December, 1844. — The men who create History have not time to write it — I at least had none.
I have called the period between the years 1810 and 1815 the most important, because it includes the epoch in which Napoleon’s attempt to establish a new order of things was overthrown; through which overthrow Europe fell under the natural consequences of the French Revolution — consequences which are only now beginning to develop themselves.
Metternich, Volume III page 335
September 9, 1819. — I never come to Prague without thinking I hear midnight strike. Six years ago, at that hour, I dipped my pen to declare war with the man of the century — the Man of St. Helena — to kindle the beacon which was the signal for 100,000 men of the allied troops to cross the frontier.
August 29, 1823. — There was but one single man in France who understood how to master the Revolution, and that man was Bonaparte. The King’s Government inherited from him, not the Revolution, but the counter-Revolution, and they have not known how to make use of this inheritance.
His heroes were Alexander, Caesar, and, above all, Charlemagne. He was singularly occupied with his claim to be the successor of Charlemagne by right and title.
August 27, 1830. — ‘ It appears to me,’ said I to the General, ‘ that you have not grasped the nature and real meaning of my words : I will proceed to make them more clear.
‘ I have known you as one of the most zealous adherents of the man who was, beyond all question, the prototype of power. Of two alternatives I can only admit one ; either the character of Mgr. le Duc d’ Orleans comes up to that of Napoleon in strength, or else falls below it, for to exceed it seems to me beyond the bounds of nature. Now, intimately acquainted as you were with Napoleon, do you believe that, placed in the position of the present Government, he would have considered himself in possession of the requisite means for governing, or, what comes to the same thing, would have considered himself in a condition to assure his throne and the maintenance of internal tranquillity in France? Can that which Napoleon would not have recognised as sufficient be justly looked upon by the new Government as capable of affording it secure pledges of existence?’
To this question General Belliard made the only reply open to him. He was silent, and after a moment’s reflection said to me : ‘ Things are changed, Prince ; France is no longer the France of the past, and she, must be governed by new methods.’
Beyond the confines of France, Governments had no other care than to withstand the political encroachments of the conqueror who had placed the Imperial crown on his head. The conflict between the different systems of government really existed only in France. Raised by the Revolution to the summit of power, Napoleon endeavoured to prop up by monarchical institutions the throne he had made for himself. The destructive parties, having to do with a man equally great as a statesman and as a general, who knew his country and the spirit of the nation better than any who ever guided the destinies of France, were above all anxious to save from the wreck of their works all they could secure from the encroachments of the Imperial power. These efforts were impotent ; but they were not the less worthy of observation.
Metternich, Volume IV page 436
February 11, 1828. — The crisis has arrived, and as I am an old practitioner in the maladies of the social body, I am not more alarmed than is necessary. What I cannot do is to know or predict how things will go: Certain it is that the crisis may turn against the folly of the age which has caused it; and the country that is most seriously ill is France, and France is also the country whose future is the least promising. A country where all the moral elements are extinct cannot help itself, and Providence alone knows what will become of this Babylon.
March 23, 1823 . — Now, to recognise a Government one must know first of all know what it is; and to enter into negotiations with it one must have recognised it. It is, therefore, necessary that we should know first of all what the Government will be.
The 20th century has been the century of scientific dictatorship. In that century three scientific ideologies contested each other for domination. On the extreme right scientific despotism was embodied by the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler, Communism was embodied by Josef Stalin. But the third, which would emerge victorious after the Cold War and which is the only surviving ideology of the three, was Leftist, but not Communist. It goes by the name of Progressivism in America, Fabian Socialism in Britain, and Suprationalism in Continental Europe.
Between Nazism, Communism, and Progressivism, the bureaucratic dictatorship of the latter is the last remaining but least understood. The history and nature of Communism is very well documented however much this vast documentation is ignored or downplayed. Nazism could not be more infamous. But Progressivism is barely understood; we will remove the fog that surrounds it and expose it as a Liberal political entity very distinct from Communism.
To deal with Progressivism one must first of all know what it is.
This goal has proven surprisingly elusive. Its elusiveness is no minor reason behind the failure of the Right to contest a Left whose characteristics are poorly defined.
To a considerable extent this confusion arises from uncertainty over whether Western Leftists are, or not, classic Soviet Communists. An affirmative or negative answer will suggest what they are; and what they are will determine what approach should be taken to counter them. A negative conclusion would be particularly significant. In that case current assumptions that Progressives are Communists must change: If we are being tyrannized by something that is not Communist, what is it?
The Leftists of our time were once referred to by Metternich as Boutique Liberalés; in America they are now referred to as limousine liberals; in Europe, champagne socialists. These labels describe their class well enough, but say nothing about their ideology nor how their ideology relates to Marxism. Are American Progressives – and their analogues, British Fabian Socialists and European Union Supranationalists – equivalent to Mao, Stalin, the Kim dynasty, Kruschev, and Lenin?
Of the terms proposed to mark the ideological boundary separating the Progressive West from the Cold War East, e.g, Globalism and Cultural Marxism, none are satisfactory.
‘Globalism’ cannot be the correct term because the scope of revolution sought by Soviet Russia was as global in nature as are the ambitions of Western “Globalists”.
Cultural Marxism fails in its role of distinguisher by failing to distinguish: If Western Leftists are Cultural Marxists and Eastern bloc leftists were not Cultural Marxists, then what to make of Eastern bloc projects such as Mao’s Cultural Revolution? Was cultural Maoism cultural conservatism? Cultural libertarianism? If it was anything besides radical cultural Leftism it would come as news to Chairman Mao. It would be met with such incredulity that anyone who suggested his cultural initiatives were conservative in any way would have guaranteed for themselves a ticket to a Maoist “re-education center” where they would be taught Mao is not in fact Chiang Kaishek.
Soviet era Communists were also “Cultural Marxists”; as a definition it is useless because it defines nothing.
But if the difference has not been adequately expressed, there lingers the sense of a qualitative divide between Western and Eastern Liberalism.
Is what is suggested by intuition real or a false signal?
By any standard Mao was a “Cultural Marxist”. And yet he would be as amazed – perhaps more amazed – by a Progressive of today who insisted there are at least 52 genders as he would if he met a space alien.
And that surprise would be far from the only one. Western Progressives have brought on catastrophes of an unprecedented nature, unheard of in Communist states, or any other kind of pre-New Deal state; this despite history having no shortage of disasters. There was once the catastrophe known to the Romans as Galba. He was a primordial Barracks Emperor who was doomed the moment he forget the first rule of all Barrack Emperors no matter how primitive or advanced – the barracks are to be paid on time, in full, with interest.
Though his demise was gruesome, the mutiny of his soldiers was not without historical parallels. In the annals of governmental failures, however, the record of Western Liberalism is strewn with failures without parallel.
When a fish begins walking on land with legs and breathes in air the time has probably come for that fish to be classified as something other than a fish. Likewise, we political taxonomers must be open to reclassification whenever we encounter an exotic political organism one can make neither Clade nor Genera of; and no political organism was ever as peculiar and exotic as Progressivism.
What is it that separates the Communist from the Progressive?
We find a clue to the answer in an excerpt from George Orwell’s 1937 work The Road to Wigan Pier:
The fact is that Socialism, in the form in which it is now presented, appeals chiefly to unsatisfactory or even inhuman types. On the one hand you have the warm-hearted un-thinking Socialist, the typical working-class Socialist, who only wants to abolish poverty and does not always grasp what this implies. On the other hand, you have the intellectual, book-trained Socialist, who understands that it is necessary to throw our present civilization down the sink and is quite willing to do so. And this type is drawn, to begin with, entirely from the middle class, and from a rootless town-bred section of the middle class at that. Still more unfortunately, it includes–so much so that to an outsider it even appears to be composed of–the kind of people I have been discussing; the foaming denouncers of the bourgeoisie, and the more-water-iri-your-beer reformers of whom Shaw is the prototype, and the astute young social-literary climbers who are Communists now, as they will be Fascists five years hence, because it is all the go, and all that dreary tribe of high-minded’ women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come nocking towards the smell of ‘progress’ like bluebottles to a dead cat. The ordinary decent person, who is in sympathy with the essential aims of Socialism, is given the impression that there is no room for his kind in any Socialist party that means business. Worse, he is driven to the cynical conclusion that Socialism is a kind of doom which is probably coming but must be staved off as long as possible. Of course, as I have suggested already, it is not strictly fair to judge a movement by its adherents; but the point is that people invariably do so, and that the popular conception of Socialism is coloured by the conception of a Socialist as a dull or disagreeable person. ‘Socialism’ is pictured as a state of affairs in which our more vocal Socialists would feel thoroughly at home. This does great harm to the cause. The ordinary man may not flinch from a dictatorship of the proletariat, if you offer it tactfully; offer him a dictatorship of the prigs, and he gets ready to fight.
In this attempt by Orwell to understand why the working class (and, as he as a sympathizer of Socialism admits, himself) had misgivings about what he terms ‘prig’ Socialism, Orwell, perhaps without then realizing it, identifies the characteristic that above all qualifies ‘prig’ Socialism as an entirely different category of Leftism from ‘prole’ Socialism – Class.
In the century of scientific dictatorship there have been two types of Left: One was Communism; the second was and is Technocracy; and the treatment of class in their respective ideological end states is why Communism and Technocracy are not the same.
Communism and Technocracy are both Liberal but different types of Liberalism just as Metternich and Coolidge were both Conservative but different types of Conservative. Both Technocracy and Communism meet the broad definition of Liberalism Metternich in 1820 put before Tsar Alexander I which defines liberal man as presumptive man:
Religion, morality, legislation, economy, politics, administration, all have become common and accessible to everyone. Knowledge seems to come by inspiration ; experience has no value for the presumptuous man ; faith is nothing to him ; he substitutes for it a pretended individual conviction, and to arrive at this conviction dispenses with all inquiry and with all study ; for these means appear too trivial to a mind which believes itself strong enough to embrace at one glance all questions and all facts. Laws have no value for him, because he has not contributed to make them, and it would be beneath a man of his parts to recognise the limits traced by rude and ignorant generations. Power resides in himself; why should he submit himself to that which was only useful for the man deprived of light and knowledge ? That which, according to him, was required in an age of weakness cannot be suitable in an age of reason and vigour, amounting to universal perfection, which the German innovators designate by the idea, absurd in itself, of the Emancipation of the People ! Morality itself he does not attack openly, for without it he could not be sure for a single instant of his own existence ; but he interprets its essence after his own fashion, and allows every other person to do so likewise, provided that other person neither kills nor robs him.
In thus tracing the character of the presumptuous man, we believe we have traced that of the society of the day, composed of like elements, if the denomination of society is applicable to an order of things which only tends in principle towards individualising all the elements of which society is composed. Presumption makes every man the guide of his own belief, the arbiter of laws according to which he is pleased to govern himself, or to allow some one else to govern him and his neighbours ; it makes him, in short, the sole judge of his own faith, his own actions, and the principles according to which he guides them.
In Communism the end of history is reached when the dictatorship of the proletariat brings about a worker’s paradise devoid of class, at which point the state withers and is then finally abolished.
In Technocracy – which is synonymous with Dictatorial Bureaucracy, Sociology, and Progressivism – the prole is faced with anything but paradise. For Technocracy the final state of civilization is a “scientific” government ruled by an unaccountable Brahmin class of priestly bureaucrats, sociologists, and scientists assembled from the middle and upper classes. Far from abolishing class, liberating the proletariat, and dissolving the state; Technocracy constructs a highly class stratified society with the sociology class at the pinnacle and all else, proles especially, nothing more than “conditioned” guinea pigs good only for social engineering experiments and to be disposed of on the pettiest of whims. The proles are not let anywhere near power; the state, which micromanages every detail of life for the citizenry, is preserved for eternity.
Because Communism raises the proles and Technocracy lowers them, they are not just different but fundamentally incompatible.
Indeed, eight decades since Orwell wrote about ‘prig’ Socialism it has now become obvious what was not obvious in Orwell’s time: The prigs wish to abolish the proletariat. Among the means to accomplish their abolition are the major prig initiatives of Third World immigration and trade.
While Marx did hope the Capitalist powers would adopt free trade he did so only because he wanted those powers to discredit themselves further in the eyes of the workers when free trade failed.
For Liberal Progressives, who position themselves as the champions of the working class, to adopt free trade would be an entirely different matter to Marx. Because of their affection for Communism, as well as frequent use of working class rhetoric and Communist symbols, Marx would fear that the proles would instead become disillusioned with real Communist revolution thanks to the free trade deals of this imposter “Communism” calling itself Progressive. Instead of embracing worker revolution against Capitalism the workers would join forces with the bourgeois.
Certainly, when Communism once controlled a number of nation states industry was not allowed to be hollowed out by trade deals no matter how inefficient those industries were. Following Stalin’s example of industrial Autarky they strove to become self-sufficient and economically independent of Capitalist powers. The Communist view of trade is quite opposed to the view of Progressives, and Marx would be the first person to point this out.
This goal now made clear by the passage of time, Dictatorial Bureaucracy could well be defined as “Communism” for “Communists” who want to destroy the proletariat and govern a highly class stratified society led by high-priest sociologists.
Like Communism, the origins of Technocracy lie in the 19th century. As systems of government Technocracy like Proletarian Socialism has always been attractive to unsatisfactory and inhuman types; but those types attracted to Technocracy were especially more unsatisfactory and inhuman than others.
The Marx of the Bureaucrats was Auguste Comte. Comte was the founder of Sociology, the professional Bureaucracy, Positivism (which later in the 19th century became Progressivism), and Utopian Socialism. In the early 19th century he originally called Technocracy Positivism. His Positivism gradually evolved into the three major regional branches of Technocracy; what are today more commonly known as American Progressivism, British Fabian Socialism (or, as Orwell called it, ‘prig’ Socialism), and European Supranationalism. It was Comte’s Leftism that survived its two great scientific competitors, Nazism and Communism, and is today the ruling ideology of the West.
(We will note for the reader that some ideas attributed to Comte may have originated with his early mentor, the political theorist Saint-Simon. However there is a good deal of dispute and confusion about which ideas originated with Comte or Saint-Simon. Because of this doubt and because Comte greatly expanded on ideas often associated with Saint-Simon, this article assumes that all of the ideas attributed to Saint-Simon’s Utopian Socialism were Comte’s. None of this article’s arguments substantively change if Saint-Simon did play an important role in Comte’s early philosophy.)
