eye logo

 

And just uploaded 11.25.13: “Miklos Nyiszli Lessons on ‘Class’” (pdf file) [in development… will update frequently…]

 

And just uploaded 01.26.14: “Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness…” (pdf file) [in development… will update frequently…]

 

Diana Spearman Excerpt:

* From Modern Dictatorship

 

 

 

Our Challenge…

 

Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness”…

–––

Begun on December 24, 2014

 

(All we’re asking for is a choice… and the power to choose… we are the streets of Kiev… of Caracas… of Suez…)

–––

 

This continues the conversations: Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class and

 

You Know How I Know 'Localization'… or 'Democratic Economics'… Is A Con? and Conversation with Joel McIver)

 

 

–––

The Second Coming

 

by W. B. Yeats

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Like Chinua Achebe I like that line – “Things fall apart”– if not the poem’s full sentiment… implying that so-called ‘civilization’ is holding ‘the wild’ at bay… if this is his meaning it’s a convenient illusion (for ‘rulers’) in which we all (in ‘class’) are trained… and certainly it’s the con-in-chief in pundit speech. He had truth in his hand, I think, but could not keep it: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…” ‘Life will out…’ I suppose the question is… whether you want that falcon to fly free or not…

 

In this space we will hopefully get clearer on what we got… and what we want…. Our ancestors who pondered how to create a new society – like Bentham… like De Tocqueville… like Marx… like Kropotkin… and like Plato – understood that you have to do both.

 

(It’s interesting that for all of the above except Kropotkin ‘class’ was a given.)

 

And De Tocqueville’s point that to see the full adult… you must see the infant…

…we must watch the infant in his mother’s arms… if we would understand the prejudices, the habits, and the passions which will rule his life. The entire man is, so to speak, to be seen in the cradle of the child.

The growth of nations presents something analogous to this… they all bear some marks of their origin… (Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Vol. 1, p. 10)

…we’ve never asked ourselves to consider when it comes to ‘class.’

 

Perhaps before we can be done with class… we must first be done with its key ideology… ‘democracy’… and that a good place to begin this discussion is to recall what was said in our January 12th, 2014 show: that the notion of ‘citizen – barbarian’ is inherent in all of the ideologies of class… not just fascism… and in that light to consider the work of ‘democracy’s most meticulous student and teacher… and perhaps accidental propagandist… De Tocqueville.

 

–––

 

Recently (12.29.13) I heard a pundit say, referring to the growth of income inequality: “This extreme inequality is not compatible with American democracy…” implying… as all Left pundits do… that ‘the system’ (in this case the political system…) can be ‘fixed’… by… – and we can all probably recite the so-called ‘solutions’ proffered: “tax corporate profits”… cap CEO salaries”… “get money out of politics”… “repeal Citizens United”… “end corporate personhood”… and these ‘feel-good’ faux-answers are generally well-received before audiences… despite the absence of any plan for how to get there… beyond the bare word ‘organize’.

 

And in all such analysis as this… the primary concern is always the system… that it’s being undermined…. The center of concern is never that we deserve self-determining lives.

(…it should perhaps be added that ‘self-determination’… to their minds… could never arise as a standard… allegiance to the parents [the state] forestalls even the thought. “What does that mean?” I can imagine them asking… and… actually… quite understandably… given that the infrastructure for being self-determining… individually… under ‘power’… under ‘class’… has been prevented from being… and so… it’s up to us now… to figure it out.)

But let’s take a moment to consider her words further by suggesting that it’s the word ‘extreme’ alone that troubles her… and not the built-in inequality. (In fact… ‘the [class] system’ tends towards extremes… this is no less true if it calls itself a ‘democracy’. The imbalance that is most key… which always heightens under class… is the externalization and growth of one’s leadership capacities… because the vast majority are kept merely surviving… made to fall asleep… and dream… and the hope allowed to live… is most often for… a ‘Daddy’…as it dovetails nicely with ‘Il Duce’….)

(And just today [01.23.14] I listened to a pundit who shed further corroborative light on this knee-jerk capitulation / regurgitation of “fix the state”. He was making his case… staking his complicity-claim… on the faux-solution that “only the state has the resources to fight climate change…” i.e. “only Daddy can do this…” is what I think his unconscious is saying. “He sounds like an abandoned child,” I said to my son… and then I recalled this man’s story… his anger and pain at his father’s leaving….

 

A lot of us ‘need’ to believe that there is such a thing… as what we have lost.

 

I don’t too often mention names… unless the pundit is clearly ‘power’s scout in a campaign… because these belief systems are structurally-made – there’s a reason they all sound the same… so it’s the structure that needs to be exposed and explained.

 

And speaking of scouts and floating notions… I just heard a really scary one [on the PBS News Hour of January 24th, 2013…] from one of ‘power’s most dutiful propaganda-planters… David Brooks… who was plugging Jerry Brown as a stealth candidate for his masters. That this man (Brown) would sell his soul – and throw us under the bus [that goes without saying…] for a shot at a seat at the Big Boy’s table… he has amply demonstrated.)

Because unless she denies that the ‘citizen’ – ‘barbarian’ divide… is at the root of all ‘class’ ideologies – and that ‘class’ itself provides the fundamental raison d’etre for the state – then necessarily there’s built-in inequality. So it seems she’s quibbling about ‘degree’ merely… complaining that the restraints on our wrists pinch… essentially… she’s but begging… “please ease the pressure on my brothers and sisters…”

(…and she means of course that it undermines the ideology of ‘democracy’ – i.e. its legitimacy in our eyes – and in this she and De Tocqueville are agreed… but here even more clearly, then, can be seen… her utter capitulation before ‘class’… i.e. belief in its ‘necessity’…)

So the problem is… she’s alright with the essence of the system…

…she’s not bothered… fundamentally.

 

And so Robert Shaw nailed it… they aren’t bothered, these pundits… they dwell too snug… too deep… in the dream…and so never question the terms by which we are required to live our lives…. They see their role as amelioration… not refusing to accept enslavement… or ‘barbarian’-status… for any of us….

 

Far more helpful… for any serious intent to end ‘power’s privilege… would be an authentic discussion of the assumptions hidden in the word ‘democracy’… i.e. discussion… finally… of the concrete realities of the word… of what is, and is not, possible… realizable… within the terms – which the word confers…

(…and here… with De Tocqueville’s help… I’m hoping to show how ‘class’ hides in the word ‘democracy’… as well as to show that in large measure De Tocqueville provides ‘power’ its ‘modern’ training manual… helps it with their project… of maintaining the illusion… that there is no fundamental divide being systematically created… and recreated continuously… by the state… i.e. with the illusion… of ‘democracy’…

 

…and – as was said in the Nascence blog “‘Digital Athens’? Or Last-Ditch Drama?” – that we’re chasing our tails when we seek to ‘improve’ ‘democracy’ – while ‘class’ lingers undiscussed and so unexamined in the word ‘democracy’… shattering our inherent wholeness –putting us at the mercy of those who own – take responsibility for – the whole… i.e. the philosopher-statesmen… and that it is only by reclaiming our wholeness that we can challenge the statesmen. In other words… ‘democracy’ itself shatters our inherent wholeness… necessarily… because the state shatters our inherent wholeness… the issue is the state… the particular legitimating ideology is a diversion…)

– the terms that have been established for our lives… by ‘statesmen’. For these rules did not descend from the sky… were not floated down on tablets from on high and sanctified… no… privileged statesmen thought them up… and got the majority to go along… because the majority… then as now… were too busy with simply surviving to quibble much about ‘the law’.

