchanged one set of elite Rulers of a two-class system for another. It was not a revolution and did nothing for deep structural change in the economy. The population increase of the time had not moved beyond the carrying capacity of its economy. What is going on now with the movement of the people for freedom IS a symptom of an inadequate economy.
You state that the lower class ‘found’ they could own the means of production’. Really? How did they find that they could they own it? The land? The energy sources? You are ignoring that the means of production had to change from local agriculture to market production of goods and services.
Tyranny of the masses? How? These nations also developed constraints to whim by the rule of law.
The Russian (and Chinese) Revolutions were to move peasant, local, agricultural economies into industrial economies. It took the West 400 plus years to do this – and these Eastern Revolutions did it in one generation. That’s why they are defined as ‘revolutions’ and not developments.
The ‘mode’ of so rapidly destroying an old economic infrastructure and setting up a new one was by totalitarianism. Communism. Communism like all utopian ideologies (socialism, fascism) dreams of a perfect society and is always two-class. However, both the Russians and the Chinese realize that such an economic mode can’t sustain the populations. They’ve both had to move into market capitalism of private businesses. Democracy is inevitable.
There is no such thing as ‘western democracy’. There is only democracy. Period. Democracy is a political mode that will necessarily emerge in an economic mode based around individual private small to medium businesses in a market economy. Democracy empowers this economic middle class.
No, the problems in Europe with riots in the streets are about the ‘entitled to my entitlements’ population resisting the socialist economy.
What has developed over the post WWII years after strong economic growth was a removal of more and more of the population from the wealth producing sector: students, early retirement, tax evasions, welfare population, minimum wages, migrant workers.
And a reduction of the wealth-producing capacities of the middle class, of independent small and medium size businesses by govt taxes and control.
This is unsustainable and eventually, a critical threshold has been reached where the wealth producing sector can’t sustain the consumer sector of the population. That’s what’s going on in these parts of the world.
ping – the arts and humanities grads are part of a two-class infrastructure. And socialism did not ‘bring us out of the dark ages’ – a totally meaningless sentence.
And, as nomdeblog points out, these people are not wealth-producers. That’s vital; how does a society produce wealth? Not by its bureaucracy. Not by a socialist control of resources.
batb – with regard to the Church, I am not talking about the Christian religion nor about its duties towards its followers but about the emergence of the ‘church’ as a political and economic power, very like a monarchy, in the period from about the 5th to 16th century. This power fought the other ‘titled rulers’, the nobles and monarchs for control of the European economies.
As for the necessary transformation of the ME nations to free market capitalism, a middle class and democracy, I say it’s inevitable because of: the size of their populations and the inability of a statist two-class economic mode to sustain this size of population.
This has nothing to do with free will choice of the individual; many prefer the security of the ‘old way of life’; many do not want the risks within a free market middle class economy. After all, being taken care of by fate, god or the state is often emotionally prerable to having to rely on oneself.
What I mean by ‘no choice’ is that IF these populations do not move into a sustainable economic mode, THEN…they will move into a dependent state. This could mean several things:
– reduction of nutrition…leads to massive famines, diseases
– wars. Problam: they cannot economically manage to carry out any sustainable wars. They will thus move into internal fighting;
– dependency on the rest of the world. Won’t work; the rest of the world, which is over-socialized, can’t sustain both their own AND the massive ME populations.
So- changing their economic mode..and thus their political mode..is actually the best solution. And, what makes it easier to occur – faster than it did in the West – is modern electronic communication systems. They can see what other lifestyles exixt; it’s not hypothetical as it was in the 15th century in Europe.
It must be wonderful to be an anthropologist. You can look at the world through marxist/materialist eyes and apply any cause to any situation without evidence and have the slobbering masses eating out of your hand.
Democracy no more ‘naturally’ springs into being thanks to a rich environment than life spontaneously sprang into being in a mud puddle. The native state of mankind is that of an elite ruling the masses. Only when there springs to mind that there should, for what ever reason, be equality of mankind does democracy even begin to emerge and even then there is ultimately an elite ruling the masses and eventually that elite has destroyed the democracy that gave it birth. The present outbreak of democracy is traceable to the Christian ideal of the priesthood of the believers and St Paul’s statement that faith in God removes all social, ethnic status. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”.
ET, thanks for your response — and, Joe, thanks for yours.
I suspect that the Muslims’ moving into a dependent state, meaning famines, disease, wars, and dependency on the rest of the world, is the likeliest scenario for the reasons that Joe gives: Democracy doesn’t spontaneously spring into being from a stagnant (Islamist) mud puddle.