Just as their planned historical end stages distinguish Technocracy from Communism, they also indicate what other non-Communist forms of Leftism belong in the same category with Communism; those are any Liberal ideologies that end with proletarian domination, Proletarian Socialism. Some of the numerous non-Communist Proletarian Socialist movements of Marx’s time include the Anarchism of Kropotkin and Bakunin, the Mutualism of Proudhon, and other radical Socialist politics such as those espoused by Josef Dietzgen.
They, like Communism, all qualify as Proletarian Socialism because their end states are proletarian.
The difference between them and Communism lay in their preferred means of bringing the proles to power. Kropotkin and Bakunin’s Anarchists had as their first step the destruction of the state before capitalism was abolished, whereas Communists wanted to first seize the means of production under the control of Capitalism.
As Engels described the difference in methods between Anarchism and Communism (Bolded excerpts mine) –
Engels argued that the ruling classes had build up the state for one reason and one reason alone: “for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage labor).” Ibid., 267. Reformists were wrong to believe that the state could be turned to any other purpose; the anarchists were even more wrong to believe that it could simply be abolished. The state was not the problem, capitalism was. A revolution in the mode of production would render the state obsolete.
These Proletarian Socialists fit the ideal “conception of a Socialist” in the minds of English proles. Proletarian Socialism was led either by proles, those who were a generation or two from proledom, or former aristocrats who joined the proletarian cause.
They were proles who looked like Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Alexander Schliapnakov, Pyotr Kropotkin, Viktor Nogin, “The Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky, Nestor Makhno, Alexei Rykov, Nikolai Krylenko, Lazar Kaganovich, Leon Kamenev, Nikolai Gorbunov, Mikhail Bakunin, Pavel Dybenko, Nikolai Bukharin, Ivan Teodorovich, Georgy Chicherin, and Lavrenti Beria.
These Proletarian radicals were ferocious in appearance and action, meat eating, often bearded, cis-gendered, white male, tobacco using, vodka drinking, and heavily armed proles or prole sympathizers; robust proles as capable of chopping down trees to build a hideout cabin as they were breaking rocks in Siberian labor camps.
By itself the physical difference between the Technocrats and Proletarian Socialists is so striking that one may also phrase their difference as – Eastern Bloc Communists were Proletarians who would inspire fear in a bar fight; Progressive Bureaucrats are “Communists” who would inspire laughter at their expense in a bar fight .
Comrades, Stalin was a prole.
His Progressive admirers in the West were not proles and therefore were never Communists; they were the weak characters Orwell as early as the 1930s already had trained his political radar on and who have only become weaker since.
If anyone still holds to the argument Progressivism is Communism they must show how Progressive “Communists” can be both anti-proletarian, and in favor of class stratification.
We see no way to reconcile tendencies so antithetical with Marxism; we doubt anyone can since Marx himself would rightly call Progressivism incompatible with Communism on class grounds.
We therefore proceed with this correct definition of Dictatorial Bureaucracy at hand to assess this ideology; its relationship to Communism without mistaking it for Communism; and chart the history of how August Comte overthrew Karl Marx.
The history of Technocracy and Proletarian Socialism begins with the aftermath of the French Revolution. At that time the immediate question before the Left was what course to take after the failures of that event.
Two answers to this question were offered. The first was the course of the Proletarian Socialists. As mentioned, in Proletarian Dictatorship the proletarians are the dictators; the most famous version of this type of dictatorship was that of Marx and Engels, and their end state was shared with all other non-Communist Proletarian Socialist movements.
But the direction Technocracy went in – a dictatorship of the bureaucrats – was very novel. We will address it after we first consider the relationship of the Jacobins t0 the radical proletarians who followed them.
Jacobin ideology was much like Proletarian Socialist ideology, the latter of which reached its culmination with the Russian Revolution. Just as Proletarian Socialist theory resembled Jacobin theory the path of the Russian Revolution closely followed that of its French predecessor, but for two exceptions: Industrial policy and class.
Industrial economics was ignored by the French Revolutionaries simply because heavy industry either did not exist in late 18th century France, or whatever industry there was did so in only a very embryonic form compared to what it would be by the second half of the 19th century. In the absence of factories to nationalize, the Jacobins instead nationalized the wealth of the Church and aristocracy with the instrument of l’Assignants. But if industry had existed, French radicals would have been sure to prelude the Bolsheviks by bringing those valuable assets into their hands.
Likewise, the class war tenets of the Jacobins and their allies in 1789 were not developed to the extent they would be by the Russian Revolution. In the then quasi-Medieval organization of French society the middle class was grouped with the working class under the Third Estate. It was because both the middle and working classes felt their rights were denied to them by the clergy and nobility that the middle class joined the proletariat in radicalism. The participation of the French middle class is one of the facets of the Revolution making it unique among all others because it is the only one that won the broad favor of the middle class.
After the middle class had been awarded greater property rights it never again as a class became radicalized. Correctly anticipating the middle class was pacified for good, Marx, Engels, and other Proletarian theorists like Kroptokin, Dzietgen and Proudhon specifically defined their Socialist movements as proletarian.
But for industrial and class theory, the First French Republic was very much the Soviet Union of the 18th century. This is true to such a degree that the French Revolution deserves to be labeled pre-Industrial Communism; its initiatives and subsequent consequences confirm this conclusion –
- The declaration of war by the First French Republic against all Monarchies and even against those nations with the most established histories of Republican government (Hamilton).
France professing eternal hatred to kings was to be the tutelary Genius of Republics—Holland, Genoa, Venice, the Swiss Cantons and the United States, are agonizing witnesses of her sincerity.
Of undone Holland no more need be said; nothing remains for us but to exercise tender sympathy in the unfortunate fate of a country which generosity lent its aid to establish our independence, and to deduce from her melancholy example an instructive lesson to repel with determined vigor, the mortal embrace of her seducer and destroyer.
Genoa, a speck on the Globe, for having at every hazard resisted the efforts of the enemies of France to force her from a neutral station, is recompensed with the subversion of her government, and the pillage of her wealth by compulsory and burthensome contributions.
Venice, is no more! In vain had she preserved a faithful neutrality, when perhaps her interposition might have inclined the scale of victory in Italy against France.
- The seizure of French farmland was naturally followed by food shortages echoing Stalin and Mao’s regimes.
- Economic mismanagement spurring Hyper-inflation worthy of Soviet Russia.
- Stalinistic show trials with accusations of different radicals being ‘counter-revolutionaries’.
- As described by Hamilton, from the beginning the French Revolutionaries, like the Russian Revolutionaries a century later, sought the violent elimination of Christianity.
Equal pains have been taken to deprave the morals as to extinguish the religion of the country, if indeed morality in a community can be separated from religion. It is among the singular and fantastic vagaries of the French revolution, that while the Duke of Brunswick was marching to Paris, a new law of divorce was passed; which makes it as easy for a husband to get rid of his wife, and a wife of her husband, as to discard a worn out habit. To complete the dissolution of those ties, which are the chief links of domestic and ultimately of social attachment, the Journals of the Convention record with guilty applause accusations preferred by children against the lives of their parents.
It is not necessary to heighten the picture by sketching the horrid groupe of proscriptions and murders which have made of France a den of pillage and slaughter; blackening with eternal opprobrium the very name of man.
The pious and the moral weep over these scenes as a sepulchre destined to entomb all they revere and esteem. The politician, who loves liberty, sees them with regret as a gulph that may swallow up the liberty to which he is devoted. He knows that morality overthrown (and morality must fall with religion) the terrors of despotism can alone curb the impetuous passions of man, and confine him within the bounds of social duty.
- Robespierre mused that at least 10 million French citizens out of a French population of 25 million would have to be executed to bring about his Utopia (Gentz)- we now know from the examples of Stalin and Mao that 10 million is just the opening bid.
In the year 1793 the thirst for destruction had gone so far, that it was at a loss for an object. The well known saying, that Robespierre meant to reduce the population of France by one half, had its foundation in the lively sense of the impossibility of satisfying the hitherto insatiate revolution, with any thing less, than such a hecatomb.
When there was nothing more left in the country to attack, the offensive frenzy turned itself against the neighbouring states, and finally declared war in solemn decrees against all civil society. It was certainly not the want of will in those, who then conducted this war, if Europe preserved any thing, besides “bread and iron.” Fortunately, no strength was great enough long to support such a will. The unavoidable exhaustion of the assailants, and not the power or the merit of the resistance made, saved society; and, finally, brought the work shops themselves, where the weapons for its destruction were forged, within its beneficent bonds again.
- In the wake of the Revolution, Metternich mentioned in 1834 there was a “dialectical school” already in existence.
Neither did he approve of man’s energies being wasted in attempts to penetrate the ultimate causes of things, since all that man can do, he said, is to observe and note phenomena. It was absurd to puzzle ourselves about the why and because (‘ das Wie und Warum’). I mentioned to him the difficulty I had experienced in arguing with professed disciples of the dialectical school. He said it was perfectly useless to dispute with such and that the only way was to silence them at once by some clinching method.
- Sexual libertinism – Hamilton above mentions easy divorce, Metternich records the rise of illegitimacy and out of wedlock births in Paris where the imposition of forcible de-Chistrianization was most thoroughly implemented. This all seems quaint by today’s standards (or lack thereof), but it was quite socially disruptive not just for the 18th century but up to the first half of 20th century.
The population of Paris may be roughly stated at 800,000. Of these 80,000 women and 10,000 men have no religion whatever.
More than a third of the population is unbaptised. The proper business for the religious at the present moment is to introduce religion. In the Quartier de St. Genevieve — where the lowest classes of the people live — it may be said that out of twenty households one consists of married people. At least half of them are not even to be found in any civil register. The only thing that can have any effect here is a religious mission like those sent among savages.
- Metternich states the ultimate source of The French Revolution was the Reformation. For the purposes of this article we will be focusing on the French Revolution since, if we look back to the Reformation, I suspect what we will see are simply Christian Jacobins.
My proposals are confined to the discipline of the universities, and do not at all touch the studies themselves—two questions which are very closely related, but yet in the present discussion necessarily separated. If we meddle with the latter, nothing at all will be done, and a letter from Müller sufficiently points this out to me, in which in speaking of this affair he observes ‘ that the disorder in the universities proceeds from the Reformation and that it can only be really set right by the recall of the Reformation.’ I deny neither the assertion nor its justice. But here on the Quirinal I cannot meddle with Dr. Martin Luther, and I hope that nevertheless some good will come of it without even touching its source— Protestantism. The last very excellent letter of Müller’s reminded me involuntarily of Golowkin’s proposition for the investigation of ‘ Causes primitives de la révolution française.’
Robespierre would have surely killed 10 million French if he, unlike Stalin, hadn’t hesitated to seize absolute power while he brooded over philosophy.
It was fortunate Napoleon turned out to be a White Tsar who disguised himself as a Red Tsar until his position was secure enough to overthrow the Directorate.
In order to judge of this extraordinary man, we must follow him upon the grand theatre for which he was born. Fortune had no doubt done much for Napoleon; but by the force of his character, the activity and lucidity of his mind, and by his genius for the great combinations of military science, he had risen to the level of the position which she had destined for him. Having but one passion, that of power, he never lost either his time or his means on those objects which might have diverted him from his aim. Master of himself, he soon became master of men and events. In whatever time he had appeared he would have played a prominent part. But the epoch when he first entered on his career was particularly fitted to facilitate his elevation. Surrounded by individuals who, in the midst of a world in ruins, walked at random without any fixed guidance, given up to all kinds of ambition and greed, he alone was able to form a plan, hold it fast, and conduct it to its conclusion. It was in the course of the second campaign in Italy that he conceived the one which was to carry him to the summit of power. ‘ When I was young,’ he said to me ; ‘ I was revolutionary from ignorance and ambition. At the age of reason, I have followed its counsels and my own instinct, and I crushed the Revolution.’
There would be no such luck with future Red Tsars. How many millions of lives might have been saved if only Stalin had declared himself Tsar after a surprise “discovery” of extant Romanov ancestry in his family tree? Sadly, that Red Tsar remained Red.
The short nature of its existence is the chief reason the French Revolution can be portrayed by “historians” as defensible. Because Napoleon brought that experiment to an end in its first decade it was too brief to build a criminal record as extensive as Soviet Russia would build over seven decades. It is particularly subject to romantic interpretations because its enthusiasm excites the imagination of the Liberal (who always prefers feeling to facts and logic) while its swift conclusion masks to untrained observers the indefensible consequences its actions would have certainly led to.
And had the Russian Revolution expired in one decade and then been replaced by a conservative regime as was the French Revolutionary regime the Russian Revolution would have many more defenders than it does.
If the alterations to Jacobinism made by Marx and other Proletarian Socialists were modest, the answer of Auguste Comte to the failure of the Revolution was highly original.
Like Marx and Engels, Comte too saw no future for established governing institutions. To Comte the Bourbons were toppled because their governance was ‘arbitrary’; by arbitrary he meant the governance of the Church and Nobility was justified on a mystical, romantic, hence “arbitrary” mythology surrounding the powers of Royalism instead of scientific principles set down by men trained in science. Because their rule was not scientific Monarchism was doomed to collapse. To save government and advance humanity into its utopian future, social scientists would have to overturn the arbitrary mysticism around government with the adoption of Comte’s “scientific” Sociology just as the equally arbitrary mysticism of alchemy and astrology were overturned by the sciences of chemistry and astronomy.
Crucially, and unlike Proletarian Socialists, Comte saw nothing gained by the overthrow of the Ancien Régime if its replacement was a regime of commoners. Rule of the proletariat, or masses of any sort, was no less arbitrary because the common man had less training in scientific principles than the aristocracy. In Sociological Government proles had no place in leadership and barely any freedoms.
Only a priestly class of Sociologists willing to apply science to create a perfect society were fit for power in Comte’s New Order which has become today’s Progressive order.
Because a state was necessarily required to implement his complex political science, Comte’s state would be permanent. This end state of Comte’s is very different from that of Communism. Proletarian Socialists assumed that once the state was abolished the proletariat would naturally learn on their own how to collectively control production and master the few remaining administrative tasks.
As Engels described it:
When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out.