Next to its habits, the thing which a nation is least apt to change is its civil legislation. Civil laws are only familiarly known to legal men, whose direct interest it is to maintain them as they are, whether good or bad, simply because they themselves are conversant with them. The body of the nation is scarcely acquainted with them; it merely perceives their action in particular cases; but it has some difficulty in seizing their tendency, and obeys them without premeditation. (De Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Vol. 1, p. 30)

 

Diana Spearman describes it this way:

 

It is clear that in this aspect dictatorship is a development of tendencies inherent in a democratic system itself; tendencies arising from a misunderstanding of the nature of democracy. Professor Laski [H. Laski, The State in Theory and Practice, 1936] is clearly right when he says that the services which parties have rendered to the democratic state are inestimable, but clearly wrong when he includes amongst those services that they are among “the most solid obstacle we have against the danger of Caesarism.” Nothing is easier than for the democratic party itself to evolve into an instrument of dictatorship. The historical destruction of democracy through its own parties is assisted by the modern development of government from the administrative side. Dictatorship and democracy are not proceeding in opposite directions but on parallel lines…. (p. 174)

 

A legislative assembly is not constructed to perform executive duties. But the Cabinet’s power is also due to its command of the time of the House. Measures not favoured by the government have a very small chance of reaching the Statute Book, because the mass of legislation introduced by the government in every session requires the whole time of the House if it is to be dealt with. Democracy has insisted on government intervention to an ever greater extent in an ever wider field, and democracy has thus produced the conditions which tend to remove the power from the legislature. The sheer amount of work which has to be got through means that the government is forced to monopolize the time of the House.

[…And we must note… the same effect extends from the shadow government… which is occasionally seen… in the actions that result from ‘think-tanks’… corporate lobbying… and groups like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council…) – P.S.]

The discipline exercised by the parties over their members has been continuously growing. This is an inevitable consequence of the development of party government. If the government is to be efficiently carried on through the system of opposed parties, the party leaders must be able to depend on the votes of their followers. (Diana Spearman, (from Chapter IV, “Authoritarian Tendencies in Democracy,” Modern Dictatorship, 1939, p. 176)

For me what’s key… the uniform theme… is that… (we’re taught to believe that…) to get ‘anything done’… there must be obedience…

(…and I mean not merely that we’re trained to allow our reasoning capacity to be directed by others… but that we are structurally rendered obedient [both De Tocqueville and Spearman see this clearly…])

…‘obedience’…one definition of which could authentically be: “the forestalling – and ultimate killing – of thought… of the independent existence of one’s own authentic reason.” ‘Self-directed reason’ is not only not required for the state to function… for the state to allow it would interfere with its ‘smooth operation’ (and so is punished…) is ‘statutorily’ nullified… by which I mean that the ‘Statute Book’ feeds on our blood.

 

And so a clearer… and more inclusive and practical (and so more accurate…) version of that De Tocqueville quote I cite in Unpacking ‘Democracy’ – “if you can get ‘the many’ chasing money… it leaves the few who play the higher stakes of ‘power’ freer to pursue their ambition…” – would be: “…if you can get the vast majority stuck in simply surviving (or ‘getting things done’… ‘accomplishment’…) it leaves the infinitesimal few freer to pursue their global game of ‘supremacy’ – the pursuit of ‘Knowledge Infinite.’” Diana Spearman’s book, Modern Dictatorship (excerpts and discussion of which can be found both in Palmers’ Chat: As We Take Our Earth Back… A Call To Reclaim… Our Earth… Our Thoughts… Our Minds… It’s Time – see its Table of Contents – and in Revealing Division) is helpful for understanding this underlying motive of ‘power’. The philosopher-king-statesmen reason that if they can own / control ‘all’ the ‘Knowledge’ – and particularly the ‘knowledge’ of how to kill us (see the January 26th, 2014 show…) – then their ‘supremacy’ can never be challenged.

 

This practical angle can be expressed slightly differently… thereby shedding even more light on this matter of ‘what we got’… in having ‘democracy.’ De Tocqueville (p. 56 – 7) describes the broad dissemination of the administrative function… both in allowing the township exclusive responsibility for the implementation and enforcement of State mandates… and in this administrative function being fragmented into non-interdependent parts… with each functionary in charge of his or her part responsible only for its own action. In this way… it’s less ‘machine-like’ – which implies central control toward accomplishing a goal – and more: ‘central control in monopolizing central control’… bringing to mind a circular action rather than a forward motion… a treading in place… allowing ‘power’ (which doesn’t have a thousand thousand rules dragging on its ankles… impeding action…) both freedom of movement and privacy in which to do it… as the rest of us are too busy trying to maneuver in the muck of laws to notice what is in any case cloaked in secrecy – well-shielded from media scrutiny.

 

So ‘democracy’… or… ‘rule of law’ installed by ‘majority vote’… in practice means… immobility – ‘no change’ – Plato’s ‘best state’ is proceeding apace… and sometimes the route it takes is dictatorship… and sometimes ‘democracy’… which offers the ‘plus’ that some are allowed to pretend they are ‘free’… so between ‘dictatorship’ and ‘democracy’ the only distinguishing quality is… for the latter… better drugs… better illusions.

 

‘Power’ keeps ‘the people’ busy pretending to be free… while it pursues supremacy…

…or… “if you can get the many mired in minutiae… it leaves the few who play the higher stakes of ‘power’ freer to pursue their ambition.”

 

And as discussed in the March 9th, 2014 Waking Up Radio show… it’s De Tocqueville who provides ‘power’ with this needed guidance:

The communities therefore in which the secondary functionaries of the government [local and state legislators] are elected, are perforce obliged to make great use of judicial penalties as a means of administration. This is not evident at first sight; for those in power are apt to look upon the institution of elective functionaries as one concession, and the subjection of the elected magistrate to the judges of the land as another. They are equally averse to both these innovations; and as they are more pressingly solicited to grant the former than the latter, they accede to the election of the magistrate, and leave him independent of the judicial power. Nevertheless, the second of these measures is the only thing that can possibly counterbalance the first: and it will be found that an elective authority which is not subject to judicial power will, sooner or later, either elude all control or be destroyed. The courts of justice are the only possible medium between the central power and the administrative bodies: they alone can compel the elected functionary to obey, without violating the rights of the elector. The extension of judicial power in the political world ought therefore to be in the exact ratio of the extension of elective offices: if these two institutions do not go hand in hand, the State must fall into anarchy or into subjection. (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Vol. 1, Chapter V, “Necessity of Examining the Condition of the States before That of the Union at Large.”

‘Power’ maintains its control by means of atomization and hierarchical division – and then by coercing (by means of the judiciary… as De Tocqueville said…) each fragment of this artificial social arrangement into performing the same inane and harmless (to ‘power’…) tasks…

 

…while it keeps the true goal hidden… completely outside this process – whether the angle on this manufactured reality is ‘the polity’… or ‘the economy’… or ‘society’ – in which ‘the people’ are forced to reside… i.e. the true goal is externalized.

 

The statesmen have by definition ruled out our freedom – by calling it ‘anarchy’. Remember Bentham? “He who owns the lexicon rules the world.” Well… ‘power’ has seized exclusive naming rights for the key terms we need to get free… then told us they know best (“rule of ‘the wise’…”) that the world is too ‘complex’ to be turned over to ‘the people’… an heretofore mere uninitiated audience to the ‘world historic’ figures… and the ‘scientists’ and pundits are all pushed forward to ‘prove’ this….

 

…so to undermine our confidence that we don’t have to believe them… don’t have to accept their definitions.(March 9th, 2014 Waking Up Radio)

And so the courts are the high tension spring on the trap. Case in point: ‘net neutrality’ (which in mid-January, 2014 they ‘ruled’ against…) the courts have the last say… they set it up that way.

 

What De Tocqueville shows us… is that this miring in minutiae is a conscious class-tactic… and of course in this the would-be ‘masters’ would see nothing malevolent… but only them behaving ‘responsibly’…. they are the ‘responsible’ actors… the ones who stand alone and above us… and ‘manage’ the earth’s precious resources (‘us’ among them…) – who monitor the delicate mechanism of ‘democracy’ with dispassion… and render their judgments ‘rationally’….

