Plutonia wrote:In this context, it's possible to interpret the tradition of harsh, competitive, boarding and military schooling of the predatory British ruling class as an attempt to counter-act the neotic incapacitation that was evident in their children.
Fascinating post, thanks!
In the 1960s, a friend's parents sent him to a well-known British-style boarding school in Canada (a natural thing for his Oxford-bred British father to do). Highlights of his time there include 'hiding under the bed in terror while the son of the prime minister of such-and-such country raped the son of the chairman of such-and-such corporation.' (His brother was molested by headmasters in a similar Canadian "British style" boarding school.) He got out of there and refused to go back, and has ever since stood with the underclass.
Plutonia wrote:the class of infantilized "rulers" satirized by PG Wodehouse in his Jeeves and Wooster stories- adult children practically and emotionally dependent on their superior (intellectually and otherwise) servant/parents
Quigley in "Tragedy and Hope" talked about elites' relationship to servants and other working-class people, contrasting them with the grasping middle class.
(Quigley of course was made famous by the Bircher right who still cite his 'exposé' as their proof of an Establishment/Communist plot etc., so I just want to say it's a boss book but I hope it's self-evident I'm not a Bircher, k.)
Strangely enough, the non-middle classes had more characteristics in common with each other than they did with the middle classes in their midst. The chief reason for this was that all other groups had value systems different from the middle classes and, above all, placed no emphasis on display of material affluence as proof of social status. From this came a number of somewhat similar qualities and attitudes that often gave the non-middle-class groups more in common and easier social intercourse than any of them had with the middle classes. For example, all placed much more emphasis on real personal qualities and much less on such things as clothing, residence, academic background, or kind of transportation used (all of which were important in determining middle-class reactions to people). In a sense all were more sincere, personally more secure (not the Lumpenproletariat), and less hypocritical than the middle class, and accordingly were much more inclined to judge any new acquaintance on his merits.
...
Another good evidence of class may be seen in the treatment given to servants (or those who work in one's home): the lower classes treat these as equals, the middle classes treat them as inferiors, while aristocrats treat them as equals or even superiors.
(a butchered scan of the book is at: real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/20.html#74)
The madness of American society is the universal middle-class aspiration to
join the sociopatholigarchy, manifested partly in that "display of material affluence as proof of social status." Reading over that chapter after 20 years, I see some relevant background:
The character of any society is determined less by what it is actually like than by the picture it has of itself and of what it aspires to be. From this point of view, American society of the 1920's was largely middle class. Its values and aspirations were middle class, and power or influence within it was in the hands of middle-class people. On the whole, this was regarded as proper, except by iconoclastic writers who gained fortune and reputation simply by satirizing or criticizing middle-class customs.
To be sure, even the most vigorous defenders of bourgeois America did not pretend that all Americans were middle class: only the more important ones were. But they did see the country as organized in middle-class terms, and they looked forward to a not remote future in which everyone would be middle class, except for a small, shiftless minority of no importance. To these defenders, and probably also to the shiftless minority, American society was regarded as a ladder of opportunity up which anyone could work his way, on rungs of increased affluence, to the supreme positions of wealth and power near the top. Wealth, power, prestige, and respect were all obtained by the same standard, based on money. This in turn was based on a pervasive emotional insecurity that sought relief in the ownership and control of material possessions. The basis for this may be seen most clearly in the origins of this bourgeois middle class.
A thousand years ago, Europe had a two-class society in which a small upper class of nobles and upper clergy were supported by a great mass of peasants. The nobles defended this world, and the clergy opened the way to the next world, while the peasants provided the food and other material needs for the whole society. All three had security in their social relationships in that they occupied positions of social status that satisfied their psychic needs for companionship, economic security, a foreseeable future, and purpose of their efforts. Members of both classes had little anxiety about loss of these things by any likely outcome of events, and all thus had emotional security. [I'm pretty sure it sucked to be an English peasant a thousand years ago, but I accept his point in this context.]