“The two-tiered socialist system is, actually, the most basic sociopolitical system on Earth. It’s essentially tribal,”
Correct. So is any form of collectivism.Collectivist systems only work in small family or tribal groups because you do not mind existing solely for the collective when it is truly all related.When the collective state is you direct relatives, working for the state is almost the same as working for your own benefit.
However, when a society matures, specializes and expands and there are numerous productive self-reliant INDIVIDUALS unrelated to each other, free market laisez faire economics and free democratic republican socio-political structures serve the needs of the most individuals while keeping tribal combative bloodshed over power, land and resources at a minimum.
Not being collectivist peasants, or from tribal society, academics like Marx and Engles believed tribal collectivism could be adapted to large industrial societies. The past 100 years has proven this to be a grossly errant theory. When transferring the powers given tribal elders to a small leadership cabal of a collective super state, the result of concentrating such power has always been despotic austerity and nation-killing political corruption.
Had Marx and Engles consulted a behavioral scientist or social archeologist about the limitations of oligarchic collectivism, we may have escaped the last 100 years of trauma and 30 million lost lives defeating such a bad idea.
joe – heh, so now I’m a marxist? Shows what little you know of marxism; i.e., you know zilch about marxism. Don’t you know that marxism rejects the middle class? Don’t you know that it rejects private enterprise and individual wealth production? sheesh.
No, my analysis is based on material reality..and no, ‘materialism and material reality’ are not the same thing.
By ‘material reality’ I mean that all living organisms, as material entities, live within a material environment. Do you know what ‘material’ means?
In the case of our species, we live within a particular ecological biome; this means that we must economically adapt to the material realities of that biome. Arable soil, climate, water, resources, plant and animal types etc.
This then, in turn, defines the size of our population. And, this size defines how we organize ourselves as a society; politically. Our species, by the way, must live within a group; that’s because our knowledge is not genetically but socially stored and learned.
Are you aware of these non-marxist facts about reality?
Second – it’s absolutely untrue that ‘the native state of mankind is an elite ruling the masses’. Wrong again, joe.
No, the earliest and most wide-ranging form of sociopolitical organization is what is known as the Hunting and Gathering Band. And there are no leaders! I’ll bet you didn’t know that.
It’s a small population living as a group, making consensual decisions. It can only support about 30 people in a particular group. I’d suggest some books for you to enlarge your knowledge but I doubt that you would read them; you don’t seem interested in facts.
The ‘ruler ruling the masses’, i.e., a two-class societal structure only emerged when agricultural economies emerged on this planet. There is no consensus on why agriculture developed; it was about 10,000 years ago (and our species has been around for about 100,000 years! All hunting and gathering!).
But when it developed, it enabled larger populations. And these larger populations organized within a two-class infrastructure. That’s tribalism, where one clan has the authority to rule over the other clans. It provides stability and security.
No, democracy has nothing to do with any religious ideology. After all, you are suggesting that a particular political mode of organization ‘sprang up’ in someone’s mind due to a Christian idea..and don’t bother to explain how that idea itself emerged and was accepted!
Certainly, Christianity emerged in a changing economy and was indeed focused, unlike the other religious beliefs of the time (animism, polytheism, judaism) on the individual rather than the collective. This is important; Christianity is based around the individual will; not the collective will. And that was a monumental change.
But what was going on that such an ideology emerged and took root? It was the changing population size and resultant economic mode..and resultant political changes.
The Roman expansion of control over Europe and the ME, with their introduction of roads, irrigation and water supplies, trade and military security, currency, linked towns etc..meant that a networked trade economy emerged. This meant that the old previously isolated peoples had to collaborate, be neighbours. It meant that you had to free yourself from group ideologies and, as an individual, get along with different peoples.
That’s the basis of Christianity. And it has nothing to do with democracy but about individual self-responsibility, the use of reason, making responsible choices and..getting along with others.
Democracy is a political mode and emerges to give power to a middle class economy. These people are indeed, as are Christians, operating as free individuals, and must get along with ‘others’. But, the two are not necessarily linked – and you don’t need to be religious or have ‘faith in god’ to be democratic.
The essay might meet the sterile academia’s requirements but it lacks any knowledge of “Human factors”. Muslims in Muslim nations are brainwashed from birth, their idea of freedom is Sharia Law. Democracy is an affront to their beliefs, there is going to be a globally food shortage in the next 12 months and millions of poor Muslims are going to starve to death that would by ET’s third class group.
occam – thanks; very nice comments.
Nice to have ET back. It’s been a while. TJ I have worked with some PhDs that exceeded that description. They had all the faults listed plus a few. We were told to hire 3 PhDs and we did. Organizational requirements so they did not have to be competent but two weren’t even close. For one it was his first real job and he was in his late forties early fifties.