 

Diana Spearman… pointing out that states tend toward centralization due to the increasing administrative complexity of the tasks that must be accomplished (attendant upon ‘modern life’…) misleads as to agency, I think, in how she presents… or fails to present… the most basic task of states behind increasing administration… i.e. that it is the ‘need’ to control ‘the people’ that drives increasing ‘administration’.

 

(She makes it sound… as most pundits or academics do when they talk about bureaucracy (as we described on the WUR show of August 18, 2013 [see p. 160 of “Reclaiming Our Leadership: Waking Up Radio Conversations (Vol. 1)” (pdf file)…]) like a force of its own – what they call ‘mission creep’….)

 

Because as we develop the technology… we develop the means to get free… and this pushes so-called ‘administrative complexity’ and increasing centralization…

 

…but the center cannot hold…

 

…so ‘power’ must fall back on Bentham and his emphasis on internalized discipline… and, of course, on Plato’s dictum to focus on ‘the best’… and ensure everyone has a ‘leader.’

 

How long must we wait… for a pundit with sufficient reach to say: “is it really the case that… given our vast communal and earth-given legacy of abundance… that the most we-the-people can ever get out of it… is a ‘power’-dispensed mere ‘existence’? Survival? After all we’ve given?!”

 

So what are these terms represented by the word ‘democracy’? And how to they translate into the language of ‘economy’ (and vice versa…) if not through the lingua franca of ‘quantity’ and ‘fragmentation’… of ‘rank’… and ‘proof’… the shattering of life (real… state… and market…) and so all at once and the same… a theft… and subsequent and simultaneous… accumulation in the hands of the tiny… tiny… few… a ‘bias’.

 

There’s an interesting passage in De Tocqueville in which he talks about what he calls “the leveling effect of commerce”:

It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others, it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.

 

Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants;…

[…and… as we’re seeing amply demonstrated around us today… with land grabs in Africa… China… India… South America… the ‘rulers’ of today have not lost this lesson: when they own the soil… they own us… – P.S.]

…the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man; and landed property was the sole source of power.

 

Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself…

[…think of all those abandoned children turned over to it… a rich resource for innovation… – P.S.]

…the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villain and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage, took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not unfrequently above the heads of kings.

 

The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail [armor].

 

Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised.

 

Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State.

[…think of all those abandoned children turned over to it… a rich resource for ‘innovation’… in ‘statecraft’… – P.S.]

The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

 

In the course of these seven hundred years, it sometimes happened that in order to resist the authority of the Crown, or to diminish the power of their rivals, the nobles granted a certain share of political rights to the people. Or, more frequently, the king permitted the lower orders to enjoy a degree of power, with the intention of repressing the aristocracy.

 

In France the kings have always been the most active and the most constant of levelers. When they were strong and ambitious, they spared no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when they were temperate or weak, they allowed the people to rise above themselves. Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices. Louis XI. and Louis XIV. reduced every rank beneath the throne to the same subjection; Louis XV. descended, himself and all his Court, into the dust.

 

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture was a fresh element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery, every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved satisfaction, was a step towards the universal level. The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to enrich the poor and to impoverish the rich.

 

From the time which the exercise of the intellect became the source of strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to consider every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea as a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the grace of wit, the glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all the gifts which are bestowed by Providence with an equal hand, turned to the advantage of the democracy; and even when they were in the possession of its adversaries, they still served its cause by throwing into relief the natural greatness of man; its conquests spread, therefore, with those of civilization and knowledge; and literature became an arsenal, where the poorest and the weakest could always find weapons to their hand.

 

In perusing the pages of our history, we shall scarcely meet with a single great event, in the lapse of seven hundred years, which has not turned to the advantage of equality. (De Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Vol. 1, p. xxxvi – xxxvii)

Described in reified terms… ‘commerce brought down kings and aristocrats’… in both realms – the ‘political’ and the ‘economic.’ Both pretend… posture… that they promise ‘fairness’… say that they can show their ‘proof’ of it… both promise to be means… tools… for identifying ‘the best’.

 

The ‘leveling effect of commerce’… that notion… also describes and conscribes – by which I mean ‘draws into its orbit or sphere’ – the anger at hereditary privilege that drove the fascist imperative (what Popper and Spearman call ‘collectivism’…) – finding validation in Plato… that “‘the best’ should ‘rule’”…. The ‘leveling effect of commerce’ – both as ideology and physical reality – is also the “leveling effect of ‘democracy’”… both get ‘the many’ chasing fantasies… while ‘power’ works behind scenes… hiding… shunning the light.

 

‘Power of the people’… in reality… therefore… is massive suppression… harnessing… of the people… massive theft… massive disappropriation – tapping into us… to be sure (and we’re seeing the most telling contemporary illustration in the propagation of the notion that the so-called masters will bring us a ‘Digital Athens’ [see “‘Digital Athens’? Or Last-Ditch Drama?”.]

 

What makes the web – this tangled one of ‘power-worship’ – more convoluted is that the ‘biases’ (imbalances) are multiple… as are our (we-the-people’s) reaction to them. But these multiple kinds are simplified… when we see them as but sides… fronts… of the massive disappropriation… of class… that first and continuous divide… between ‘citizen’ and ‘barbarian’.

 

So there’s the bias of kings… and the bias of aristocracy… and then the bias of ‘industry’… and of course that of the more shadowy ‘philosopher-statesmen’… – and all of them busily busily seeking to con and manipulate… feed on our energy… the energy of we-the-people. (It’s all about feeding on our energy – materially… psychologically – as The Matrix says.) And as all of these biases represent a theft… there is a bias in that massive disappropriation… at the other end… in a massive absence… accumulating massively today (as they’ve been aggregating with every passing day…) in massive questions…

…that… as they are honored… and followed…

…return to them what was took…

…re-gather energy back… to us…

…we-the people…

…from…

…an absence…

…an empty collectivity…

…filled with the dreams of so-called masters…

…to…

…no longer a nullity (in terms of determining our world’s design…)

…but fully-developing individualities…

…who choose good fellowship over fear.

They took our words… the ancestors are giving them back.

 

Let’s use them.

 

 

–––

 

So here in this massive… moving… coming-into-being lies the ‘concrete’ beneath the abstract banners of the state… that speaks across specific state-ideology. The abstract banners:

‘Representation’ – vesting our individual power (which is limitless if it taps into the power of the planet… of life…) in ‘representatives’… i.e. symbolic power (illusion) is given in exchange for our authentic lives – minimization of the ‘me’ and glorification of the ‘we’ – i.e. the state; fragmentation into discrete non-interdependent functions… i.e. a diffuse miasma of ‘rules’ across all levels of an infinitely expandable hierarchy; ‘proof’ of ‘merit’ [rank]; ‘rule’ of ‘the best’. Is any of this specific to ‘democracy’?… or does this, rather, speak to the ‘needs’ of ‘the state’?

And ‘bias’ (unbalance…) has its also useful companion notions of ‘predisposition’ (leaning…) or ‘founding assumptions’ (intent…) which cause the bias. (I.e. ‘rule’ made the world of ‘class’ this way… in order to stack the deck… so that its ‘supremacy’ would not be questioned… would be affirmed by ‘universal’ acclamation… i.e. they need us to believe. [This point was also made at the end of the Waking Up Radio program of February 2, 2014.])

 

Recall that in previous shows we discussed how ‘the economy’ provided the lingua franca for them… for ‘power’ (and we… unconsciously… go along…) and that our lingua franca – and first allegiance – must be the earth… and that our direct connection to it is through our bodies. So we want an un-biased world.