Or, as Lenin simply put it, after the state is dissolved administration would become so simple that “even a cook could take charge of it”.
Of course Stalin did not abolish the Soviet State. But he could at least plausibly justify retaining it as a temporary condition until Communism conquered the world. In the meantime the Soviet Union did stay true to its proletarian roots and, despite its many flaws, never become the complex bureaucratic mess that Western Progressive governance has become.
Stalin –
“Is this proposition of Engels’s correct?” he asked, citing the passage above. The answer was yes but only if we assumed a world revolution. “What if Socialism has been victorious only in one country. . . . what then? Engels’s formula does not furnish an answer to this question. As a matter of fact, Engels did not set himself this question, and therefore could not have given an answer to it.” For Stalin, Engels’s phrase was not so much obsolete as inapplicable to the current conjuncture: “A country which is surrounded by a capitalist world, is subject to the menace of foreign military attack, cannot therefore abstract itself from the international situation, and must have at its disposal a well-trained army, well-organized punitive organs, and a strong intelligence service consequently, must have its own state.” “Report on the Work of the Central Committee to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.),” delivered March 10, 1939, in Joseph Stalin, Works (London: Red Star, 1978), 14:415–416.
But for Comte the retention of the state was both its ideal and necessary condition.
Because scientific rulers in Comte’s mold could neither be adherents of the discredited aristocracy nor proles, Comte would have to first train this new civil service royalty and then assign them to new Technocratic institutions after the old order was crushed in his Sociology Revolution. His aristocracy would then employ a new social engineering bureaucracy to severely restrict the freedoms of the ordinary, ignorant, citizen for their own good and with no mercy shown to the proletariat.
This article accurately summarizes Comte’s system (Bolded excerpts mine) :
His positivist ideology, rather than celebrating the rationality of the individual and wanting to protect people from state interference, fetishised the scientific method, proposing that a new ruling class of technocrats should decide how society should be run and how people should behave. This idea has its seeds in Saint-Simons thought but finds its expression in a much more developed authoritarian form in Comte.
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In July 1819 Comte wrote an article which was destined not to be published until 1854, when he appended it to his Système de Politique Positive (System of Positive Polity) as a demonstration of the continuity of his thinking from youth to old age. Entitled General Separation Between Views and Desires, and later referred to as the First Opuscule, it revealed a new attitude on Comtes part towards democracy and his increasing disdain for the opinion of the people. Developing his previous suggestion that only enlightened men should take part in journalism or government, he argued that only those specifically trained in political science should play an active role in politics. Clearly aware that he was in danger of sounding like the present administration he emphasised that, despite their lack of knowledge, the people had legitimate desires for freedom, peace, industrial prosperity, economical public expenditure, and good use of taxes. They should thus contribute to deciding on the overall aims of society, but should leave the means of achieving them to those who knew what they are talking about, that is, the social scientists. Revealing his authoritarian and elitist tendencies, he proclaimed that social scientists should rule, and that the liberty of everyone else should be restricted accordingly.
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He contended that sovereignty of the people would put power in the hands of those unfit to rule both morally and intellectually, replacing the arbitrariness of kings by the arbitrariness of people, or rather, by that of individuals. What was needed was a new organic doctrine that would be supported by all, kings and ordinary people alike. Rather than limiting the power of the state to protect people from arbitrary authority, Comte now argued that the government should be made the head of society, uniting people and focusing everyones activities on common goals. He was also highly critical of the notion of freedom of conscience: there is no liberty of conscience in astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, in the sense that everyone would find it absurd not to believe with confidence in the principles established in these sciences by competent men. Thus even the right to question science on the basis of ones own rationality that Comte had retained to some degree in the First Opuscule seems to have gone out of the window. In a similar vein, he argued that only an educated elite should be entitled to freedom more generally:
Liberty in a reasonable proportion is useful to people who have attained a certain degree of instruction and have acquired some habits of foresight [but] is very harmful to those who have not fulfilled these two conditions and have the indispensable need, for themselves as much as for others, to be kept in tutelage.
With his newly discovered law of three stages, Comte was convinced that politics could now be raised to the rank of the sciences of observation. This would enable the scientists to create the spiritual doctrine needed to replace religion. These scientists would be generalists trained in all of the sciences this idea, first proposed in the Plan, was to become a key theme in his later work. Political science, based on a historical understanding of the past (and future) would ultimately provide a blueprint, or at least some clear ideas, for what a new society would look like.
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Comte at this time was clarifying and expanding his account of the three stages of historical development. Six of these articles were later republished as his fourth and fifth opuscules. In these works we see Comtes ideas about the structure of his positivist society solidifying. Gone is any remnant of his old libertarian and egalitarian principles. In place of the existing institutions Comte now envisaged a fixed social hierarchy strictly controlled by a positivist elite. Expressing an admiration for primitive societies because of the absolute power held by the spiritual leaders, he proposed a form of theocracy with a clergy made up of his social scientists. The spiritual authority would have an explicitly repressive function, playing the role that the Catholic Church had played in the Mediaeval period, but more powerful. His positive clergy would be moral and political philosophers, men with general knowledge of all the sciences backing their social science. Control over ideas would be an essential element of the state. Thus education would be a key tool, helping to link theory and practice, and teaching people to know their place in the social order.
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In particular, his presentation of history in terms of ordinary people as opposed to the rich and powerful is still influential today. However, despite this, and despite his extensive knowledge of Enlightenment thought, his vision is peculiarly devoid of a sense of agency. He was convinced from an early stage that theory had to precede practice and really believed that the social scientists, the generalists trained by his Cours, would provide a blueprint for a perfect society. It is this that led Karl Marx to be so disparaging of Comtes ideas, who denied ever trying to write Comtist recipes for the cookshops of the future. Marx, in contrast, extended the notion of agency to the common people for him the proletariat the new class that emerged from the industrial revolution and the establishment of capitalism were the people with the history making potential for the future. Comte, as we have seen, had a deep distrust of the masses, and thus, while he started out as a proponent of freedom of speech, he ended up proposing a system in which people were told what to think by an intellectual elite. The very idea of Marxs dictatorship of the proletariat would have been truly terrifying for Comte.
And the very idea of Comte’s dictatorship of the Bureaucrats – Bureaucrats more powerful than the Catholic Church of the Medieval Ages! – would be equally terrifying to Karl Marx (Marx was aware of Comte and his Utopian Socialism, but he dismissed the possibility of it ever gaining traction. If he could see that it would displace Communism and become the ruling ideology of the world, well, we will get to that; but for now rest assured he would be as horrified by Progresssivism as you the reader are).
The rigidly hierarchical society governed by Technocratic high-priests that Comte dreamed of perfectly describes the West’s ruling class of Bureaucrats.
Comte’s industrial policy, too, far better describes what Conservatives today refer to as “Corporatism” than Marxist industrialism.
Conservatives generally consider Corporatism to be a corrupt hybrid of Leftism and corporate profiteering (The reader should note that “Corporatism” should not be confused with “Crony Capitalism”, the latter is a different economic system practiced by modern Russia and Northeast Asia, neither of which are Progressive).
Comte did not want industry placed completely under state control. Instead Comte preferred industry take detailed blueprints from Bureaucrats and run their operations largely off of it.
Like Sieyès and Condorcet before them, Comte and Saint-Simon believed it was up to a class of experts—scientists, industrialists—to work out a new doctrine capable of bringing enduring social and political stability. The scientists would turn their observational skills onto the social and political realm, revealing its laws of development. The industrialists would then reconstruct institutions in such a way that their operations were in harmony with these laws. Unlike Sieyès and Condorcet, however, these postrevolutionary thinkers adopted what Baker has called a “theocratic” understanding of knowledge. Any deviation from rationality became a kind of heresy. “No one is so insane as to set himself up, knowingly, in revolt against the nature of things,” Comte argued (101). He had supreme faith in the power of knowledge.
Comte’s economic doctrine was one of his strengths. This spin on the role of business in Sociology often won more favor from both industrialists and Progressives than Communism. In this scheme Technocrats stood to gain greater say over economic activity without killing the free market goose that lays the golden eggs; quite unlike Proletarian Socialism which promised to axe murder the goose straight away along with its industrialist owners. For their part, industrialists would theoretically retain influence over policy and enjoy some measure of freedom to run their businesses.
In practice, however, the Progressive Movement’s marriage of Comte’s Sociology to Big Business gave birth to an unstable hybrid monster that greatly incentivized the worst vices of Bureaucracy and Capitalism. In Corporatism incompetent social engineers are free to plan seizing even more power over economic activity in order to fund their tyrannical objectives. At the same time corporations unwittingly become more corrupt the more they engage this crackpot Bureaucratic system in the futile hope the Bureaucrats will exempt them from their craziest experiments if only business acts like “responsible” team players. At best their “responsibility” only slows the pace of how quickly the Bureaucratic crocodile eats them.
Karl Marx called Comte’s Bureaucratic Sociology “shitty” –
Discussing utopian socialism, Engels invoked Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, but ignored Comte altogether. In this, he was probably following the lead of Marx, who dismissed Comte’s work in a single word: “Shitty.” Letter from Marx to Engels, July 7, 1866, MECW 42:292.
Over century later we now know “shit” was an understatement.
Unfortunately the shit bureaucracies of today that all Westerners live in terror of have long demonstrated superior staying power relative to Communism.
The reasons why it has proven so politically viable after Communism went extinct everywhere (except for a single, wonderfully determined, hermit holdout in North Korea) have much to do with who this program attracted, and which nations it found the most support in.
Comteian Sociology won the allegiance of the mediocre, usually bourgieous descended, always disatisfied employees of the modernizing Civil Service; men and women who match this sketch drawn in the 1930s by George Orwell:
The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years’ time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from. the old Liberal Party. In addition to this there is the horrible–the really disquieting–prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
Horrid nudists though they were and are, Britain’s “snob-Bolshevik” Fabian Socialists (“isn’t ‘snobbery’ too classist to be ‘Bolshevik’?” George suggested…) along with their Progressive and Supranationalist siblings in America and Continental Europe turned out to be more formidable Leftists than the proletariat.
Because Comte immediately grasped that the working class was not close to having the qualities of aristocracy, Comte proved to be a wiser class theorist than Marx. It was Marx who wrongly bet on the proletariat because he saw in them a nobility in waiting. Eventually this presumed nobility lost interest in revolution once their material needs were satisfied by the free market. Without the enthusiasm of the proletariat, Proletarian Socialism lost momentum and then slipped into the mists of history. Ever since then the proles have remained in a tranquilized stupor barely aware the Progressives can’t eliminate them quickly enough through Third World immigration, automation, and the outsourcing of manufacturing.
By contrast, the “non-Conformist” segment of the bourgeois from which Comte’s Sociology would gain its primary following remained messianically committed to societal upheaval no matter how much modernity improved the physical quality of their lives. They never lost their fanaticism for inflicting Bureaucratic tyranny due to their above average (but still overrated) intelligence, supreme arrogance in their presumed self-embodiment of science and knowledge, personal insecurity, moral depravity, and crude lust for power.
The civil servant class was unwittingly put in a position to march to power because of the Industrial Revolution; the same Revolution that gave rise to Capitalism as well as the supreme enemy of Capitalism, Progressivism. The largely conservative Western powers of the time felt obligated by the increasingly complex impact of industry and science on society to professionalize their civil services and authorize them to manage this impact and harness its benefits.
Due to this complexity, the role of the civil servant became more and more specialized. Before these specialized roles could be staffed, it was reasoned, potential civil servants should first be sent off for specialized academic training. During their university careers they were disciplined in sociological studies that, if not directly founded by Comte, were infused with his attitude that the future of social scientists was not limited to being mere aides and number crunchers but to be the supreme leaders of a new man and a new society.
The following articles’ descriptions of how 19th century American students who later became Progressives were intrigued by the potential of sociology to evolve up from a field of academic research into an entirely new form of totalitarian government also describes equally well Sociology’s attraction to those students who would become British Fabians and European Supranationalists –
During the 1880s and 1890s bright young graduate students in history and the social sciences went to Germany, the home of the PhD degree, to obtain their doctorates. Almost to a man, they returned to the United States to teach in colleges and in the newly created graduate schools, imbued with the excitement of the “new” economics and political science. It was a “new” social science that lauded the German and Bismarckian development of a powerful welfare-warfare State, a State seemingly above all social classes, that fused the nation into an integrated and allegedly harmonious whole. The new society and polity was to be run by a powerful central government, cartelizing, dictating, arbitrating, and controlling, thereby eliminating competitive laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand and the threat of proletarian socialism on the other. And at or near the head of the new dispensation was to be the new breed of intellectuals, technocrats, and planners, directing, staffing, propagandizing, and “selflessly” promoting the common good while ruling and lording over the rest of society. In short, doing well by doing good. To the new breed of progressive and statist intellectuals in America, this was a heady vision indeed.
Bureaucracy as a government unto itself was always the ideal state of Progressivism; no matter how much Progressives flattered and sympathized with Proletarian Socialists. Lester Frank Ward, who has been called the father of the modern Progressive welfare state, was greatly influenced by Comte’s dreams of bureaucratic dictatorship. Ward enthusiastically brought Comte’s ideas to the attention of numerous other Progressives. That leading Progressive light, Herbert Croly, was raised by a father who was a Comteian Positivist. The Social Gospel’s belief that both the working class and middle classes were inherently “sick” and needed to be reformed by a 1984-ish social engineering state is directly inspired by Comte’s Utopian vision as well as his deep loathing of the uneducated masses:
To the American mind, the most formal connotation of the term progressive is the Progressive Movement, a period of reform that ranged from the late 1800s to the end of World War I. Unlike its predecessor, the Populist Party, Progressivism was not a movement of farmers or manual laborers. Its guiding lights were college-educated men who were consequently steeped in the post-Enlightenment collectivism that had taken hold of the universities both here and in Europe. Among its apostles were economists who adopted the “organic” collectivism of the German historical school, sociologists and historians who interpreted Darwin according to the social ideas of Hegel (the “reform” Darwinists), clergymen who interpreted Jesus according to the moral ideas of Kant (the Social Gospelers), single-taxers who followed Henry George, Utopians who followed Edward Bellamy … “humanitarians” who followed Comte … pragmatists who followed William James and the early John Dewey. (Peikoff)
The man who is now virtually synonymous with Progressivism, Herbert Croly (The Promise of American Life), was himself both the son of a noted proponent of Comteian positivism and the student of Harvard’s Josiah Royce, a disciple of Hegel. All of these thinkers contributed to what would become the ethical foundation of the Progressive Movement: a contempt and loathing of “individualism” — and its political expression in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:
On its way to political power the American Progressive movement in proportion to its electoral success created ever more bureaucratic departments. The federal agencies diseased from the moment of their foundation by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt have with only occasional interruption relentlessly expanded into a psychopathic 4th branch of government; a 4th branch unaccountable to the voters and the other three branches of American government.