“Karl – no, I disagree that it was the “Black Death’ that caused the emergence of a middle class. The definition of a middle class is not that they earn wages; the definition is that they are able to start up independent private businesses. And no, you can’t have someone free to work on a farm or be a trader until you have an economy that functions within market trade!”
But I never said that the Black Death caused the emergence of the middle class. The middle class had been emerging though the 11th and 12th centuries. And they were being “put in their place” more or less effectively. But the labour shortages caused by the Black Death allowed greater social mobility.
I agree with many of your points, but I do not agree that it is always population growth which leads to the changes you describe. How do you contend with the fact that the pace of social change in Europe increased dramatically AFTER the black death, when Europe lost 30% of its population? What do you do with the fact that the Yeoman farmer came into his own AFTER the Black Death? What do you do with the fact that AFTER the Black Death in England laws were passed which tried to reduce wages for farm labourers back to pre-plague levels? Laws which were unenforceable and ignored, because landowners faced with the prospects of letting their crops rot in the field, and so paid what the workers demanded. And in the years that followed, many former serfs became tenant farmers, which increased their control over their business. And, (as I said before) many of these tenant farmers went on to purchase their land as the manorial system of the Middle Ages collapsed.
To be sure, all of this social change was in the cauldron before the Black Death came. But most historians agree that the Black Death was the fire which finally put the kettle to boil.
As for the Islamic World: Do they have no choice but to change? People always have choice. I wonder that it might take some great calamity for real change to come.
“One class, the anointed, are deemed by birth, education etc. to be Guardians, Rulers, Wise Men…”
Moral of the story: you morons should have finished high school.
ET wrote: “No, the earliest and most wide-ranging form of sociopolitical organization is what is known as the Hunting and Gathering Band. And there are no leaders! I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”
ummmmm ….. no. That is not even close to accurate. Hunter/Gatherer societies had leaders. Ever heard of the “Chief”? the “Big Man”? Shaman? Theuy organized themselves differently, but they did organize themselves under leaders.
BTW, ET, you don’t have a PhD in a science. You have one in anthro, probably the silliest and least-defensible “discipline,” one with virtually no empirical analysis, and that makes its students half-assed amateur historians, half-assed amateur economists, half-assed amateur political scientists, half-assed amateur sociologists. And if you wanted to be around better academics, you should have taught at a better school.
“The present outbreak of democracy is traceable to the Christian ideal of the priesthood of the believers and St Paul’s statement that faith in God removes all social, ethnic status.”
lol. Honestly, I think this is 90% of the reason I come to SDA. You just don’t get these clowns anywhere else!
“Certainly, Christianity emerged in a changing economy and was indeed focused, unlike the other religious beliefs of the time (animism, polytheism, Judaism) on the individual rather than the collective. This is important; Christianity is based around the individual will; not the collective will.”
ET is that why Jews tend to be progressive? And capitalism seems to have historically “sprung” from Christianity? Ergo Max Weber and his book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
The other thing that might have had influence is that as society moved from hunter gatherer to tribalism to an agricultural society that trades surplus crops, that it was the Christian idea of tolerance to other religions (because that was what was economically necessary to make things commercially viable) that caught on. Perhaps the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity because it was a tolerant culture that worked better than others that excluded.
Can an argument be made that economics drives religion and not the other way around? Because if Constantine hadn’t converted based on his observation that Christianity is better for the economy, than the growth of Christianity might have been stunted.
Alex if I had a head like yours I’d pop it before it festers. The problem with you materialists is that you are completely lacking a vital dimension. Watching you and ET spout off is like watching a two dimensional cartoon in a three dimensional world. Not everything is reducible to materialistic causes. Ruling out religion as a modifier of social outcome despite overwhelming evidence is like saying climate change is caused solely by mankind. Each underlying philosophy produces its own kind of society. The voodoo in Haiti produces the poverty you see there. The animism in some parts of Africa produces the kind of society you see over there. Islam produces a type of society, Marxism/materialism/scientism produces a type of society. Evangelical Christianity produces a type of society, Catholic Christianity produces a type of society. As I have too often quoted, “Man does not live by bread alone”. Yes materialism has a role to play in the formation of a society but it is not the sole determinant of said society’s formation. Far more important is how individuals in that society view themselves in relation to the world around them, other people with whom they interact and the relationship they have with their deity. If I believe you and I are equal because we both are under the same god I will treat you different than if I believe that the god we are under has mandated me to rule over you.
karl – the ‘chief’, Big Man’ and Shaman are not found in Hunting-Gathering societies but in tribal societies that are based in an economic mode that enables a larger population.