 

But states are made to ‘bias’ our energy… ‘herding’ implies and requires concentrating energy… the taking from the many… and its consolidation in the hands of the tiny few (an ‘energy-view’ of the Panopticon…) – and without energy… what can we do?

 

By suggesting the word ‘bias’ I mean to use it as a shorthand to grasp… hold… in our minds… big concentrations of planetary resources (represented… symbolized… by ‘money’…) – or energy. But the tend itself… commodification / privatization… acts like (and therefore is…) a bias… because it orients human thought and action toward accumulation… toward further deepening the tend. So the actual, physical resources comprise the material bias… and the predisposition we are given (taught) towards ‘proving’ (i.e. ‘mathematically’… via quantification…) ‘worth’ – which is what the ‘commercial imperative’ boils down to – constitutes the spiritual bias (the bias of our spirits… our energies… our obedience… our ‘agreeing’ to sit on our hands and pretend we’re powerless… and so need a ‘Daddy’…) and both mutually reinforce.

 

The ‘economy’ is both mirror image and justification of ‘class’… which predates the market… and to which it (the market) is carefully crafted.

 

‘The state’ as a notion is an amalgam of certain founding assumptions… and its several related ideologies exist but to legitimate it – this amalgam. So, within each of the supporting ideologies – like ‘democracy’ – we should see those (untested – and this is the point of our actions right now… to test them…) those untested founding assumptions. The first and most basic: “the individual is nothing and the state is all…” “the single vote may seem to mean nothing… but it is in the aggregate that ‘the people’ ‘rule’…” followed by “…the division between intellectual and manual labor is necessary in order to identify and support ‘the best’…” and “…the state exists to drive us all to ‘perfection’… to ‘improvement’…” and then “…the statesmen are the best judges of what that is.” These notions are drenched in ‘power’-worship… and the earth denies them utterly… and shows us repeatedly… that it is fully-developing-individualities who advance the species. (For Karl Popper’s reply to Hitler’s advancement of these precepts, please listen to this excerpt from Part 22 of Miklos, the audio-blog from the January 19, 2014 show: “…these ethics of fame and fate… perpetuates an educational system… still based upon the classics with their romantic view of the history of power… a system whose ultimate basis is the worship of power…”)

 

Is it clear that training our children to be ‘obedient’ sets them up to be used by the state? (This is discussed in our “Richard Aoki and the abandonment of our children - pt. 1” audio blog of September 16, 2012.) Is it clear that the statesmen who use the ideology ‘democracy’ deny absolutely that it means that we-the-people come first… that our ability to grow our gifts continuously is the priority? Far from it… rather… we exist to serve the alleged ‘larger’ purposes which it is their heavy burden to define and represent… the orderly exploitation of the resources in their charge (including us…) in order to realize the ‘Ideal’ they tell themselves (and it varies state to state… era to era…) – be it ‘Perfection’… or ‘Truth’… or ‘the perfect state’…. The particular words they use is beside the principle point: our individual irrelevance… our individual disposability… and the elevation of the ‘Ideal’ over us – they are dedicated to ‘ideas’… not to life.

 

But then how can we put the pursuit of our gifts… our happiness… first?

 

The statesmen never intended that pursuit to mean for us… but only for them… as they see themselves as the only legitimate representative of – guides to – the ‘Ideal’… the particular name it wears… call it what you will.

 

To their minds, it is their charge to define the broader ideals for the society as a whole… and our charge to do what we’re told.

 

Now… what we are seeing… is that the tend ‘accumulation’ (the material / physical bias) is – as Rosa Luxemburg foresaw – collapsing into itself… because it leads, not just to the demolition of ‘society’ (Polanyi)… but to the demolition of life itself… the collapse of the ecosystems needed to sustain life. So… obviously… necessarily… ‘power’ is scrambling to figure out how to… not just control us… but to simultaneously seem to be ‘saving’ us… because they must re-gain our allegiance… to seem to be our ‘savior’… this is necessary in order to sustain that control over the long haul… by reinforcing the ‘legitimacy’ of ‘rule’ itself.

 

And I suspect ‘power’ thinks that De Tocqueville can help them with this sleight-of-hand… this ideological shift… intended to corral and sweep youth energy into bed with it. I suspect ‘power’ is trying to move us to a state-sponsored and -managed… controlled de-centralization – because ‘the center cannot hold’…

 

…and what we may choose to think through –

…though certainly not as a substitute…

…for our fleshing out our alternative that is people-driven –

…is…

…is that even possible?

…from their perspective?

…and so far it has seemed true that…

…anything they set their mind to they can do…

…so long as they can keep us asleep…

 

But now the earth-terms are dramatically different… and more and more of the global populace are pressuring to have more than bare existence… – and of course commodified-life can’t provide it.

 

–––

 

[And here we’re hoping to discuss how ‘democracy’ translates into ‘rank’.]

 

‘Democracy’ can’t be ‘fixed’ because it’s performing to specifications. ‘Democracy’ (by each having only one vote…) requires that each citizen has an ‘equal share’ of ‘power’… i.e. an equal share of an illusion… of nothing… a share of a system of ranking… of quantification… a share of the business of stomping on our brothers and sisters…

 

…each one of us is ‘equal’ in being nothing… a vacancy to be filled by statesmen… whatever they feel they need to realize ‘Perfection’… and of course themselves as its representatives… so… again… this state of things ‘works’ for them… but not for the vast… vast… majority.

 

…we each bear an equal share of a commodified existence in which each one of us has a price… which… when we’re asleep… ‘naturally’ prompts us… provokes us… to want to increase it… particularly as we’re systematically denied recognition as children.

 

Now… left pundits look at this and say: “but this ‘equal share’ surmise has been perverted by…” and then they’re off and running… identifying ‘power’s unfair advantages and staking their claims (to complicity)… their hustle… on one of them…

(…the pundits are battling to distribute the illusion more ‘fairly’… some all unconscious… some with intent as legitimating propaganda…)

…and then set about finding ‘solutions’… all of which seem to start with “informing the people”… apparently never noticing (or pretending not to…) that the whole set-up is premised on the acceptance of the most massive unfair advantage of all… of class – which prices (quantifies)… and so ranks… life – and is therefore stacked against us. Quantification is necessarily ranking.

 

…because our ‘representatives’ – as they are charged with the mandate to keep things as they are… i.e. to keep us, we-the-people, wrestling with scarcity (survival) and mired in the minutiae of ‘law’ – are in fact our keepers (and we’ll elaborate further… with De Tocqueville’s and Diana Spearman’s help… on how ‘administration’ is surveillance…) – that’s their job… that’s what they’re paid to do…

 

…and until we own our own bodies… they’ve no choice… anymore than the functionaries of the Third Reich… but to keep doing what those who own the means… constrain them to do….

 

–––

 

But the pundits not only accept that we-the-people need ‘keepers’… in accepting the package ‘class’… they accept the hierarchy… they accept that some are consigned to misery while others to a false sense of superiority. And they will shamelessly stride into extreme illogic to maintain the sanctity of commodification – never mind the fact that all of our problems establishing reverence for life can be traced back to it.

 

If you… any pundits hearing this… dispute these words… then where is your analysis… your discussion of work that demonstrates that all 7 billion of us will get to grow our gifts… based on your analysis? How are you pushing this discussion of ‘work’ forward? How do you rationalize in your mind the ranking? Please put your views on work out there for inspection… for our scrutiny and challenge and discussion.

 

Humans under class are very attached to their soothing illusions… after all… what else do we have… under class? And so I can imagine that pundits would ask, “and you want to take those too?!” It’s comforting to think one’s privilege is due to one’s superior ‘fill’ in ‘the gap’ (the gaps in ‘power’s efforts to keep us enslaved…) – “fill-in-the-gap”… which is precisely what class-perks are designed to do.