The fact should be emphasized that there was no Gramscian march through Western institutions: Civil service institutions were not captured by an outside force; early civil servants of the modern nation states freely chose to rebel against and displace the conservative authorities who professionalized them. The bureaucrats rebelled in hopes of eventually installing themselves as a new, ‘scientific’ elite. By the 1920s and 1930s the American university system had become dominated by Communist sympathizing Progressives and Sociologists.
Further expansions of bureaucratic institutions, meant to serve as loci of power, were established by the New Deal, the Great Society, and in Britain by the creation of the NHS. In Europe, as planned by Jean Monnet and his allies, the old European Coal Commission thanks to its followup acts such as the Maastricht Treaty, European Monetary Union, and the Delors Commission eventually morphed into the most perfect incarnation of Comte’s Bureaucratic Dictatorship, the European Union.
A consideration of which nations preferred Technocracy or Communism is instructive.
The most fertile ground for Proletarian Socialism lay South and East of the Hajnal line: Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Europe. There working class anger was highest, the middle class historically most dissatisfied with its level of property rights, and wealth was narrowly concentrated among the aristocracy. The one exception to this rule is France. Appropriate enough for the nation that first produced both Proletarian Socialism and Technocracy, these two forms of Liberalism have been about equal in influence since the end of the French Revolution. After WWII the “Enarque” Supranationalists of France have been that nation’s true Liberal elite despite a number of overtly Communist third parties still performing well with the French working class on election day.
But Proletarian Socialism never fully took root in Protestant Europe or the Anglo diaspora. The Protestant tradition (especially the Anglo-Saxon tradition) of property rights left their proles unwilling to gamble their expanding wealth with full scale revolution. They did, however, respond well to Communist rhetoric if for no other reason than the leaders of proletarian revolution looked like themselves – if you can’t trust yourself to be dictator who can you trust?
Both moderate Socialist parties and Technocrats that co-opted radical Proletarian slogans were the preferred parties of working class Protestants. The electoral gains of truly Communist and radical Proletarian parties with Protestant workers was negligible.
For elite Protestant Liberals the debate about industry took place within the context of an abundance of wealth and rapid technological innovation. Because prosperity (although not universal) and science were widespread the question for the establishment Left centered more around how to manage wealth and technology than nationalizing them outright. Liberals of a radical bent preferred the “Corporatist” compromise first proposed by Comte and later refined by numerous sociologists, academics, and economists such as Lord Keynes. In this hybrid scheme Capitalism is heavily regulated by centralized bureaucrats, manipulated to fund and implement social engineering projects, but Capitalism is not terminated.
Thus, geography has been of the greatest advantages Comte’s system enjoyed over Marx’s in the battle for the loyalty of Western elites. Comte discovered a formula to recruit to Technocracy a segment of the Protestant bourgeoisie already operating in the halls of government, albeit a segment initially serving the state only as paper pushers not decision makers. When those bourgeoisie Sociologists collectively attained decision making power they brought over to the cause of Comteian Progressivism the great wealth and resources of Protestant Capitalism. This wealth was by itself enough to ensure Comte’s Liberalism would outlive Marx’s.
It cannot be emphasized enough that history before 1932 is without precedent for an aristocracy of bureaucrats; Comte’s priesthood is a complete historical aberration.
The classes making up the Technocratic elite were more able than the proletariat, yet still only dull, gray, members of the bourgeois and upper classes. However numerous were the advantages Technocracy held over Communism thanks to drawing leadership from the bourgeois, these were overwhelmingly the mediocre or even failed portions of the bourgeoisie. They consist of sociologists, academics, scientists, pseudo-scientists, government bureaucrats, media hacks, ‘artists’, ‘experts’, celebrities, non-profit workers, quacks of every type, writers, philosophers, economists, environmentalists, feminists, public and private sector unions, and international organizations.
Little though they would agree about anything else, both Engels and conservatives of any type would agree that these elements of society were unfit to serve as a ruling class. Traditional conservative ruling classes were drawn from the aristocracy, military, priesthood, and merchant classes (the class that met Alexander Hamilton’s ideal of a ‘natural aristocracy’), and, to varying degrees of flexibility, with room made for admission into the elite of the occasional parvenu of great ability.
The leadership of Soviet Russia, as well, did not consist of Technocrats. Soviet rulers overwhelmingly came from the founding revolutionaries, the military high command, economic management, and intelligence agencies. As in Conservative systems, the Civil Service in Communist nations served a purely advisory role to the Communist elite.
It is also remarkable how comfortable so much of the citizenry of the West is with the bizarre idea of having Bureaucrats control government rather than serving government when these classes never before held decision making powers.
However intense the mistrust of Technocrats was towards the working class, Technocrats were every bit as interested as Communists were in overthrowing conservative elites and breaking the majority of the Western middle class; except for the minority of the middle class working in government.
This brings us to the seeming paradox of how could Technocrats simultaneously hate the proletariat but sympathize and cheer on Proletarian Radical movements like Communism and Anarchism?
Their sympathy for Communism has often been wrongly interpreted by the Right as proof Technocrats were Communists.
The explanation to this seeming contradiction is that Bureaucrats were enthusiastic only for the support of the proletariat. Once in the driver’s seat, Dictatorial Bureaucracy contemptuously shoved the proles away from the levers of power. It is their use of the proletariat in revolution and their later refusal to let them anywhere near government once the revolution was finished that still makes Bureaucratic Dictatorship of the Progressive type not Communist.
In Technocracy’s beginning, when the road to their warped Utopia was long and uncertain, it was a necessity that the political energy of Proletarian Socialism be harnessed to the benefit of Progressivism.
Modern observers who look back at the Progressive movement from the late 19th to early 20th centuries are often surprised at how freely that movement’s leaders spoke up in favor of Communism. Leaders such as Upton Sinclair were obfuscating for Stalin’s purges as late as the 1930s –
It is also true that I have been studying the problem of Russia as earnestly as I know how for twenty years. There have been few days during that period that I have not sought some new facts and pondered them. I have had many a heartache over the things which have happened in Russia— so different from what I hoped for. I watched Gorky all through this period, and I know how he suffered and how more than once he wavered. But in the end he made up his mind that the Soviet regime was the best hope for the workers of Russia, and that is my conclusion today.
Though this is not well understood today, the reason why early Progressives got away with this was because Communism was seen by many Proletarian voters at the time as an ordinary workers party. Proletarian voters often identified with a number of its objectives even if they did not vote for it.
And proletarian voters were no inconsequential force. 19th century Proletarian radicalism had significantly broader popularity and momentum than Sociology did. This would continue to be the case throughout most of the 20th century and left Sociology in a position where it had no choice but to hug close to the rising force of Proletarian Revolution.
The working class vote was once so important that even Hitler, though on the extreme right, had to make his case to them. A little known, and ironic, fact about the German elections of 1932 and 1933 was that Hitler competed with the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands for segments of the same working class bloc. Hitler’s effort to incorporate them into his electoral coalition was so successful that the KPD leader, Ersnt Thällman, felt compelled to adopt some of Hitler’s nationalist propaganda in order to restrain the defections of normally Socialist and Communist voters to the Nazis.
Technocrats especially were unlikely to survive ignoring the working class compared to other political parties.
The primary obstacle facing Technocrats was always the lack of enough votes to get Technocracy off the ground on a platform that honestly expressed their system. Without satisfying the working class they had no natural constituents except for a small class of bureaucrats; or at least not until the working class was replaced with a compliant third world electorate:
June 4, 1834. — Prince Esterhazy will doubtless have spoken to you of a most interesting conversation he has had with King Louis Philippe. What I beg you to insist upon is, that I do not dread the Republic more than it is to he dreaded; a fact contradicted by the King, who apparently does not fear it at all. In order to make myself clearly understood, I need only tell you that I mean by anarchy, the Republic. I know very well that the Republic — in other words a Republican Government affording the prospect of stability — is not what is in store for France, but anarchy under the colours of the Republic, for no one will ever proclaim anarchy.
Just as “No one will ever proclaim anarchy” it is equally true that “no one will ever proclaim Bureaucracy” because no one will fight or vote for Bureaucracy unless it is very falsely called ‘Communism’.
Hitler and Stalin personally believed their systems represented the best interests of their blue collar classes; both had justification to argue this was so.
But Technocrats were completely dishonest in their working class rhetoric. Like Comte , Progressives never viewed the proletariat as fit for government, but to win their acceptance (if fierce loyalty was implausible) they had to lie by disguising themselves in Communist clothing.
Recent events provide important examples of how their true feelings about allowing proles near leadership become manifest.
Those examples are the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, the rise of Jeremy Corbyn over the British Labour Party, and the threat by the radical Leftist government of Greece to leave the euro. The leaders in all three cases expressed sympathies with proletarian interests; and in all three cases their (somewhat) proletarian objectives were at odds with the Bureaucratic class. The results of these rather modest insurgencies were the rallying of the Democratic Party around Hillary Clinton which awarded her the party nomination, and the Blairite wing of Labour chaffing under Corbyn. As for Greece, the potential withdrawal of that nation from European Monetary Union was the most harshly punished of the three insurgencies because their exit was potentially the greatest threat to the European Union establishment: The governing radical Leftist party was completely discredited when it was forced to keep Greece in the euro, implement hated economic reforms, and effectively place what is left of the Greek economy under the direct control of Brussels.
Zorba wept.
The Progressives also needed the proletariat simply to fight in the streets – imagine how poorly those sickly, vegetarian Progressives described by Orwell would fare without proletarian street muscle against a true reactionary willing to unleash the guns on them, a madman like Jorge Videla. How long could they hold out in a frigid cabin in the Urals, living off only vodka canteens, rations staler than cardboard, clinging in desperation to grenades and Kalashnikovs?
We will even go so far as to say that Technocrats associated themselves with Communism to boost their own self-image. The truth is that Communist revolutionaries have always held an aura of romanticism and excitement for Technocrat Liberals that the latter cannot hope to find in their own lives. The harsh reality for Progressives is that they are just bureaucrats entrusted with far too much power. The vast majority of them are doomed to a boring, unsatisfying existence as underpaid activists for non-profits, faceless bureaucrats lost in the labyrinth of DC bureaucratic machinery, run of the mill academics, or starving teaching associates with no chance of every gaining tenure, etc. Those few Progressives who do achieve stardom are often frustrated by their inability to advance their agenda.
Even their internal battles are tiresome. Academic rivalries resemble WWI trench warfare, but worse: They are similar because both involve vicious fighting for no gains; they are worse because no one dies in the “combat”.
Certainly, actual Progressive existence does little to attract impressionable youths to Sociology unless it is offered to them under a false covering of Communist intrigue.
The former head of the European Union, Jose Manuel, Barroso, was like many Technocrats in that he was as a youth an energetic Maoist street revolutionary who in adulthood seamlessly transitioned into the dull Supranationalist President of the European Union Commission. It was under the watch of this former Maoist that the anti-proletarian Treaty of Lisbon was passed.
Still, though they flattered proletarian radicals as much as was needed for the sake of political expediency, the simple personality differences between Proletarian Socialists and bourgeois Technocrats was by itself often enough to cause friction and mistrust between the two groups. The doubt the British working class felt towards ‘prig’ Technocrats was also held, perhaps greatly exceeded, by the leaders of Proletarian movements. Their mutual, low-level dislike to a certain extent poisoned the atmosphere in the periodic meetings the Proletarian leadership held with the leaders of Progressive Technocracy.
In this system there are three characteristic elements: 1) a series of brilliant thoughts, which however are nearly always spoiled to some extent because they are incompetently set forth likewise; 2) a narrow, philistine way of thinking sharply contrasting with that brilliant mind; 3) a hierarchically organised religious constitution, whose source is definitely Saint-Simonian, but divested of all mysticism and turned into something extremely sober, with a regular pope at the head, so that (Thomas) Huxley [4] could say of Comtism that it was Catholicism without Christianity.
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Then there is another point I should like to correct, the note on p 513. [5] Marx never was Secretary General of the International but only Secretary for Germany and Russia. And none of the Comtists in London participated in the founding of the International. Professor E Beesly [6] deserves great credit for his defence of the International in the press at the time of the Commune against the vehement attacks of that day. Frederic Harrison [7] too publicly took up the cudgels for the Commune. But a few years later the Comtists cooled off considerably toward the labour movement. The workers had become too powerful and it was now a question of maintaining a proper balance between capitalists and workers (for both are producers according to Saint-Simon) and to that end of once more supporting the former. Ever since then the Comtists have wrapped themselves in complete silence as regards the labour question.
It is appropriate to speculate how Marx himself would assess modern Progressivism considering how much Progressives have shamelessly borrowed from Communist slogans and tactics knowing since the birth of their movement they would end up betraying the white proletariat Marx held so much confidence in.
He would likely focus on three facets of Progressivism. First, how their initiatives have neutralized the chances of a truly proletarian movement, second why Progressives wanted the proles left inert, and finally how Progressivism will ultimately collapse.
The two main Progressive methods for disabling the proletariat, immigration and trade, would both be fanatically opposed by Marx and opposed with equal vigor by other Proletarian theorists such as Kropotkin and Proudhon.
Marx would have an easy case to make on Communist grounds against immigration. He believed proletarian revolution must be led by the “aristocracy of the proletariat”. These are the proletarians who, because of their ability and elevated status, with other proles were most likely to reach class consciousness. From class consciousness they would then lead proletarian revolt. Third world immigrants he would consider to be lumpenproletarians, those proles so lacking in intelligence, education, discipline, and prone to crime that they were not only useless to revolution due to their incapacity for class consciousness but were in fact easily co-opted by Capitalist forces because of the precarious nature of their day to day existence.
As for the embrace of immigration by Capitalists he would chalk that up as another example of them happily making a short term profit off the sale of the rope that will hang them later.
