Category: class

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ARISTOCRACY

When aristocracy as such became discredited, people still found in themselves a desire, acknowledged or not, to look down on somebody.  It is the old sin of pride.  Just because aristocracy is abolished or muted does not mean its proud and ancient desires disappear.  If they cannot achieve satisfaction in the old political structures, they shall find new ways.

And so, much of the 19th to 21st centuries’ opposition to “modernity,” however defined, may owe some of its existence to the old desire to feel superior. The aristocrat of the spirit looks down on the NOW in the name of the PAST.  He cannot, perhaps even in his own eyes, despise openly in the name of “blood,” or even class, and maintain credibility.  But he can cook up some theory—even one which may have considerable truth in it—wherein he stands by the past over and against the present.  Thus, he can despise all and sundry about him as the benighted commoners in effect, those who do not understand or appreciate the old ways.  This is a source of tremendous satisfaction.  The other type of snob, the one who despises the past in the name of the present, must be content to despise the dead.  It is much harder in this situation to pose as the brave knight living in enemy territory but soldiering on nonetheless.  To cast one’s attack broadly against “modernity” can be to gloat in one’s superiority in the face of an enemy whose power outstrips one’s own (while, in effect, living in no greater danger than anyone else); this is more gratifying to the ego than to gloat over a helpless corpse.

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CELEBRITIES AND ARISTOCRATS

Perhaps in some ways celebrities are what has replaced aristocrats in a largely republican world (in the non-American sense of the word “republican”).  But celebrity is more cleverly dishonest than is aristocracy.  Aristocrats claim superiority as a function of birth.  This claim is now easy to see through.  But celebrities claim superiority as a function of earned worthiness.  What confounds the rejection of the power of celebrity is that from time to time, unlike in aristocracy, a given celebrity may well have earned some measure of his or her exalted regard.  Aristocrats, conversely, are always aristocrats only because of birth, no matter how worthy some amongst them may be.  Aristocracy can be rejected as nonsense across the board, for no aristocrat is superior by right of birth.  The needed annihilation of celebrity as such is handicapped by the occasional truth of this or that celebrity’s perceived earned superiority.

One can therefor reject aristocracy untainted by one’s own personal envy, self-loathing, or other dubious motive.  To reject celebrity in the same sweeping manner is much more difficult if one is wary of one’s motivations.

This is all the more tragic since the motivations of a given individual hostile to the idea of celebrity as such are not relevant to the overall need to annihilate the deceit and injustice of celebrity.  But we doubt ourselves and hesitate.  And for some, becoming a celebrity may be a genuine (if unlikely to be fulfilled) hope.  The same is not true of aristocracy since it is decided at birth whether one will ever be a member.

What I have said here about celebrity is also similar with regard to plutocracy under capitalism.

Could this be the secret of Donald Trump’s power? the persistence of his fan base and the incredible leniency shown him despite whatever he does?  There are many business people who are not celebrities.  There are many celebrities who are not business people or even particularly rich.  But Trump is a businessman, and a celebrity.  Nobody in the culture is more thoroughly both than he, and nobody more thoroughly combines the most odious capacities of both: the imperious sense of entitlement, of being the special case that the worst celebrities display; the parasitical nature of capitalists at their worst, who produce nothing of value and are instead vampires of money.

The combination of capitalist and celebrity makes for the most dangerous sort of spiritual vampire.

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THE POLITICS OF CHAPTERS BOOKSTORE

I was in a Chapters bookstore not long ago and noticed a problem: no, I am not talking about the fact that what used to be a bookstore with a large number of gift items has now turned into a gift store with a large number of books.

I am talking about an interesting section of books called “Culture and community.”  This was divided into four parts with the following labels: “Black Voices,” “Gender,” “LGBTQ+,” and “Indigenous.”

It is this sort of thing that makes conservatives bleat that liberals run everything.  But this is like complaining women run the world because there is a preponderance of females leading the feminist movement.

No, the real problem is there is no section on class.  And this, briefly, is the problem with much progressive politics.

The supposed liberal hegemony that conservatives complain about is nothing which in fact threatens them very much.  What is truly thrust into the shadows, as if there is a quiet understanding amongst all good people that the neocons are right in saying Marx and everything connected to him is both outdated and hopelessly wrong, is a class-based understanding of our current situations.

I would not simplify history in the manner of a vulgar Marxism and reduce it to a mere playing out of property relations.  But whereas there is little or no inherent power accruing to race, gender, sex, or sexual orientation, there is power inherent in the control or ownership of the means of production.  In other words, such power as men have had over women, for example, has been based not so much on some inherent power in being a male, as that men have managed to have more property rights than women in many times and places.

It would be a mistake to get into a competition between a class-based analysis and these other types of analysis.  In struggling with each other, advocates of all kinds for oppressed and marginalized people would only weaken each other and strengthen the oppressors.  So my point is not to decrease the attention paid to current ways of understanding injustice.  Rather, I would attach an understanding of class to these issues.

For is not class power central, perhaps even essential, in the oppression of various groups?  Consider some of the following observations.

A key factor in the oppression of women, historically, has been in making it difficult or impossible for them to own property.  Materially, they have been dependent on fathers and husbands.  In societies where they can get the same jobs as men, they often get less pay.  In other words, control of the means of production is restricted in their case.

Indigenous people in North America were opened to oppression largely by losing their land: that is, their means of production.  In the late 19th century the buffalo of Western Canada were opened up to massive over hunting by white people, causing literal starvation amongst the indigenous people of that region.

A common incentive for sexual and gender nonconformists of all types to stay in the closet is fear of job loss or harassment on the job.  Yet again, a threat to one’s means of production (keep in mind that employees do not own the means of production to begin with) is a key factor in maintaining injustice.

African people not only lost control of their means of production when removed from their land and forcibly exiled: they could not own property in North America and became literally the means of production for others in becoming slaves.