 

–––

 

Pure Happenstance

 

In Blog 50: “Wading Into The Muck Of State”, I noted that our under-siege-but-yet-surviving communal legacy called ‘The Library’ had unfailingly provided the breadcrumbs leading me home… brought the ancestors needed… the missing pieces… to fit into the puzzle of our containment under class. The pieces all seemed custom-fit for… the particular place (questions) I was stuck in.

 

Well… a few weeks ago it gave me such a gift… I’m still pondering it… and will be for a while yet… so fit for where we are now in our process.

 

It gave me De Tocqueville’s Democracy In America, Vol. 1 – which is both painting clearly our needed picture of ‘democracy’ itself… and showing the seeds of which the U.S. was founded.

 

–––

The selectmen [of New England, early 19th century] are elected every year in the month of April or of May. The town-meeting chooses at the same time a number of other municipal magistrates, who are entrusted with important administrative functions. The assessors rate the township; the collectors receive the rate. A constable is appointed to keep the peace, to watch the streets, and to forward the execution of the laws; the town-clerk records all the town votes, orders, grants, births, deaths, and marriages: the treasurer keeps the funds; the overseer of the poor performs the difficult task of superintending the action of the poor-laws; committee-men are appointed to attend to the schools and to public instruction: and the road-surveyors, who take care of the greater and lesser thoroughfares of the township, complete the list of the principal functionaries. They are, however, still further subdivided; and amongst the municipal officers are to be found parish commissioners, who audit the expenses of public worship; different classes of inspectors, some of whom are to direct the citizens in case of fire; tithing-men, listers, haywards, chimney-viewers, fence-viewers to maintain the bounds of property, timber-measurers, and sealers of weights and measures.

 

There are nineteen principal offices in a township. Every inhabitant is constrained, on the pain of being fined, to undertake these different functions; which, however, are almost all paid, in order that the poorer citizens may be able to give up their time without loss. In general the American system is not to grant a fixed salary to its functionaries. Every service has its price, and they are remunerated in proportion to what they have done….

 

He obeys the government, not because he is inferior to the authorities which conduct it, or that he is less capable than his neighbour of governing himself, but because he acknowledges the utility of an association with his fellow-men, and because he knows that no such association can exist without a regulating force. If he be a subject in all that concerns the mutual relations of citizens, he is free and responsible to God alone for all that concerns himself. (p. 48 – 9)

“He obeys… because he knows that no such association…” – now that’s propaganda… disguised as some supposed ‘universal truth’… but thanks are due to De Tocqueville… for with his help… we are getting to… the heart of this beast called ‘democracy’… or any of the state-legitimating ideologies: service to the state… obedience (ideologies which, by the way, depend on the partnering lie “the savage.”)

 

And Diana Spearman confirms Popper’s point that modern totalitarianism is not a departure… but a continuation of ancient tendencies… tendencies inherent… I would argue (and obviously inherent, I think we’ll see, once we have a chance to talk about it…) in class itself… in the division between mental and manual labor – the citizen-barbarian divide – (and I intend to stand with ‘the barbarian’… when so-targeted by ‘the state.’)

The administrative efficiency and the emotional attractions of dictatorship have an application in all ages, no matter what the intellectual background may be; but there were certain nineteenth-century developments, both in ideas and in organization, which in themselves tended to produce autocracy and had a profound effect on the actual form which autocracy took. Dictatorship is not, either in ideas or administration, such a complete breach with pre-war Europe as might be supposed from the apparent victory of Liberal ideas. It is a logical, although unexpected, development of pre-war tendencies in democratic no less than in autocratic countries. The dictators found in the autocratic theories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries plenty of material from which to concoct their creeds. From the point of view of organization the dictator’s party is clearly an adaptation of the mechanism of party government to the needs of autocracy. The growth of autonomous associations within the state, which appeared at first sight to favour the syndicalist organization of society, ultimately simplified the task of the dictator and made it easier for one man to control the multitudinous activites of modern life.

 

The sources of National Socialism in the German romantic attitude have already been pointed out, but many of the political theories of the nineteenth century – even theories which appeared to be democratic – can now be seen to have prepared the way for the acceptance of autocracy. The two dominant ideas of nineteenth-century Europe were individualism, in the sense of the supreme value of human personality; and collectivism, in the sense of a growing feeling of the importance of the community, whether this expressed itself as Socialism or as Nationalism. In both of these ideas there is one aspect which finds its completest expression in dictatorship, in the all-powerful State controlled by the all-powerful human being. Collectivist theories, whether Nationalist or Socialist, lead directly to this consummation; individualist theories take a more devious route through hero-worship and through the worship of human personality dissolving into worship of those forces which give birth and nourishment to the personality. In most cases these forces express themselves in the national State. Both the worship of individuality and the depreciation of individuality tend to the justification of violence.

 

In spite of the subordination of the individual to the collective purpose in dictatorship, the dictatorial State is saturated with hero worship. The dictator has even stolen some of the attributes of God. This attitude is, of course, antagonistic to the conception of individualism which flourished in the period when individualistic doctrine appeared to be triumphant. At that time it was linked to Liberalism, and to a respect for all human personality. This attitude implied political liberty in order that everyone might have a chance to develop his potentialities, and in order to prevent that cramping of personality which tyranny was thoughts to produce. But at its birth in the Italian Renaissance individualism tended to an attitude more akin to that of modern dictatorship, an attitude which was fundamentally regardless of the claims of society. The Reformation moralized individualism and harnessed the idea of the full development of human personality to the idea of the social good. But in its origin attention was concentrated on activity as the expression of personality, not on activity as moral purpose. Neither Machiavelli’s Prince nor Marlowe’s Tamburlaine inquired what social benefits would result from his activities; simply:

Nature, that fram’d us of four elements

Warring within our breasts for regiment,

Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend

The wondrous architecture of the world

And measure every wandering planet’s course,

Still climbing after knowledge infinite

And always moving as the restless spheres,

Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,

Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,

That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

It is clear that individualism of this kind could develop on the one hand into tyranny and on the other into hero worship….

…Three aspects of Nietzsche’s thought have entered into the official theories of Germany and Italy: anti-intellectualism, expressed chiefly in a belief in the superior power of faith, courage, and instinct over reason’ a repudiation of all forms of materialism, a denial that even happiness is the object of life, much less economic or material welfare; and the assertion of the value of the individual personality. All these ideas, with the exception of the last, are found also in Bolshevist thought.

 

Anti-intellectualism was of course a strong tendency in pre-war thought…. An ethical revolt against the intellect can be seen in the works of D. H. Lawrence, and Aldous Huxley’s doctrine of the complete man is in the same tradition. The distrust of reason and an assertion of the barrenness of the intellect has been one of the main intellectual tendencies of the twentieth century. It would be hard to find a more perfect expression of the National Socialist attitude than this passage from D. H. Lawrence: “My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds, but what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true.”

 

Lawrence, of course, was not concerned with politics, and the element of truth in the anti-intellectualist attitude should not blind us to the other truth, recognized by none of these philosophers except Nietzsche, that, while rationalist ethics allow freedom of choice between different impulses, if we trust in “what our blood feels”…

[…forgive the interjection… but I have to say… that under the regime of ‘class’… i.e. of ‘betrayal’… of ‘make-use-of’… “what one’s blood (generally) feels…” is rage… and to think… is to challenge this way of things… the ‘right’ of the ‘might’ of ‘the father’… – P.S.]

 

… if we trust in “what our blood feels”, then we must accept all the impulses in human nature.

 

[…when we allow the inhuman regimen of ‘class’ to pass unexamined… as it clearly was in the post-mortems of Nazi Germany… then the heart of the problem is never exposed… and ‘rule’ may proceed with its misanthropic ‘impulses’… and is able to convince… subsequent generations… that they come from ‘human nature’… – P.S.]