Free trade he would see as a mechanism for neutralizing any class threat posed by the white proletariat. Through de-industrialization, the white proletariat – in Marx’s view the most capable of the proletariat – would slip into a degenerate lumpenproletariat state from which they too would be unable to attain class consciousness.
He would be dismayed at how Progressives had corrupted his natural aristocracy of the proletariat into tranquil, morbidly obese, cretins waiting to be carved up by ISIS like roast beef.
He would not consider the possibility of the proletariat seizing control of the main Progressive Parties because of the unsuitability of its leadership. He would dismiss the remaining members of those mainstream parties who do sympathize with the Proletariat, e.g., Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, as just managed “pothead Communists” who exist only to keep some remaining portion of the working class in the Progressive camp.
The displacement and degradation of the white proletariat served Progressive interests because Sociologists could only disguise themselves as proletarians for so long. At some point the fact they are actually by background and culture bourgieous to the core would be revealed. Marx likely would (wrongly) argue Progressives are Conservative Capitalists. At some point they would have to let the mask slip and reveal they were class enemies of the proletariat, but not until they could compensate for their votes with immigration.
With Third World immigrant voters satisfied by welfare and uninterested in either political ambition or revolutionary philosophy, Progressives now feel free to finally abandon any pretense they will respect their obligations to the white proletariat which was for over a century one of their electoral pillars.
Marx would say the ultimate defeat of Comte will be a result of the fact the class he and his followers truly represent is too narrow to exist on its own should Capitalism, the majority of the bourgeois, and what’s left of the proletariat collectively turn against it. Progressives are not, as proletarians are, self-sufficient enough to survive without Capitalistic luxuries. They are also not a natural ruling class and therefore are more dependent on the power of Capitalistic leaders than they care to admit. As employees of inherently non-productive bureaucratic agencies they could not generate by themselves the wealth of private sector Capitalists. And they are greatly outnumbered by the private sector bourgeois.
In Marx’s view the immigrant demographics imported by Progressives are much too degenerate (“lumpenproletariat”) to defend them against the far more capable white classes. The latter would be equally capable of flipping the loyalty of immigrants with Capitalist resources just as Progressives have, temporarily, purchased their loyalty with welfare.
Marx would say the day Comte is overthrown is the day the Progressives Comte gave birth to finally run out of their own allies to overthrow.
Pragmatically Distributed 
Good direction. I have two suggestions on form and content, if you can forgive my presumption.
Form: this needs a lot of editing for readability. Awkward grammar and run-on sentences make it difficult to parse. An intro and summary would help. The main body would be better broken down into several thematically appropriate sections/separate posts. Moldbug’s format doesn’t suit your style. Finally, the introductory block of Metternich’s quotes should be broken down, embedded in the appropriate places in the text, and probably directly commented upon; it’s hard to see the connections otherwise.
Content: for me, the main missing connections are to the secret and semi-secret groups such as Skull and Bones, CFR and the Trilateral commission, and to the great foundations set up by various oligarchical families (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Rothschild, Brookings, etc). Professor Antony Sutton did a lot of work on this theme, as did Professor Carroll Quigley. For example, Skull and Bones was instrumental in building German-style Ph.D.-led social science to the US and into US government, and was also involved in pretty much every major development in 20th century America. CFR functions as an employment agency for most of the paragovernment and unelected government (your Fourth Branch,) as well as the large corporations.
Rather than being hostages to a movement of petit bourgeouis Leftists, big business and government answer to an oligarchy whose power is nearly absolute precisely because it is unofficial, routed through officially non-governmental bodies like the media, academia, NGOs and professional associations, and thus free of accountability.
If, for instance, the Rockefellers were to go out there and start forcibly sterilizing people en masse Rajiv Gandhi-style, they’d find their heads on pikes. However, by using their foundation to fund medical research into birth control, sociological “education” and social activism on gender equality, ecological research and education on the harm humans cause to the environment, and of course various media outlets which bring all this great research to the awareness of their readers and listeners, they’ve been able to achieve the exact same goal. You can see the same thing happening in every area of policy, including medicine, psychology, education, external and internal security and of course economics.
The drawback of this sort of obscure control is that it’s slow-there’s a delay while all this stuff percolates down (though the delay has gotten shorter over the last 100 years as people have become more atomized and alienated, and the various social structures standing between them and new policies and ideologies have been destroyed, co-opted or discredited.) But the great advantage is that it disperses responsibility and almost guarantees the rulers’ safety from justice.
Who is the author?
This essay is one of the most important I have ever read. Thank you.
Oh! I can post. I thought maybe I had been banned. Can’t think why, hope I didn’t do anything to offend you. Anyway, I have been reading quite a bit of your stuff — your comments elsewhere and the recent essays. If you don’t mind, I will return to comment more later.
Best.
@BaruchK
Good direction.
Very much appreciated.
Form: this needs a lot of editing for readability. Awkward grammar and run-on sentences make it difficult to parse. An intro and summary would help. The main body would be better broken down into several thematically appropriate sections/separate posts. Moldbug’s format doesn’t suit your style.
No offense taken.
I’m open to suggestions about style and format. But could you give examples? I doubt I will change much of the style for this entry except for adding extra links and correcting some typos that may have slipped my notice. But I will take it under consideration for future articles.
Finally, the introductory block of Metternich’s quotes should be broken down, embedded in the appropriate places in the text, and probably directly commented upon; it’s hard to see the connections otherwise.
Respectfully disagree how unclear the connections are.
The article explores the French Revolution and then segues into the two forms of Leftism that emerged from it.
How prescient does Prince Metternich look having only the French Revolution as his main frame of reference for Liberalism in action – “what will become of this Babylon”?
Content: for me, the main missing connections are to the secret and semi-secret groups such as Skull and Bones, CFR and the Trilateral commission, and to the great foundations set up by various oligarchical families (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Rothschild, Brookings, etc). Professor Antony Sutton did a lot of work on this theme, as did Professor Carroll Quigley. For example, Skull and Bones was instrumental in building German-style Ph.D.-led social science to the US and into US government, and was also involved in pretty much every major development in 20th century America.
Those foundations are all part of the Bureaucratic state, but I wouldn’t say they are secret or the core of it. At the start of the Progressive movement Germany was the heartland of Western academia. Because of Germany’s intellectual prowess Max Weber and his sort didn’t need Skull & Bones to get Sociology filtered through to academia in the Anglo-Saxon world. I’d say Skull & Bones jumped on Sociology early on because they saw its potential, but they were not necessary to it gaining traction. The original founders of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Rothschild families would be horrified by Progressivism.
Rather than being hostages to a movement of petit bourgeouis Leftists, big business and government answer to an oligarchy whose power is nearly absolute precisely because it is unofficial, routed through officially non-governmental bodies like the media, academia, NGOs and professional associations, and thus free of accountability.
If, for instance, the Rockefellers were to go out there and start forcibly sterilizing people en masse Rajiv Gandhi-style, they’d find their heads on pikes.
In 1950, yes they would be punished. At this point, though, the Progressive elite has become so decayed and degraded that I think a rogue Rockefeller could get away with it as Trump has.
Who is the author?
In spirit, Moldbug; in experience, Metternich; in authoritarian impulse, Stalin; in fact, myself.
You expected otherwise?
Oh! I can post. I thought maybe I had been banned.
Your comments were – without my knowing it – marked as spam by WordPress.
I’ve restored them all and apologize for any confusion. In the future I will check the spam box more frequently.
Anyway, I have been reading quite a bit of your stuff — your comments elsewhere and the recent essays. If you don’t mind, I will return to comment more later.
By all means, take your time.
Communism V Progressivism.
Formal Cause.
Communism’s form, or its decision structure, is either a dictatorship, or a small oligarchy (Politburo).
Communism, moreover, is a one party state.
The State, meanwhile, controls the means of production for (so it is claimed) the benefit of the proles.
Progressivism.
The form or decision structure of Progressivism, or the EU is…..What exactly? The decision structure is an endless series or processes and procedures, committees and consultations. No one is in charge; sectors of responsibility and control are unclear.
See:
http://www.euractiv.com/section/euro-finance/opinion/decision-making-and-disarray-in-the-eu/
Democracy, so far as it goes, exists, but the parties are largely meaningless; they exist to provide the illusion of people power.
Economically, Progressivism permits private enterprise but subjects commerce to stringent and constant interference to achieve aims such as “social justice”, “diversity”, “health and safety” “environmental safety”.
Material Cause.
Communism consists of proles.
Progressivism consists of Brahmins or bobos: the middle class.
Efficient cause.
Communism achieves power via revolution. Communisms rules via top down command and control; its methods, beyond dictating, are force and fraud.
Progressivism achieves its aims firstly via electoral success; then, by constant bureaucratic expansion. Crucially, progressivism is able to reproduce and spread by capturing the universities and the media which produces new “managers”. Progressivists rule by laws, regulations, and social-shaming and employment purges. However, it also jails thought and speech criminals, and uses (by tolerating) fascist (anti-fascist) gangs to break up dissenters.
Progressivism maintains power by subverting and destroying rival institutions and power centres, and by importing the third world.
Final Cause.
Communism.
Communism is the final goal of Communism: the “withering” away of the state.
Progressivism’s goal is…… Formally it is peace, equality, liberty and wellbeing, justice, happiness, dignity. Really, its goal is to perpetuate the rule by bureaucrat.
Post French Revolution saw the left divide and evolve along two different paths: Marxist and Comtiean.
Good?
Question: Why did it not work? Why does Japan’s system work?
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue23/Locke23.htm
Three suggested answers:
A: Democracy and divided power which causes the left to undermine its enemy – the right, which results in disaster.
B: Crazy ideology.
C: No responsibility in Europe or America, while stronger in Japan. Furthermore, the Japanese bureaucrats are better educated, better trained and just better.
Other suggestions: Class conflict? IQ and personality differences? Too much cultural, racial and religious diversity?
On the character of progressives.
I have read that Orwell extract on their character before; however, that was a more fuller extract. Orwell was right on the mark.
Let me share an experience.
During the Brussels bombing last year, this woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federica_Mogherini
Broke down in tears:
As Michael Corleone said: “try to think as other people around you think.”
So, I was thinking and feeling of what other Muslims men might be thinking and feeling. And it was contempt, just contempt. Contempt at weakness. It was not pity or sympathy, but a desire to inflict cruelty for this pathetic display of weakness.
They see this, and they think Europeans are nothing but decadent, weak, cowards. The sad thing is, they would largely be right.
I mean look at the woman’s bio. She was a member of the Communist Party!!!!!
Also, right there in her wiki bio, it says that Islam belongs to the future of Europe.
I quoted from your essay, the part where Metternich said that the left only use Nationalism to win power and destroy its enemies in “reply” to David Frum who complained that the contemporary left despise Nationalism and who important Muslims and other third world immigrants in order to maintain power.
I thought this essay was excellent for helping us understand the origins and nature of progressivism as it contrasts with Communism.
Economically, Progressivism permits private enterprise but subjects commerce to stringent and constant interference to achieve aims such as “social justice”, “diversity”, “health and safety” “environmental safety”.
The rate of interference also increases as Progressivism spreads; they find it difficult to give their Corporate allies a breathe. It is interesting there is an occupy Wall Street despite Wall Street always trying appease the Progressives but there is no “Occupy the Universities” to protest exorbitant student loans.
This indicates to me Wall Street is not inherently Liberal because the Left wouldn’t antagonize it if it was part of the inner party. It’s more of a cooperative hostage with the Progs holding a regulatory gun to the head of Big Business while the latter uses its thumbprint to open the electronic safe.
Progressivism achieves its aims firstly via electoral success; then, by constant bureaucratic expansion. Crucially, progressivism is able to reproduce and spread by capturing the universities and the media which produces new “managers”.
They’ve had the universities for some time. And, again, I wouldn’t call their dominance in academia a takeover. Academia freely decided to revolt against tradition because in the new Technocratic order they are elevated into leadership for the first time.
The form or decision structure of Progressivism, or the EU is…..What exactly? The decision structure is an endless series or processes and procedures, committees and consultations. No one is in charge; sectors of responsibility and control are unclear.
The effect of EU and Progressive governmental structures on other governing bodies is similar to their effect on large corporations – Technocrats coexist with historically typical institutions while simultaneously undermining whatever remaining power they have. Progressives undermine them either by delegitimizing those institutions or corrupting/assimilating them by coercing them to collaborate on their self-destructive projects.
On the other hand the decentralized arrangement of the Progressive system slows the pace of their advance, frustrating both Conservatives and Progressives.
Post French Revolution saw the left divide and evolve along two different paths: Marxist and Comtiean.
Good?
Catastrophic for those living in the West.
Comte’s Technocracy turned out to be worse than Marxism, though because of the slow metastasizing of Bureaucratic state this didn’t become obvious until recently.
You’ve nicely summarized my argument.
If you were going to punch holes in my logic what arguments would you use against it?
By “Good” I meant is this an accurate description? You seem to agree, with caveats.
Thank you for the replies regarding the universities and economics. Looking back, even after I posted it, I would have considered making some changes. I think you are right there.
On poking holes in the logic and the project.
Well, we are here to serve.
Ok, here is an easy one.
1: What do you hope to accomplish with the genealogical tracing of the concept of progressivism?
Is it merely for truth and understanding, or is there a dialectical purpose, a critical purpose? How, do you think, it undermines the progressives? ( Rhetorically, you provide a target, a giant, and you take him done.)
(I have an intuition about you have done here, and, and well, I don’t even want to say it, perhaps you should not even say it…..What a Clever Boy You Are!)
2: The class analysis.
An ugly fact can kill a theory.
Was Lenin a prole?
From what I have read of him, he was not a prole, but….well…..middle class. (Can these terms be applied to Russia at that time?)
Lenin was apparently very smart, his family were not serfs, or manual labourers, and Lenin could have had a good career in the civil service!
However, I suspect you’re on the mark with Stalin.
Trotsky? Don’t know much about his origins…..
Mao and Deng were Proles, as were much of the top Chinese Communists.
Castro? Seems prolish.
Do we have any statistical evidence in support of the claim that communists are proles? Could you get one of your friends to find such information?
I am going to read the essay again, shortly, but I will finish with two more questions.