‘Chief’ is a common term’ for both pastoral nomadic economies and horticultural economies as is shaman..’Big Man’ is a common term used in swidden or wet horticultural economies.
Again, the hunting/gathering societies have no leaders. I’d suggest reading Richard Lee’s works on the San/Dobe !Kung.
karl – the changes that you describe take place over many generations. As I said, it took over 400 years for the West to move from a two-class to three-class economic mode. You are right; the changes were ongoing in the 11th, 12th centuries. I don’t agree that a singular event, even one as decimating as the Black Death would tip the scale unless that scale had already reached the tipping point. Any ‘event’ would then break stability but the focus has to be on the scale’s gradual slope not the particular ‘flick of the switch’. (I think there are too many metaphors in that example!)
And yes, in the ME, it might take some great calamity to ‘flick the switch’ there as well. You are right.
nomdeblog – yes, economics drives religion not the other way around. Specifically, the ideology is the ‘surface level’ while the economic mode is the deep infrastructure. We are more conscious of the surface level (and that doesn’t mean superficial!) and tend to focus on our beliefs but we can’t ignore the deep infrastructures.
Yes, Christianity is a unique religion in that it specifically focuses on the individual rather than the group, that it requires you to choose the religion rather than be ‘born into it’; that it asserts that the individual has free will and makes free choices and that the individual must ‘love they neighbour’. All of that functions within an economic mode that is based on free markets and trade with others. So – Constantine chose Christianity for its ideological robustness in a market economy.
Hayek said something similar, I think it was in “The Road to Serfdom”. Trying to run a society of millions with the tribal morality that works for a hundred fails because it just doesn’t scale. Ask yourself “does the Government love me?”
The only thing that does work is a self organizing system where the decisions are made by the people who are affected – local democracy and a free market.
It would be nice if these socialist Guardians would actually read Plato’s Republic instead of relying on the Cliff’s Notes summaries. One uncomfortable section in book 5 seems to be roundly ignored by them:
“…if our rulers and their auxiliaries are to be worthy
of the name which they bear, there must be willingness to obey in the
one and the power of command in the other; the guardians must themselves
obey the laws, and they must also imitate the spirit of them in any
details which are entrusted to their care.”
Then there’s this description of the Guardian that no modern Guardian could bear to hear:
“Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to
realize our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should have
any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither
should they have a private house or store closed against any one who has
a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are required
by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; they should
agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet
the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go to mess and live
together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them
that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they have
therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not
to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner
metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is
undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle
silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear them, or
drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and they will be the
saviours of the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands
or moneys of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen
instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other
citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against,
they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than
of external enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the
rest of the State, will be at hand.
Imagine Strauss-Kahn or Ted Kennedy having to endure such a life. They would quickly sour on the idea of “public service.”
Generally, a nice piece. However, what the author, Popper and many others never seem to appreciate is that Plato’s whole point about the “Philosopher King”, and thereby elites, was that such a thing was impossible and unreasonable to want.
Popper did not have nice things to say about Plato, here’s a few:
“I believe that Plato’s political programme, far from being morally superior to totalitarianism, is fundamentally identical with it.”
________________________________________
“Why did Plato claim, in the Republic, that justice meant inequality if in general usage, it meant equality? To me the only likely reply seems to be that he wanted to make propaganda for his totalitarian state by persuading the people that it was the ‘just’ state.”
________________________________________
“What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most – that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato’s kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman – the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.”
ET writes, “economics drives religion not the other way around . . . Yes, Christianity is a unique religion in that it specifically focuses on the individual rather than the group, that it requires you to choose the religion rather than be ‘born into it’; that it asserts that the individual has free will and makes free choices and that the individual must ‘love they neighbour’. All of that functions within an economic mode that is based on free markets and trade with others. So – Constantine chose Christianity for its ideological robustness in a market economy.”
Two points of clarification: Re “economics drives religion not the other way around”: the first Christian Church was comprised of Jews in a far-flung corner of the Roman Empire, who believed in the resurrection of Jesus, whom they believed to be both God and man. I don’t believe the beginning of the Christian Church had much to do with economics. Re the individual and the group: the Church is “the Body of Christ”, “the Priesthood of all Believers”, “a Cloud of Witnesses”, “the Company of Saints”, etc., etc., etc. Yes, in Christianity the individual is of inestimable value. However, there is no Christian without the community and no community without the individual Christian: they are inextricable.
(Joe @ 11:53. Well said. Thanks.)