 

As Nietzsche said: “With every degree of man’s growth towards greatness and loftiness he also grows downwards into the depths and into the terrible.”…

 

[…straight-up Hegel… and of course Plato… – P.S.]

 

(Diana Spearman, (from Chapter IV, “Authoritarian Tendencies in Democracy,” Modern Dictatorship, 1939, p. 141 – 144, and 146 – 148

[…see below for the longer quote * From Modern Dictatorship – P.S.]

And… these ideologies the state relies on in times of crisis (for it….) So we can expect the full arsenal of cons to be trained on youth… particularly in such times… with the fixity of purpose of all predators on their prey… to lure them back… to being slaves… to convince them to do what, after all, comes naturally to them: saving the day… freeing their parents… being heroes… by doing their part… to save the planet. And in this we can clearly see… that the point of the state is controlling the human race… and marshalling human energy… from which perspective… all power’s plays… fall into place.

 

–––

 

Reading De Tocqueville’s careful depiction… of the ‘statesman’s mania for classification (it seems as if every colonist carried Bentham in his or her back pocket…) we can see Bentham’s obsession with categorization made manifest… its minute dissection… its division and subdivision of function… and the seeds of those weeds grew… furiously.

Is it any wonder we despair…

…when it seems that everywhere…

…whether back in the state’s earliest beginnings…

…cloistered in Yosemite…

…the Panoptic reach…

…never tires…

…it seems…

…in its lust and its rush for dissecting…

…and for pounding us into boxes…

…which with each generation…

…shrink.

Surveillance… hidden in the word ‘administration’… is the function of the state… to object to ‘surveillance’ is to (unconsciously) begin to question the validity of the state.

 

We have all been so deeply trained in a mindset of service to the state… the notion of putting our bodies first is utterly foreign to us… stuck under the regime of class.

 

Any so-called solution that does not take this as its starting point… is a con.

 

–––

 

But to even use the word ‘solution’… for what we need to do… to move the species beyond categorization and rank… leads us wrong… except in the sense that ‘class’ was a puzzle we needed to solve… to move on…. Which to do is not ‘solution’ but ‘breathing clear’ when our lungs have been clogged… or standing up after being bent… or seeing light after millennia of darkness… or being healthy after long being sick. It means trusting what we are born with… at long last.

 

So… as it very well may be… that sight fogged over intentionally… for century upon century… may need prompting to believe this truth we’re born with… those of us who can… best to start the visioning process:

 

–––

 

In freedom there are tribal standards established by tribes in order to teach a body of knowledge and provide guidance…

 

…To teach a body of knowledge and provide guidance is a responsibility inherent in good fellowship…

 

…This is our natural way of learning… from guidance… by watching… and trying… and doing…

 

…Guidance and modeling mastery of skills and bodies of knowledge replaces Force and Surveillance.

 

We must originate in Sound Seeds…

 

…what we need to grow:

 

Consensus Authority… Open Tribalism… Transparent Decisions (CAOTTD)… to begin to do which… we must:

 

Found & Realize A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness”…

The Waking Up Radio show of March 23, 2014 included some initial thoughts about this:

But beginning to discuss – and subsequently define – what the opposite of ‘power’ would look like… not only allows us to begin being strategic… it continuously feeds a realistic sense of hope… which we need to be ready… for whatever catastrophe ‘power’ unleashes. So that even in the midst of manufactured crisis… we continue to build our ‘opposite’: foster a global consciousness while building our interconnections – locally and globally –coordinate our actions globally… begin to build a communal ‘infrastructure’ – i.e. increased abundance… to support individual self-sufficiency and therefore good fellowship… embrace key slogans like, “no more masters…” and “no more commodities…” discuss and flesh out the key elements of a social arrangement based in good fellowship… like, ‘consensus authority’… ‘open tribalism’ (which has sharing as its purpose…) ‘transparent and inclusive decision-making’… fluid ‘structures’ and continuous growth… global-interconnections supporting individual self-sufficiency.

 

… It seems to me what we’re talking bout is a globally inter-linked network of villages… land-gifted to folks who want to engage in this effort to design a future beyond force.

 

Because we’re living things… at base we want the same things… we want to govern our own lives… to once again own our time…

 

(…there’s a Woody Guthrie cartoon I love that shows a man wearing boxing gloves… and in front of him is an alarm clock… and the caption reads: “Punch the clock!”)

 

…and time is essential in order to experience our lives… and so at base an ‘infrastructure’ must be put in place that allows this…

 

…“‘village-scale’ is ‘human-scale’” simply means we get to experience our breathing… see the plants and animals around us… know the folks with whom we share the soil that feeds us… notice ways we can increase the love and beauty in the world…

 

(…and by ‘beauty’ I don’t mean ‘aesthetic sense’ but rather ‘life unfolding as it’s meant’… and ‘respect for balance.’)

 

The point is… that nothing can matter more than living our gifts… and living our interconnections – locally and globally – because this is the truth… it means aligning our lives (at long last!…) with truth. (Waking Up Radio show of March 23, 2014. The full transcript can be read at the page “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”, under that date in the menu.)

 

–––

 

–––

 

–––

 

The Future: What do we call it? Who cares?… So long as it means… generalized leisure for all…

 

* Diana Spearman Excerpt from Modern Dictatorship

 

The administrative efficiency and the emotional attractions of dictatorship have an application in all ages, no matter what the intellectual background may be; but there were certain nineteenth-century developments, both in ideas and in organization, which in themselves tended to produce autocracy and had a profound effect on the actual form which autocracy took. Dictatorship is not, either in ideas or administration, such a complete breach with pre-war Europe as might be supposed from the apparent victory of Liberal ideas. It is a logical, although unexpected, development of pre-war tendencies in democratic no less than in autocratic countries. The dictators found in the autocratic theories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries plenty of material from which to concoct their creeds. From the point of view of organization the dictator’s party is clearly an adaptation of the mechanism of party government to the needs of autocracy. The growth of autonomous associations within the state, which appeared at first sight to favour the syndicalist organization of society, ultimately simplified the task of the dictator and made it easier for one man to control the multitudinous activites of modern life.

 

The sources of National Socialism in the German romantic attitude have already been pointed out, but many of the political theories of the nineteenth century – even theories which appeared to be democratic – can now be seen to have prepared the way for the acceptance of autocracy. The two dominant ideas of nineteenth-century Europe were individualism, in the sense of the supreme value of human personality; and collectivism, in the sense of a growing feeling of the importance of the community, whether this expressed itself as Socialism or as Nationalism. In both of these ideas there is one aspect which finds its completest expression in dictatorship, in the all-powerful State controlled by the all-powerful human being. Collectivist theories, whether Nationalist or Socialist, lead directly to this consummation; individualist theories take a more devious route through hero-worship and through the worship of human personality dissolving into worship of those forces which give birth and nourishment to the personality. In most cases these forces express themselves in the national State. Both the worship of individuality and the depreciation of individuality tend to the justification of violence.