1: Echoing Baruch, I think, regarding, the question of completeness you need to provide more documentation of the influence and links to Comte. Maybe, this is coming. But my sense is that it could and should be expanded.
2: I don’t believe you have addressed the question of why progressivism does not work? Is it for those reasons I set out above?
Or, could it be that it is designed to fail?
(I think we both know, but it would be good to make clear:
Was Comte doomed to fail, or was it because of the dastardly English?
Shortly, I want to discuss with you the questions of intention and responsibility — both moral and legal.
(More to come.)
Best.
Oh, I came across this the other day, and saved it for you:
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/06/12/socialist_or_fascist
You seem to agree, with caveats.
Yes.
1: What do you hope to accomplish with the genealogical tracing of the concept of progressivism?
Is it merely for truth and understanding, or is there a dialectical purpose, a critical purpose? How, do you think, it undermines the progressives? ( Rhetorically, you provide a target, a giant, and you take him done.)
I have no philosophical purpose. My intention in tracing the origins of Progressivism is first for the sake of historical accuracy and secondly to understand how it functions in order to anticipate what it will do and determine what the best methods to defeat it are.
I also as a Hamiltonian Capitalist have an interest in clearly separating truly Capitalistic economics from Progressive economics since, as discussed, economically Technocracy as a state-capital hybrid has brought discredit on Capitalism for policy failures I view as more the fault of Technocratic policy.
Was Lenin a prole?
From what I have read of him, he was not a prole, but….well…..middle class. (Can these terms be applied to Russia at that time?)
Remember that the Russian Empire held onto serfdom into the second half of the 19th century. As a consequence virtually every Communist Revolutionary who was of middle class background had either a parent or grandparent who lived as a serf or peasant. This led to the emerging Russian middle class strongly identifying with prole interests and worker revolution despite the rapid development of the Russian Empire when serfdom came to an end.
Lenin’s father had been a serf who did well upon his emancipation. Though not technically a prole he was another example of a talented middle class Russian citizen who held prole political sentiments.
Do we have any statistical evidence in support of the claim that communists are proles? Could you get one of your friends to find such information?
I mentioned a number of Communist leaders in the article. Off the top of my head I know Schliapnakov was from a working class family, Pavel Dybenko was a nearly illiterate Ukrainian Cossack, and Nestor Makhno was a Ukrainian peasant.
Trotsky’s parents were wealthy farmers, but they were illiterate. Like Lenin his background could be classified as recent middle class with prole loyalties.
Kropotkin and Chicherin were former members of the nobility.
I am going to read the essay again, shortly, but I will finish with two more questions.
By all means.
1: Echoing Baruch, I think, regarding, the question of completeness you need to provide more documentation of the influence and links to Comte. Maybe, this is coming. But my sense is that it could and should be expanded.
Do you mean in terms of his influence with specific Progressive organizations such as Skull & Bones or his influence on other political thinkers, or both?
2: I don’t believe you have addressed the question of why progressivism does not work? Is it for those reasons I set out above?
Or, could it be that it is designed to fail?
I’m saving that largely for Part III. Part III should be not be as long as this article is (and therefore will be out sooner) because Part III will be a discussion of how the machinery of Technocracy works in practice whereas to create Part II I had to debunk multiple assumptions made about the history and nature of Leftism while simultaneously justifying my own hypotheses.
But I can answer some functional problems in the meantime.
Was Comte doomed to fail, or was it because of the dastardly English?
Have we forgotten the Swedes are also Protestant?… 🙂
Shortly, I want to discuss with you the questions of intention and responsibility — both moral and legal.
I’m more of a scientific cause-and-effect person, but if you have any philosophical questions I will be happy to answer.
(1/X)
I had an idea of typing into Google Comte and Walter Lippmann. The Rothbard article you linked had the connection via him and the new republic and Croly.
I will post my findings. This may or may not be useful to you, but maybe other readers, now and in the future, will find it useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann
(Lippmann is the founder of “media studies.” Perhaps, one of the most important men of the 20th century America. He also one the Presidential medal of freedom. )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism#Lippmann-Dewey
(What is the role of the Media. Lippmann’s view won out. Note that Lippmann’s philosophy is, not only influenced by Comte but it means the control and influence of the public by “experts.”
Lippmann is linked with Edward Bernays, via Baker and their propaganda work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_D._Baker (See Google links below. )
“Like other intellectuals who were involved in propaganda during World War I, Lippmann was profoundly interested in the relationship between public opinion and democracy. That considered, it should be clear that the focus of his work was not communication theory but rather the limits of democracy. He was not alone in his doubts about common assumptions regarding representative democracy. Edward Bernays, who like Lippmann worked for the Committee on Public Information during the war years, was attracted by the same topic. While Bernays presented himself as “the father of public relations” and worked within the field of commercial advertising, he also published several books on this topic, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (Bernays, 1923)and Propaganda (Bernays, 1928), his best known and most widely read book. In addition, several members of the Chicago School were studying these themes, along with Harold D. Lasswell in his famous Propaganda Technique in World War I (Lasswell, 1927). John Dewey, perhaps the greatest twentieth century American philosopher, also demonstrated his interest in these questions. He was an acute reviewer of Lippmann’s main works during the Twenties and the Thirties and his The Public and Its Problems (1927) reads like a long, optimistic reply to Lippmann’s theory of democracy and public opinion, whose conclusions ran counter to his approach as a pragmatist philosopher. In fact, when Dewey reviewed Public Opinion, he argued that it was “perhaps the most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived ever penned” (Dewey, 1922, p. 337). In Lippmann’s defense, it would now be fairer to say that he was not really attacking democracy. Rather, Lippmann was a true democrat who, in effect, was arguing for the necessity to think beyond the way the theory of democracy had been classically formulated.”
https://erea.revues.org/2538
Note the connections….
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ti7_q8TZ-BsC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=August+Comte+walter+lippmann&source=bl&ots=CZY-W12csB&sig=0PSMtPjvhrPsDhzxAve8tFjm5fM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLrd-I0ofSAhVLDMAKHXuoCPcQ6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=August%20Comte%20walter%20lippmann&f=false
Selected Works of Herbert Blumer.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lx7vjcIfPpQC&pg=PA128&lpg=PA128&dq=August+Comte+walter+lippmann&source=bl&ots=ZxFdmFAMYY&sig=uC8iJ6vL2y6KatlwFv85o7ageDc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLrd-I0ofSAhVLDMAKHXuoCPcQ6AEINzAF#v=onepage&q=August%20Comte%20walter%20lippmann&f=false
Religious Advocacy and American History.
This look very interesting. I pulled some quotes from reader reviews:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Positivist-Republic-Reconstruction-Liberalism-1865-1920/dp/0271026421
” The editors of the New Republic were … Comtean “in their vision and cultural emphasis. The three shared an important set of assumptions that were generally consistent with the positivism of Croly … all three were strongly critical of Marxian socialism and classical liberalism.”
The classical liberalism was the liberalism of the Founders. Yet Croly disliked the Founders, and like Beard and many others of his time he looked at them as subjects to run away from. As hart states on p. 197:
“To current the United States’s “erroneous democratic theory” and address its concomitant problems Croly articulated an answer in The Promise that also betrayed his organicism. Croly proposed a spirit of democratic nationalism as “the road whereby alone the American people can obtain political salvation.””
Harp goes on to discuss the Croly theory of the Administrator, that super executive, who would control everything, a scientific individual who would have the tools to make rational and correct decisions. This was a natural Comtean extension (see p. 208) but after the presidency of Wilson it appears as if Croly found his theory has flaws. Wilson was a disaster and was not the Progressive that Croly had thought when he first supported him.”
Note the following quote. Look at the pychological background to the author. He was one of your dissatisfied middle class types. The progressives hate hate hate the task of having to make money in the commercial sphere:
What inspired Croly to write The Promise of American Life? Croly addressed the question just once, and his answer has baffled generations of Gilded Age and Progressive Era scholars. “The idea which lies at the basis of ‘The Promise of American Life,’” he wrote in The World’s Work in June 1910, “first occurred to me about ten years ago, during a reading of Judge Robert Grant’s novel, ‘Unleavened Bread.’ In that story the author has ingeniously wrought out the contradiction subsisting between certain aspects of the American democratic tradition and the methods and aspirations which dominate contemporary American intellectual work. It struck me as deplorable that American patriotic formulas could be used with even the slightest plausibility to discourage competent and specialized individual intellectual effort, and I began to consider the origin and meaning of this contradiction, and the best method of overcoming it without doing violence to that which was best in the American democratic tradition.”
Every wing of the fractious progressive movement could find something of value in The Promise; Croly seemed to have discovered the underlying principles on which all their policy platforms rested. The book helped encourage Theodore Roosevelt to mount a presidential campaign in 1912, and both Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson later borrowed phrases from Croly in their subsequent political activities (“New Nationalism” for Roosevelt; “peace without victory” for Wilson). Vanderbilt heirs Willard and Dorothy Straight so admired the book that they installed Croly as editor-in-chief of their new magazine, The New Republic; Croly hired Walter Lippmann, Walter Weyl, Randolph Bourne, and a host of other brilliant journalists, and together they fashioned the publication into America’s most influential progressive journal.
The idea that Croly wrote the most influential political tract in a generation because he read what one scholar described frankly as “a rather bad novel” has not sat well with historians.[2] Croly’s biographer David Levy essentially dismissed the claim, saying that Croly “incorrectly assessed the importance of Grant’s novel and the questions it raised” and that he was “reading into the novel more than it contained.”[3] To Levy, the real intellectual influences on The Promise were Croly’s father David, David’s hero Auguste Comte, and Herbert’s Harvard professors: Josiah Royce, William James, and John Dewey. Charles Forcey, who wrote another significant book on Croly, took the role of Unleavened Bread more seriously. Forcey’s analysis focused on the novel’s hero, the architect Wilbur Littleton, whom he assumed Croly had identified with given Croly’s work at the Architectural Review. Forced by circumstance to design crassly commercial projects rather than upholding the artistic standards he believes in, Littleton eventually dies of overwork. “To Croly,” wrote Forcey, “Wilbur Littleton’s saga seemed a symbol for the central tragedy of American life. For Littleton had been destroyed…by America’s most cherished ‘patriotic formulas.’ The United States, argued Croly, was a country in which empty individualism had run riot, where individual merit was measured only in cash. … Croly’s vital concern for the intellectual in America goes far toward explaining both the origin and the essential meaning of The Promise of American Life.”
http://s-usih.org/2016/12/herbert-croly-unleavened-bread-and-progressivism-in-the-age-of-charisma.html
https://newrepublic.com/article/120193/how-new-republic-was-founded
(Consider the above link with the book cited in the last post.)
Two more books.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_OEPBt16JscC&pg=PT36&lpg=PT36&dq=August+Comte+walter+lippmann&source=bl&ots=_6vBdPij9u&sig=77ioWS3FTxf5a0KufwSMwNkP0yk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLrd-I0ofSAhVLDMAKHXuoCPcQ6AEIPjAH#v=onepage&q=August%20Comte%20walter%20lippmann&f=false
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ERGJfgsppfgC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=August+Comte+walter+lippmann&source=bl&ots=lUFgVmPiOU&sig=kNvft9HI5oYR2ZubHaOwh9SETVY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg1reP2YfSAhVlIcAKHRRlCaw4ChDoAQgsMAQ#v=onepage&q=August%20Comte%20walter%20lippmann&f=false
Also, when reading an article on the New Republic, I found the following. It supports your thesis of Progs V Proles.
“The building trades’ support of anything that creates a job, no matter the cost to the nation or the environment, has given the union movement a bad name in progressive circles. The pipeline battles have galvanized the left to fight for indigenous rights and against climate change. From the outset, O’Sullivan has been contemptuous of the rest of the progressive movement. Moreover, he has bullied other unions to stay out of the question of pipeline construction—seemingly forgetting that all of us have to live in a world plagued by dirty energy. And if the building trades keep this up, they will damage themselves by alienating the allies they need to survive the Trump era.”
“This kind of behavior is hardly new. The building trades have long aligned themselves with racist and exclusionary forces. The labor movement’s first major legislative victory in the United States was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which originated with California workers angry about Chinese competition. The trades consistently supported immigration restriction well after the Immigration Act of 1965 reopened America’s borders to the world’s tired and poor. The Congress of Industrial Organizations, founded in 1935 by United Mine Workers of America President John L. Lewis to organize the millions of workers in the nation’s industrial sectors, was necessary because the trades not only refused to allow women, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and unskilled workers into their unions, but also opposed any effort by other unions to organize them.”
“The broad-based social policies these unions fought for are now in the process of being repealed by an emboldened Republican Party. Public sector unions such as SEIU and AFSCME have filled some of that political vacuum, fighting for health care, higher minimum wages, and other economic justice programs. But the public sector unions are incredibly diverse, ranging from professors to home health care workers. They lack the common working class culture that would be needed to replicate the mass movements of the New Deal era.
As a result, the building trades once again hold an outsized amount of power within the labor movement. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is the most politically progressive labor federation leader in American history, with the possible exception of Reuther, but he is beholden to his constituent unions when shaping policy. He cannot take a strong stand in support of protesters stopping the Dakota Access Pipeline without alienating powerful people like McGarvey and O’Sullivan.”
“The repeal of Davis-Bacon will be sad. It will hurt workers and hurt unions. On the other hand, what have th”e building trades ever done for any other progressive group? With some exceptions, the trades have failed to understand the value of solidarity. In doing so, they are facing a situation in which they will have few allies in the fight to keep Davis-Bacon in place. Their short-sightedness is even greater considering the Muslim ban the Trump administration imposed last week. Any organization not fighting for our most vulnerable residents will not receive support from the left for its own goals.”
“The building trades have a singular obsession with jobs at any cost. That is understandable given the lack of union work in this country. But it also ignores the other concerns of their members—the civil rights of their black and Latino members, the need of their female members to have access to birth control and health care, and the universal need for a livable planet. Environmentalists have failed to reach out to the building trades by not demanding that our green energy infrastructure be union-made. But if LIUNA members are going to taunt environmentalists, and if building trade leaders are going to support Trump’s decision to run roughshod over indigenous rights by building the Dakota Access Pipeline, they bring the hostility of the left down on themselves.