 

In spite of the subordination of the individual to the collective purpose in dictatorship, the dictatorial State is saturated with hero worship. The dictator has even stolen some of the attributes of God. This attitude is, of course, antagonistic to the conception of individualism which flourished in the period when individualistic doctrine appeared to be triumphant. At that time it was linked to Liberalism, and to a respect for all human personality. This attitude implied political liberty in order that everyone might have a chance to develop his potentialities, and in order to prevent that cramping of personality which tyranny was thoughts to produce. But at its birth in the Italian Renaissance individualism tended to an attitude more akin to that of modern dictatorship, an attitude which was fundamentally regardless of the claims of society. The Reformation moralized individualism and harnessed the idea of the full development of human personality to the idea of the social good. But in its origin attention was concentrated on activity as the expression of personality, not on activity as moral purpose. Neither Machiavelli’s Prince nor Marlowe’s Tamburlaine inquired what social benefits would result from his activities; simply:

Nature, that fram’d us of four elements

Warring within our breasts for regiment,

Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend

The wondrous architecture of the world

And measure every wandering planet’s course,

Still climbing after knowledge infinite

And always moving as the restless spheres,

Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,

Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,

That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

It is clear that individualism of this kind could develop on the one hand into tyranny and on the other into hero worship…. In the later years of the nineteenth century… a group of writers… produced a conception of autocracy extremely close to that of the Renaissance. Indeed, Nietzsche, the most important, was directly inspired by Renaissance models. These writers exulted in the violence and illegality of the historic tyrants, and regarded as virtues those qualities which had been previously denounced even by defenders of autocracy. This latter Nietzschean view has been incorporated into the doctrines of Fascism and National Socialism. It professes delight in the autocrat for his own sake, not for any purpose which he may serve, and is essentially different from the practical defence of autocracy as the most efficient form of government.

 

Beside individualism conceived as hero worship, both Fascism and National Socialism proclaim their belief in individualism in the ordinary sense. Hitler says: “Our movement must develop by every means personality. One must never forget that all that is valuable in humanity resides in individual value, and that every idea and every action is the fruit of the creative strength of a man.” Mussolini, too, has always insisted on the part the great man plays in the development of culture. He says – frequently – “A hierarchy must culminate in a pin-point.” The means by which the dictators propose to teach men a respect for personality is clearly shown by Hitler’s words: “One must not forget that admiration for the one who is great not only represents a tribute of gratitude to greatness, but also a virtue which binds together and unites all those who experience the gratitude.” He adds: “To renounce the rendering of homage to a great spirit is to deprive oneself of an immense force, that which emanates from the names of men and women who have been great.” Compare Mussolini: “There is a lack of leaders; what we want is to have the few who can guide the many, men strong in faith and in self-sacrifice, who will temper like steel the excited feelings of the multitude.”…

 

Respect for personality is, then, to be taught chiefly by the worship of great personalities, but these regimes do also incorporate one practical aspect of the doctrine of individualism: the aspect of equal opportunity, of the carriere ouverte aux talents. Modern dictatorship does not wish to reinstate a privileged class. Hitler and Mussolini both proclaimed in almost the same words their determination to open the highest offices of State to anyone, whatever his social origin. Mussolini, in one of his early speeches, said: “For fifty years generals, diplomats and bureaucrats have been taken from the upper class and from a certain limited number of families of rank and position. It is time to put an end to all this, if we want to infuse new energy and new blood into the body of the nation.” Hitler, in Mein Kampf, says: “The racial State is not… to maintain one social class in the possession of the predominant influence which it has exercised hitherto; its task is to search for the best brains amongst the members of the community and to confer on them employment and dignities.”…

[…which is what inspired Karl Popper to write:

 

And, indeed, our intellectual as well as our ethical education is corrupt. It is perverted by the admiration of brilliance, of the way things are said, which takes the place of a critical appreciation of the things that are said (and the things that are done). It is perverted by the romantic idea of the splendour of the stage of History on which we are the actors. We are educated to act with an eye to the gallery.

 

The whole problem of educating man to a sane appreciation of his own importance relative to that of other individuals is thoroughly muddled by these ethics of fame and fate, by a morality which perpetuates an educational system that is still based upon the classics with their romantic view of the history of power and their romantic tribal morality which goes back to Heraclitus; a system whose ultimate basis is the worship of power. Instead of a sober combination of individualism and altruism (to use these labels again) – that is to say, instead of a position like “What really matters are human individuals, but I do not take this to mean that it is I who matter very much” – a romantic combination of egoism and collectivism is taken for granted. That is to say, the importance of the self, of its emotional life and its ‘self-expression’, is romantically exaggerated; and with it, the tension between the ‘personality’ and the group, the collective. This takes the place of the other individuals, the other men, but does not admit of reasonable personal relations. ‘Dominate or submit’ is, by implication, the device of this attitude; either be a Great Man, a Hero wrestling with fate and earning fame (“the greater the fall, the greater the fame”, says Heraclitus), or belong to ‘the masses’ and submit yourself to leadership and sacrifice yourself to the higher cause of your collective. There is a neurotic, and hysterical element in this exaggerated stress on the importance of the tension between the self and the collective, and I do not doubt that this hysteria, this reaction to the strain of civilization, is the secret of the strong emotional appeal of the ethics of her-worship, of the ethics of domination and submission….

 

‘Do no harm’ (and, therefore, ‘give the young what they most urgently need, in order to become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves’) would be a very worthy aim for our educational system, and one whose realization is somewhat remote, even though it sounds modest. Instead, ‘higher’ aims are the fashion, aims which are typically romantic and indeed nonsensical, such as ‘the full development of the personality.’

 

It is under the influence of such romantic ideas that individualism is still identified with egoism, as it was by Plato, and altruism with collectivism (i.e. with the substitution of group egoism for the individualist egoism). But this bars the way even to a clear formulation of the main problem, the problem of how to obtain a sane appreciation of one’s own importance in relation to other individuals. Since it is felt, and rightly so, that we have to aim at something beyond our own selves, something to which we can devote ourselves, and for which we may make sacrifices, it is concluded that this must be the collective, with its ‘historical mission’. Thus we are told to make sacrifices, and, at the same time, assured that we shall make an excellent bargain by doing so. We shall make sacrifices, it is said, but we shall thereby obtain honour and fame. We shall become ‘leading actors’, heroes on the Stage of History; for a small risk we shall gain great rewards. This is the dubious morality of a period in which only a tiny minority counted, and in which nobody cared for the common people. It is the morality of those who, being political or intellectual aristocrats, have a chance of getting into the textbooks of history. It cannot possibly be the morality of those who favour justice and equalitarianism; for historical fame cannot be just, and it can be attained only by a very few. The countless number of men who are just as worthy, or worthier, will always be forgotten.

 

It should perhaps be admitted that the Heraclitean ethics, the doctrine that the higher the reward is that which only posterity can offer, may in some way perhaps be slightly superior to an ethical doctrine which teaches us to look out for reward now. But it is not what we need. We need an ethics which defies success and reward. (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2, The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath, p. 275 – 277) …

 

For more of Karl Popper’s thoughts on authentic education… please visit the page Karl Popper on Authentic Education for Youth – P.S.]

The combination of this justification of violence with the idea of the victory of the masses makes the exaltation of violence particularly vicious. Nietzsche’s theory was framed for the individual. The individual is fully conscious of his acts – in fact, the readiness to accept the burden of this responsibility is one of the signs of the great man. There must be no attempt to shift the responsibility on to a party or a creed, or even to argue that the end justifies the means. There is no end except the full development of personality. The Sorelian attitude allows the cruelty to be increased while the responsibility is borne by the proletariat or historic forces. It is possible to forget that in reality it is a man who kills and tortures. Nietzsche may encourage cruelty, but at least a price – courage – is exacted for its exercise; Sorel encourages the cruelty of cowards. Sorel’s influence on Mussolini is direct and avowed by both master and pupil.

 

Nietzsche’s importance probably does not lie in his effect on the dictators themselves. Rulers have never found it difficult to justify their actions or to turn any theory, from Christianity to Communism, to their own ends. His ideas seem to be serious rather in their effect on those young men who were to make up the dictator’s party. His influence, both before and since the War, on the student and the young intellectual has been enormous…. Three aspects of Nietzsche’s thought have entered into the official theories of Germany and Italy: anti-intellectualism, expressed chiefly in a belief in the superior power of faith, courage, and instinct over reason’ a repudiation of all forms of materialism, a denial that even happiness is the object of life, much less economic or material welfare; and the assertion of the value of the individual personality. All these ideas, with the exception of the last, are found also in Bolshevist thought.

 

Anti-intellectualism was of course a strong tendency in pre-war thought…. An ethical revolt against the intellect can be seen in the works of D. H. Lawrence, and Aldous Huxley’s doctrine of the complete man is in the same tradition. The distrust of reason and an assertion of the barrenness of the intellect has been one of the main intellectual tendencies of the twentieth century. It would be hard to find a more perfect expression of the National Socialist attitude than this passage from D. H. Lawrence: “My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds, but what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true.”

 

Lawrence, of course, was not concerned with politics, and the element of truth in the anti-intellectualist attitude should not blind us to the other truth, recognized by none of these philosophers except Nietzsche, that, while rationalist ethics allow freedom of choice between different impulses, if we trust in “what our blood feels”…

[…forgive the interjection… but I have to say… that under the regime of ‘class’… i.e. of ‘betrayal’… of ‘make-use-of’… “what one’s blood (generally) feels…” is rage… and to think… is to challenge this way of things… the ‘right’ of the ‘might’ of ‘the father’… – P.S.]

… if we trust in “what our blood feels”, then we must accept all the impulses in human nature.

[…when we allow the inhuman regimen of ‘class’ to pass unexamined… as it clearly was in the post-mortems of Nazi Germany… then the heart of the problem is never exposed… and ‘rule’ may proceed with its misanthropic ‘impulses’… and is able to convince… subsequent generations… that they come from ‘human nature’… – P.S.]

As Nietzsche said: “With every degree of man’s growth towards greatness and loftiness he also grows downwards into the depths and into the terrible.”…

[…straight-up Hegel… and of course Plato… – P.S.]

There is, perhaps, nothing seems more inherently right to ‘the blood’ than to injure those who stand in the way of what is believed to be right. Writers like D. H. Lawrence are generally profoundly uninterested in social reactions and therefore ignorant of the fact that tyranny is also a psychological impulse. The result of the incorporation of the ideas of these gentle idealists into politics has been amply demonstrated all over Europe. The distrust of reason has been incorporated into the creed of both National Socialism and Fascism. The two doctrines, although both clearly influenced by Nietzsche, stress different aspects of anti-intellectuality. In Italy it is the superiority of will, belief and courage over reason which is asserted; in Germany it is rather the relative nature of all political judgment.

 

Fascism can claim to be pragmatic in a more real sense than can National Socialism. The doctrine in Germany definitely preceded the action; in Italy the doctrine grew up after the conquest of power. In origin the Fascist movement was a spontaneous reaction to the state of disorder in 1922 and to the failure of Socialism. A doctrine would have probably been fatal to the Fascist Party.

 

(Diana Spearman, (from Chapter IV, “Authoritarian Tendencies in Democracy,” Modern Dictatorship, 1939, p. 141 – 144, and 146 – 148)

 

This conception of the relations between society and the individual leads to a conception of the Communist State very similar to that of Hegel. The Communists, of course, declare that the State is autocratic only for the transition period between capitalism and Communism, and that after the establishment of real Communism the State will ‘wither away’. There is, however, no reason to consider this a likely development from Communist doctrine; in fact the Communist denial of individuality implies that society shall be so organized that the State shall be supreme, by whatever name the State is actually known.

 

The Socialist and national conceptions of the supreme community meet in the Bolshevist and Fascist dictatorships: in Bolshevism simply because Russia is conceived as the fatherland of the proletariat, but in Italy and Germany there is a fusion of the two ideas through a realization of the importance of the National State to the worker. As early as 1921 Mussolini said: “We deny your internationalism, because it is a luxury which only the upper class can afford; the working people are hopelessly bound to their native shore.” Rossi, the organizer of the Fascist corporations, had been a Labour leader to the United States, and the factor which turned him from a Socialist to a Nationalist was the inferior position of the Italian worker as compared with the native-born American.

 

The German Fascist Party has adopted a similar attitude. “Our Socialism is iron justice, as Adolf Hitler said at Nuremberg; i.e. it is not only an economic but a political hierarchy. It fights against Versailles and against Franco-European imperialism. A Socialist policy of suppressed nations links us with the nations of the Near East against the capitalism of the Western Powers.” [quote from the November, 1933 Fascist Germany Explains.]

 

(Diana Spearman, (from Chapter IV, “Authoritarian Tendencies in Democracy,” Modern Dictatorship, 1939, p. 166 – 7)

 

It is out of democracy itself that the extreme socialist parties have arisen, demanding the suppression of every other party. This demand is quite spontaneous and is in no way manufactured by the leaders to suit their own ambitions; it is in fact the natural result of an enthusiastic political faith.

 

It is clear that in this aspect dictatorship is a development of tendencies inherent in a democratic system itself; tendencies arising from a misunderstanding of the nature of democracy. Professor Laski [H. Laski, The State in Theory and Practice, 1936] is clearly right when he says that the services which parties have rendered to the democratic state are inestimable, but clearly wrong when he includes amongst those services that they are among “the most solid obstacle we have against the danger of Caesarism.” Nothing is easier than for the democratic party itself to evolve into an instrument of dictatorship. The historical destruction of democracy through its own parties is assisted by the modern development of government from the administrative side. Dictatorship and democracy are not proceeding in opposite directions but on parallel lines…. (p. 174)

 

A legislative assembly is not constructed to perform executive duties. But the Cabinet’s power is also due to its command of the time of the House. Measures not favoured by the government have a very small chance of reaching the Statute Book, because the mass of legislation introduced by the government in every session requires the whole time of the House if it is to be dealt with. Democracy has insisted on government intervention to an ever greater extent in an ever wider field, and democracy has thus produced the conditions which tend to remove the power from the legislature. The sheer amount of work which has to be got through means that the government is forced to monopolize the time of the House.

 

The discipline exercised by the parties over their members has been continuously growing. This is an inevitable consequence of the development of party government. If the government is to be efficiently carried on through the system of opposed parties, the party leaders must be able to depend on the votes of their followers. This involves the subordination of the individual member to the party. Although there still remains, even in the most rigid party, a place for a few independent members, they must be very few. The majority must vote, except of course in exceptional circumstances, as the leaders decide. Anything else would produce sheer chaos. Unless the government of the day can depend on a solid block of votes, it will be forced to resign or condemned to complete inaction. In France we have an example of the instability produced by a situation such as this, and it has proved a serious danger to the continuance of democracy. Strict party discipline is, then, an essential element in modern democratic government. From the purely theoretical point of view this is not necessarily an undemocratic tendency, but in practice it leads to an increase in the power of the party leaders, an increase which tends to strengthen the executive still more.

 

Other democratic governments have attempted to deal with particular problems by taking special powers. For example, in Czechoslovakia, by the law of June 9th, 1933, the government was granted special powers to prohibit, and in other ways control, the political parties. But as this was itself a result of the appearance of Fascist parties in Czechoslovakia, it is perhaps less important as evidence of the general trend. In 1935

 

(Diana Spearman, (from Chapter IV, “Authoritarian Tendencies in Democracy,” Modern Dictatorship, 1939, p. 174 – 9)

 

The Future: What do we call it? Who cares?… So long as it means… generalized leisure for all…

 

–––

 

The Future: What do we call it? Who cares?… So long as it means… generalized leisure for all…

–––

 

The Future: What do we call it? Who cares?… So long as it means… generalized leisure for all…

 

 

 

 

 

The Future: What do we call it? Who cares?… So long as it means… generalized leisure for all…

–––

 

 

 

 

The Future: What do we call it? Who cares?… So long as it means… generalized leisure for all…

The problem is...primarily...sharing work, sharing experience...

 

 

 

 

The Future: What do we call it? Who cares?… So long as it means… generalized leisure for all…

The problem is...primarily...sharing work, sharing experience...