Only a progressive labor movement that sees workers as part of a larger social movement for justice and equality can represent the interests of all working-class Americans, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or immigration status. The building trades have too often been the enemy of these goals. And by supporting Trump’s actions, they have done so again.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/140423/unions-betraying-left
(Game set and match don’t you think? This is caste and class warfare of Progs against Proles)
I found it interesting in your essay that Comte’s system was not only like the Catholic Church but was modelled on it. Last month, I wrote a very long essay that makes this point. I will post extracts below that map the similarities.
“Part 6: Catholicism and Universalism.
39: Catholic means universal. Roman Catholicism is a universal religion for all humanity because all humans are created equal in the eyes of God. All men, from all cultures, countries and races can be Catholics.
Roman Catholicism is a system comprising of beliefs, values and commands.
Roman Catholicism is a universal system.
40: Do the oligarchic class of Western democracies have an ideology, if so, what?
41: Claim: all members of the oligarchy share a fundamental, architectonic, belief in human equality and or uniformity: physical, psychological, and moral.
……
45: What are the similarities and differences between Catholicism and Universalism?
A: Both claim to be universally applicable, but with some subsidiarity (small scale, local variations in application and practice).
B: Both claim to have foundations in reason.
C: Both claim to be true, good and right.
D: Both claim to value and desire peace, but both accept the philosophical, moral and legal necessity of war to advance the aims of peace — peace according to their respective ideologies.
E: Both form comprehensive doctrines regarding politics, law, economics, education, morality, family, sex, race and other religions.
F: Both make use of authorities, authoritative texts and authoritative structures.
For example, the Catholic Church claims that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith; that priests have “teaching authority” and are responsible for the beliefs, values and behaviours of the flock; the Catholic Church makes use of a number of authoritative texts such as Canon law, Papal decrees, theological arguments and the Bible. The Catholic Church’s structure is based explicitly on hierarchy and authority.
Universalists, despite having no Pope, see Supreme Justices as, while not infallible, having final authority over all questions that are brought to it.
Teachers, professors and journalists, meanwhile, possess university granted, and institutional, government sanctioned authority to teach, inform, monitor and judge people’s beliefs, values and actions.
Priests, teachers and journalists are not elected, nor can they lose their authority and power via election or recall; they are not subject to the authority of elected politicians (a politician cannot fire journalists, teachers or professors).
Positive law is the ultimate textual source of authority for Universalists. Crafted by lawyers, lobbyists and other unknown persons; interpreted by lawyers and judges, and enforced by state-controlled police; individual consent and voluntary contract with these laws are, of course, irrelevant; compliance is absolutely categorical — unless so interpreted by a prosecutor or judge. (Needless to say, lawyers and judges – with some exceptions in America – are not elected and cannot be removed from public office by popular vote, or fired by politicians.)
Humans who are born into Universalist countries (America, England and Germany say) are as subject to these involuntarily imposed laws, as Muslims are to Sharia law in Saudi Arabia (a theocracy).”
Cont
“Universalists, furthermore, also have “authoritarian” (non-democratic) structures:
1: Local, State, Federal Courts and an International legal system. These legal systems are hierarchical and exclusive.
For example, entry requirements are university legal degrees, then entry examinations, then promotion (selection) from within the system. Finally, these legal systems are closed to democratic control, influence and accountability, except in an attenuated way. For example, in America, the President nominates Supreme Court Justices who are then passed with the Senate committee’s approval. As for the Judges of the European Court of Human Rights, they are elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Who elects the “Assembly”? National governments either selects, or their Parliament elects people to the Assembly.”
“2: Civil service bureaucracy. Local to national to transnational: Whitehall, the “Fed”, the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and, of course, the bureaucratic masterpiece: the European Union. Again, the civil service bureaucracies are hierarchical, exclusive, and closed to democratic control.”
3: The “Press”. Informal hierarchies, networks, “status publications” and cliques exist. The press frame the agenda, set the parameters of “discourse” and decide what and what not to focus on. The 2016 Presidential election has provided a wealth of information that demonstrates corruption, bias and the power of the press. However, following the election of Trump, it is clear that the traditional press is weakening influence and accountability.”
“4: The University system . Universities have formal hierarchies among professors, but also informal hierarchies of prestige (impact). Universities have league tables as well as informal hierarchies of prestige.
The most prestigious university in the world is Harvard University.
If a university is a church, and if the Vatican is the pre-eminent religious institution of the Catholic Church, then Harvard is like the “head church” —the “Vatican” — of Universalism.
Again, professors, departments, funding, and institutional behaviour are not subject to elections, except for small and unimportant universities.
However, universities, like with the judicial system, the civil service and the press, are entirely insulated from the “democratic will of the people”; carping malcontents in California have as much democratic power over Harvard as Hungarians do over Oxford.
What Harvard is to the universities, The New York Times is to the press.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger is the publisher and Chairman of the New York Times; he has, unsurprisingly, degrees from Tufts and Harvard. Harvard, Tufts and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are all in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is part of New England, America’s North East, where all the “Ivy League” universities are. New England was founded by English Puritan separatists. The most influential among the Puritans, were called “Boston Brahmins”.
“Again, to return to our theme of democracy and power, there is zero democratic control over the Times or Harvard University.
It is irrelevant if more people read the National Tattler as do the Times; because, as the Times has it with “all the news that’s fit to print”, all the people that matter read the New York Times.
And by people that matter, we mean the oligarchy.”
“The above people (those alive anyway) constitute an extended “social network” or a caste, an ideological/religious oligarchy. They rule America, and since America rules (much) of the world, they thus rule the world.
Harvard and other “Ivy League” universities are, by their very nature, “elite” institutions.
Elitism cannot co-exist with equality.
Elitism and aristocracy cannot co-exist with democracy.
Who? Whom?
5: Political Parties. Political Parties are oligarchies within the oligarchy. Their informal rule-based structure, the constant faction fights and political backstabbing; their vertical integration of town, county, state and country reveal them to be nothing more than a cartel, or an organised criminal fraternity who engage in racketeering, bribery, corruption and extortion of the subjects they wield near exclusive control over.
The American parties — Democrats and Republicans — probably receive billions of dollars’ worth of foreign money ( from states, monarchs, dictators and corporations) who in exchange for money receive whatever favours and privileges Senators and Presidents can grant.
The parties are nearly, but not quite, democracy proof. The Trump insurrection and the Bernie Sanders debacle have not only demonstrated gaping holes in the oligarch’s security fence but that the voting public is exasperated by the pre-selected, uniform, asinine candidates.”
All in all, 500 years after the Protestant Reformation, we now have a kind of inverted pre-Reformation Catholic Church.
Part 7: Conclusions, Implications and Further Considerations.
47: The conclusions drawn from this analysis then is the following:
The design and evolution of the oligarchical structure are not in service of democracy, or to advance democratic aims and agendas, but to expressly prevent it.
Click to access Post-Democracy.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/10/jurgen-habermas-europe-post-democratic
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/dec/06/mario-monti-technocracy-europe
Wikileaks Proves Primary Was Rigged: DNC Undermined Democracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-democracy
Again, governments can either be monarchies, democracies, or oligarchies.
The structure and composition of Western states are best defined as an Orwellian, ideological/religious oligarchy.
The problem, however, is that the oligarchical structure is out of control, like late Republican Rome.
https://darkreformation101.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/the-path-to-the-dark-reformation-part-a-democracy-power-and-the-modern-crisis/
(I think your on the money with what you say. I look forward to hearing your solutions. )
I was expecting more pushback on the idea Progressivism is not Communism, but it appears my article has made its case better than I had anticipated.
The links are excellent, thank you.
Just about every early Progressive you can look up was ultimately some sort of Comteian. I doubt there is one early Progressive who was not in agreement with his spin on scientific government.
Ward –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_F._Ward
While Durkheim is usually credited for updating Comte’s positivism to modern scientific and sociological standards, Ward accomplished much the same thing 10 years earlier in the United States. However, Ward would be the last person to claim that his contributions were somehow unique or original to him. As Gillis J. Harp points out in “The Positivist Republic”, Comte’s positivism found a fertile ground in the democratic republic of the United States, and there soon developed among the pragmatic intellectual community in New York City, which featured such thinkers as William James and Charles Sanders Peirce and, on the other hand, among the federal government scientists in Washington D.C. (like Ward) a general consensus regarding positivism.
Comte is the ultimate founder of all fields of Sociology (even if numerous other sub-fields of Sociology, such as media, were not founded directly by him) in the sense that he was the first to promulgate the previously unheard of idea that the Civil Service should be a ruling class.
If his Sociology had been restricted to a mere field of academic research it would be no more of a threat to civilization than chemistry is. His Sociology is a menace because it has morphed into a government of Sociologists.
Despite how catastrophic Sociology has failed as a system of government, in a way Comte was farsighted.
Technocratic government seemed justifiable to Dewey, Ward, Croly, Lippmann, Keynes, and the rest of the Progressives when they were surrounded by unprecedented economic, scientific, and cultural change that seemed to require elite scientific managers.
Comte, on the other hand, reached his conclusions in the first half of the 19th century when science and economics was not noticeably different from what it was in the early 18th century. For him to see a political opening for bureaucrats to seize the reigns of government was quite ahead of his time.
Game set and match don’t you think? This is caste and class warfare of Progs against Proles
Lets go with Prigs since Orwell nailed it first. Or some derivative of Prig. ‘Prigressive’ doesn’t sound right, but I’m sure there are more potential variations out there.
What are the similarities and differences between Catholicism and Universalism?
Both seek perfection of man, but Catholicism is a restrained system because it says man cannot be perfected by any worldly power. While humanity waits to be perfected governments must manage imperfections rather than taking it upon themselves to solve them completely.
Bureaucracy is unconstrained because, not believing in any kind of god or supernatural moral law whatsoever, the duty to perfect man is the responsibility of secular rulers.
Hence the embrace of extreme nurturism: If man has any severe biological limitations on his intelligence, personality or behavior, equality (don’t mind the Sociology priesthood!!) and the government programs required to make a success out of social engineering will fail no matter what intervention is dreamed up.
When Marx called Comteism “shit” he wasn’t joking.
The major divergence between Catholicism and Bureaucratic Dictatorship is that there is no “Pope” of Bureaucracy. The different Progressive interest groups are largely operating independently of the others in terms of their daily routines. They do coordinate spontaneously to bring social upheaval because they all have an interest in grabbing power for their particular sub-niche within the Progressive ecosystem. But when they capture or destroy an institution they are incapable of then governing it because Progressive power is so diffuse across multiple interest groups that there is no “Pope” that can give them orders.
In a way Progressivism is decentralized Communism.
The structure and composition of Western states are best defined as an Orwellian, ideological/religious oligarchy.
Are Progressives Orwellian or Huxleyian?
Orwell’s 1984 was an analysis of the hypocrisies of Communist governments that were initially founded to benefit the working class.
In Huxley’s Brave New World the scientific elite of his dystopia exist in a Comteian government: His world is ruled by a ‘priesthood’ of scientific elites who socially engineer every action of the average citizen. There is no indication (if I recall correctly) that this elite was installed on the back of a proletarian revolt as the power blocs in 1984 were.
I believe Comte’s vision is closest to Huxley’s dystopia, not Orwell’s although I am grateful to good old George for providing me with material so appropriate for this article.
Yes. That is a good point about the Pope and Catholicism. Somehow I don’t think the Prig Universalism will last as long.
Prig V Proles sounds good. Prigism.
BTW. There potential for a clever strategy here is that in the name of Marx (but really just anarchy) many young leftists will rebel against the prigs. Furthermore, those on the left from the prole classes, or lower middle classes can also aim fire at them.
I must confess that the whole Comte thing would have fascinated me many years ago. I too, would have went for the kind of system he wanted. However, regarding economics, I would always had the good sense, not actually knowing anything about the subject, that the best thing is to keep the government away as much as possible.
The subject of good governance has fascinated me for many years. For fun, I used to plan out changes to the Roman system that Augustus could have made.
Ironically, it was Caesar and Napoleon who awakened me to the potential of what a true leader of men can do. I have always been fascinated by war, and I studied how the greats did it. Then, I would check that against our current practice.
The whole thing is FUBAR.
The funny thing is we are run by bunch of weak limp wrist cowards. All it takes is a Napoleon to sweep these hated “directors” away.
Ok, let’s try out a thought experiment.
We are running Nuremberg 2.0.
Who, Whom?
How much do they know? How much, and to what extent, can they be blamed?
(I have an idea for article The Genocide: A Progressive Perspective.)
The funny thing is we are run by bunch of weak limp wrist cowards. All it takes is a Napoleon to sweep these hated “directors” away.
And the Directorate was more formidable than these collection of weirdos.
How much do they know? How much, and to what extent, can they be blamed?
I’m actually not sure.
As Moldbug argued no one is actually in control of this odd Politburo; there is no Progressive ‘Pope’ running this farrago or an identifiable oligarchy as in post-Stalin Russia.
Take this, ” for example:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Andrew_Neather
That’s intentional. The question then is how much they can they be held to account for the subsequent consequences. At best, the New Labour jokers could be accused of gross negligence, given that it was pre 9/11. When I learned about that for the first time, my first thought was of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference
(Which I learned about in school, and watched a pretty good BBC docudrama on. )
Someone like Merkel or Obama or Clinton, however, is different. There is no way they could plead ignorance.
My belief is that *they* know exactly what they are doing. When I say *they* I mean the higher ups the “sociopath” types who run governments and corporations, the rest are dupes and “useful idiot” types.
My mind goes back and forth, but I believe that it is all part of a plan. Even the Middle East debacles are all there for a purpose.
BTW What are your thoughts on the recent Iran “scare”?
I was thinking that maybe the U.S should let Israel, with Saudi Arabia’s tacit endorsement, take care of the problem, and the U.S can step in if Iran gets carried away in response.
What happened to Fillion in France? A set-up? Who? Russians? Americans? French Left?
If he leaves, or is knocked out, then it is Macron v Le Pen.
If Macron wins, nothing will change, except that it will get worse. Is Le Pen going to win?
On Zero Hedge one post claimed that the elites are setting up the Nationalists for a economic crash. Bring them in, then pull the plug.
Someone like Merkel or Obama or Clinton, however, is different. There is no way they could plead ignorance.
My belief is that *they* know exactly what they are doing.
I don’t agree about Merkel and Clinton. I think their actions are consistent with the belief Technocracy can socially engineer Muslims into peaceful Swiss.
Obama I believe intentionally brought Muslim terrorists to power, Clinton simply believed moderate Muslims would take power.
But what is actually going on in their heads is speculative and ultimately not provable, what I’m more interested in is how to defeat them regardless of their actual intentions.
BTW What are your thoughts on the recent Iran “scare”?
I was thinking that maybe the U.S should let Israel, with Saudi Arabia’s tacit endorsement, take care of the problem, and the U.S can step in if Iran gets carried away in response.
I’m happy with the status quo where Iran does not have a nuclear weapon which would give them immunity (short of an extreme provocation on their part) to cause more problems. I don’t see what good could come from their acquisition of nuclear weapons therefore I see nothing wrong with targeted airstrikes to knock out their program by either Israel or the United States.
I discuss the Iran situation here –
https://pragmaticallydistributed.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/trump-and-irans-nuclear-program-the-hamiltonian-perspective/
What happened to Fillion in France? A set-up? Who? Russians? Americans? French Left?
There was probably no setup.
Although the French shrug off their politicians having affairs, financial scandals traditionally do harm candidates.
It is more likely that he was arranging for his wife to be paid excessively and got caught. It is no one’s fault but his own.
The Progressive establishment doesn’t benefit from him dropping. He is more likely to defeat Le Pen in a runoff thanks to his rural and small town popularity among Catholics. Fillon is pro-Russian so there isn’t much reason for the Russians to get involved. Even if Fillon were anti-Russian he wouldn’t be much of a threat to Russia now that Trump is opening diplomatic channels again (an action of Trump’s which I favor).
The French Left could have leaked information to investigators, but financial wrong doing by any politician in the West is considered perfectly fair game for opposition researchers.
If Macron wins, nothing will change, except that it will get worse. Is Le Pen going to win?
Fillon would be harder for her to beat IMO. Second round polls don’t agree with me on that, but I think Le Pen could draw greater contrasts with herself and the Liberal Macron than she could against Fillon who has been moving right on immigration (if only rhetorically…) and who is popular with Conservative Catholics.
Macron vs Le Pen I won’t try to predict because the French are so contrarian and inscrutable.
On Zero Hedge one post claimed that the elites are setting up the Nationalists for a economic crash. Bring them in, then pull the plug.
I’m not inclined towards Zero Hedge-like thinking about the elites having a master plan. Most of the time their failures are master screwups caused by faulty Liberal assumptions (or “presumptions”…)
The euro will go up in flames if there is a crash and probably pull much of the world down with it. That won’t be of any help to the Technocrats who look to the EU as nearest to their ideal post-democratic state.
If the eurozone does go down in flames the blow could be cushioned thanks to economic steam building in America and China. But no one has ever seen the currency of ~20% of world GDP disintegrate.
“Part 3: Church, State and Democracy in America.
Section A: The Orwellian State.
17: We claim that America is an Orwellian state.
A: There are three, complementary, meanings of the term “Orwellian”.
B: The first sense is a state whose government advertises itself as one thing, but is, in reality, another. For example, the People’s Republic of China is governed by the Communist Party which advertises itself as “Communist”. However, are they actually adhering to the principles of Marx-Leninism? No.
C: The second sense of the term is a state which uses propaganda to “manufacture consent”. Manufacturing consent or propaganda can extend to anything — anything.
D: The third sense is a state that uses surveillance, informants, “struggle sessions” and “five minute hates” to practice and enforce thought-control or crimethink.
E: We claim that America is an Orwellian state in all three senses.
…..
The structure maintains its control via massive, invasive, ingenious propaganda, mass distraction and manufactured controversy; in addition, the structure makes use of thought-police, crimethink and good-think, informants and surveillance; purges, show trials, inquisitions and the occasional use of paramilitary violence.
The structure’s Orwellian sham of multi-party democracy maintains the illusion of choice and competition.
The structure’s ingenious hybrid of Huxlean hedonism and Orwellian thought-control has allowed it to bamboozle and brow-beat not only its own people but foreign states; ironically, it has bamboozled even itself:”
https://darkreformation101.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/the-path-to-the-dark-reformation-part-a-democracy-power-and-the-modern-crisis/
See also:
https://radishmag.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/orwell-vs-huxley/
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/the.real.lessons.of.1984.have.nothing.to.do.with.donald.trump/104193.htm
On Criminal Responsibility and Intentions.
Intentions matter for moral and legal judgement.
I believe there is a “plan”.
Are you aware of this book:
http://www.staugustine.net/our-books/books/the-slaughter-of-cities/
I live in a country where this sort of thing was once done on a “national” scale. We still live with the consequences to this day.
I think I have provided evidence of such a plan in other posts. (I think it was the first time I posted, or the second. I can provide more if you suspect.)
But, of course, defeating them first is the prime concern.
B: The first sense is a state whose government advertises itself as one thing, but is, in reality, another. For example, the People’s Republic of China is governed by the Communist Party which advertises itself as “Communist”. However, are they actually adhering to the principles of Marx-Leninism? No.
Slightly disagree.
The reason they still call themselves Communist is due to governmental inertia. Remember that the transition of the Chinese economy from Maoism to Deng’s style of Crony Capitalism took decades once the Great Helmsman croaked in 1976. During that transition many of the old guard Chinese leaders still considered themselves to be proper Marxists. That leadership has mostly died off; but while they were in power it wasn’t politically feasible to legally change China’s title from a People’s Republic. Whether they do make the death of Chinese Communism official or not I doubt it makes a difference at this point given how entrenched Crony Capitalism now is over there.
I also get the impression the Chinese people themselves are aware of the fact they are not Communist and are comfortable with it.
The structure maintains its control via massive, invasive, ingenious propaganda, mass distraction and manufactured controversy; in addition, the structure makes use of thought-police, crimethink and good-think, informants and surveillance; purges, show trials, inquisitions and the occasional use of paramilitary violence.
The structure’s Orwellian sham of multi-party democracy maintains the illusion of choice and competition.
The structure’s ingenious hybrid of Huxlean hedonism and Orwellian thought-control has allowed it to bamboozle and brow-beat not only its own people but foreign states; ironically, it has bamboozled even itself:”
You as well as Huxley and Orwell were being too optimistic – a trait no doubt genetically ingrained universally within the English genome.
The conditioning is pervasive but totally moronic. The Orwellian propaganda and actual implementation of Huxleyian Sociological policy have merged with the stupidity and incompetence of Idiocracy.
The propaganda is good enough to get them frequently across the electoral finish line, but it isn’t nearly persuasive enough to condition nearly 100% of the citizenry as the states in Huxley and Orwell’s dystopias do.
On Criminal Responsibility and Intentions.
Intentions matter for moral and legal judgement.
Metternich disagrees. Discerning intent is not a primary concern of Imperial government:
https://pragmaticallydistributed.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/conversations-with-prince-metternich/
The execution of criminals became the subject of conversation. The Prince defended this extreme. rigour of the law in cases of murder saying that it should not be view in the light of punishment but of prevention only. Therefore he thought judges should never enter into the question whether a convicted murderer were a monomaniac or not, but leave him to be executed as a warning to others. Besides, it would be dangerous for society if it were established that eccentric indulgence in unbridled passions should they lead to murder, might be excused on the score of unsound mind, Prince Schönburg mentioned a project in Saxon to abolish public executions, and to have them take place in jails before certain public functionaries.
This plan Prince Metternich decidedly disapproved of; it would be as well, he said , to do away with capital punishments altogether, for the object being to deter by the example of a painful and ignominious death, the public at large would soon cease to believe in executions if they took place within the precincts of jails, and before social persons only. A little incident amused me in the course of this conversation. Prince Schönburg expressed his doubts whether cases of monomania should be exempted from capital punishment or not , and whilst apparently anxious for the solution of this question, and without allowing time or its discussion, he started another question, viz., Whether executions at all were useful? Prince Metternich immediately, and in no very gentle manner, desired him not to confound two distinct questions, nor whilst requiring an answer to one, to expect at the same time an answer to the other. He alluded to the frequency of such illogical proceedings in conversation, and to the confusion which they cause in arguments. I had previously been struck with the minute attention to the arrangement in his own mind of every subject the Prince conversed upon, and to the logical order in which he placed his arguments. One part he would distinguish by the letter A, another as B , &c.; and so he went on to give his explanations and work out his train of reasoning.
I live in a country where this sort of thing was once done on a “national” scale. We still live with the consequences to this day.
I think I have provided evidence of such a plan in other posts. (I think it was the first time I posted, or the second. I can provide more if you suspect.)
The reason I call into question whether Technocracy is a conspiracy is that to be a conspiracy it must be largely kept a secret.
As I see things they’ve been fairly upfront about their major objectives except for their borrowing of Revolutionary Proletarian rhetoric.
But what does their use of a worker’s rights platform say about the worker? That the proles were happy to be thrown over a cliff by an Orwellian Socialist dystopia so long as they could have their Social Security, NHS, and EU welfare opiates delivered with an IV directly into the bloodstream, but in the end they were thrown over the cliff by a Huxleyian Sociological dystopia?
As for other pieces of the Progressive agenda when have they ever said they were not for global human rights? Human rights must be protected by laws, and laws are written by governments; therefore human rights must be delivered by a global government which – by pure coincidence – will be run by the Progressives themselves.
I agree with your comment about China; however, my point still stand.
The point was that here is a government that still, however falsely, claims to be one thing, but is in fact another.
On Propaganda.
Well, to us. But it works on quite a lot of people, including the so called “educated” classes. Indeed, they are the ones most affected.
On the Plan.
Yes, and that is what is so odd. There is nothing really hidden in what they want to do. They are quite upfront about it. However, what is not spelled out is all the death and destruction that will have to happen. What they have also not considered is what if it all, as it most likely will, go wrong.
On Metternich and Deterrence.
I enjoyed that passage when I read it. In particular, I enjoyed the fact that he said to do it in public so that the deterrent effect would be stronger.
I think that the justice system should have 3 purposes:
1: Isolate the dangerous.
2: Reform the miscreant.
3: Deter future miscreants by punitive measures.
It is, of course, possible that these three goals will conflict. I’m still not sure what a sound justice would look like.
However, I think intentions are important to determining what kind of response ought to be taken.
Someone who carried out violent attacks intentionally should face punitive measures. Crimes committed by accident, or by reason of insanity, should be treated differently.
A terrorist who kills a police officer should be executed in my book as a standing policy of deterrenve. However, a schizophrenic should not. The reason should be clear.
The problem, of course, is that lawyers, activists, and academic types will want to inflate the concept of mental illness…..
The point was that here is a government that still, however falsely, claims to be one thing, but is in fact another.
Every government that has ever existed engaged in some form of propaganda.
But Orwellian/Huxleyian propaganda is not within historic norms; it is propaganda taken to warped levels. As far as I can discern China’s unofficial transition to Capitalism isn’t covered up with extreme conditioning. They just sort of ignore the question, go about with the state’s program, and the people don’t worry about the situation.
Yes, and that is what is so odd. There is nothing really hidden in what they want to do. They are quite upfront about it.
In Europe I find the Technocratic elite to be especially upfront about their embrace of post-democracy (such as Prodi, Barrasso, etc). At least compared to American Prigs. According to Ambrose Evans Pritchard, Prodi admitted the euro was designed to fail so that the EU could step into the aftermath of a crisis and grab even more power for itself.
Here in America the Progressives are more circumspect, though far from pretending to be nationalists.
However, what is not spelled out is all the death and destruction that will have to happen. What they have also not considered is what if it all, as it most likely will, go wrong.
ISIS has been spelling it out in America and Europe. And yet much of the citizenry is indifferent as long as they can have their transgender surgery, gluten free menus, or whatever.
However, I think intentions are important to determining what kind of response ought to be taken.
That puts you to the Left of Metternich who would have judges not take mental stability into account…
The problem, of course, is that lawyers, activists, and academic types will want to inflate the concept of mental illness…..
Ah well, rejoice in the fact once the Empire is restored you will be able to execute Mr Neather and the rest of New Labour regardless of their intentions.
On China.
Ok, well this is straight MM. The regime’s political formula (per Mosca) is contradicted by an accurate perception of the political reality. I brought it up to illustrate a glaring example of it.
You write:
“In Europe I find the Technocratic elite to be especially upfront about their embrace of post-democracy (such as Prodi, Barrasso, etc). At least compared to American Prigs. According to Ambrose Evans Pritchard, Prodi admitted the euro was designed to fail so that the EU could step into the aftermath of a crisis and grab even more power for itself.”
The worse it gets the better it will be. I had never heard of that, but it does not surprise me. If true, then it simply goes to my hypothesis that they know what they are doing. Chaos and destruction actually benefits them. I’m sure you are familiar with Sailer’s “invade the world invite the world?”
BTW are you no longer doing your circular thing? I thought you were going to post something on consciousness?
Thanks for chatting.
Ok, well this is straight MM. The regime’s political formula (per Mosca) is contradicted by an accurate perception of the political reality. I brought it up to illustrate a glaring example of it.
I don’t think they are pushing the false perception of their being Communist hard enough for the propaganda to be Orwellian.
Orwellian propaganda is dramatic because of how distant what the state says is true is from what is actually true.
But if the distance is narrow there is no novel: “‘We have sort of always been at war with Capitalist powers’, says Chinese Politburo, ‘but not really, or at least not if they are going to finance our industrial policy and if we can extort carbon tax credits from the WTO and West while we saturate our atmosphere with toxic metals, and Mao is dead so what does he know. And hey, if you find out we’re actually Fascists now it makes no difference because we don’t care what you think but continue being good worker & consumer drones because ideology doesn’t matter anymore – thanks Deng!'” .
Chaos and destruction actually benefits them. I’m sure you are familiar with Sailer’s “invade the world invite the world?”
Different topic and not relevant in the EU’s case: There’s no invasion involved in a euro collapse.
EMU as a mechanism of destruction is very original because no tyrant of history – not Stalin, Pol Pot, or Genghis Khan – ever thought of using their own country’s currency as a weapon of terror against their own people.
BTW are you no longer doing your circular thing?
It will return – I just haven’t had time while I was putting the finishing touches on a certain ~40 page article.
Some good quotes here by Brahmins on proles:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/what-orwell-discovered-in-the-north