In the course of the medieval period, chiefly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this simple two-class society was modified by the intrusion of a small, but distinctly different, new class between them. Because this new class was between, we call it middle class, just as we call it "bourgeois" (after bourg meaning town) from the fact that it resided in towns, a new kind of social aggregate. The two older, established, classes were almost completely rural and intimately associated with the land, economically, socially, and spiritually. The permanence of the land and the intimate connection of the land with the most basic of human needs, especially food, amplified the emotional security associated with the older classes.
The new middle class of bourgeoisie who grew up between the two older classes had none of these things. They were commercial peoples concerned with exchange of goods, mostly luxury goods, in a society where all their prospective customers already had the basic necessities of life provided by their status. The new middle class had no status in a society based on status; they had no security or permanence in a society that placed the highest value on these qualities. They had no law (since medieval law was largely past customs, and their activities were not customary ones) in a society that highly valued law. The flow of the necessities of life, notably food, to the new town dwellers was precarious, so that some of their earliest and most emphatic actions were taken to ensure the flow of such goods from the surrounding country to the town. All the things the bourgeois did were new things; all were precarious, and insecure; and their whole lives were lived without the status, permanence, and security the society of the day most highly valued. The risks (and rewards) of commercial enterprise, well reflected in the fluctuating fortunes of figures such as Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, were extreme. A single venture could ruin a merchant or make him rich. This insecurity was increased by the fact that the prevalent religion of the day disapproved of what he was doing, seeking profits or taking interest, and could see no way of providing religious services to town dwellers because of the intimate association of the ecclesiastical system with the existing arrangement of rural landholding.
For these and other reasons psychic insecurity became the keynote of the new middle-class outlook. It still is. The only remedy for this insecurity of the middle class seemed to it to be the accumulation of more possessions that could be a demonstration to the world of the individual's importance and power. In this way, for the middle class, the general goal of medieval man to seek future salvation in the hereafter was secularized to an effort to seek future security in this world by acquisition of wealth and its accompanying power and social prestige. But the social prestige from wealth was most available among fellow bourgeoisie, rather than among nobles or peasants. Thus the opinions of one's fellow bourgeoisie, by wealth and by conformity to bourgeois values, became the motivating drives of the middle classes, creating what has been called the "acquisitive society."
In that society prudence, discretion, conformity, moderation (except in acquisition), decorum, frugality, became the marks of a sound man. Credit became more important than intrinsic personal qualities, and credit was based on the appearances of things, especially the appearances of the external material accessories of life. The facts of a man's personal qualities—such as kindness, affection, thoughtfulness, generosity, personal insight, and such, were increasingly irrelevant or even adverse to the middle-class evaluation of a man. Instead, the middle-class evaluation rested rather on nonpersonal attributes and on external accessories. Where personal qualities were admired, they were those that contributed to acquisition (often qualities opposed to the established values of the Christian outlook, such as love, charity, generosity, gentleness, or unselfishness). These middle-class qualities included decisiveness, selfishness, impersonality, ruthless energy, and insatiable ambition.
As the middle classes and their commercialization of all human relationships spread through Western society in the centuries from the twelfth to the twentieth, they largely modified and, to some extent, reversed the values of Western society earlier. In some cases, the old values, such as future preference or self-discipline, remained, but were redirected. Future preference ceased to be transcendental in its aim, and became secularized. Self-discipline ceased to seek spirituality by restraining sensuality, and instead sought material acquisition. In general, the new middle-class outlook had a considerable religious basis, but it was the religion of the medieval heresies and of puritanism rather than the religion of Roman Christianity.
This complex outlook that we call middle class or bourgeois is, of course, the chief basis of our world today. Western society is the richest and most powerful society that has ever existed largely because it has been impelled forward along these lines, beyond the rational degree necessary to satisfy human needs, by the irrational drive for achievement in terms of material ambitions. To be sure, Western society always had other kinds of people, and the majority of the people in Western society probably had other outlooks and values, but it was middle-class urgency that pushed modern developments in the direction they took. There were always in our society dreamers and truth-seekers and tinkerers. They, as poets, scientists, and engineers, thought up innovations which the middle classes adopted and exploited if they seemed likely to be profit-producing. Middle-class self-discipline and future preference provided the savings and investment without which any innovation—no matter how appealing in theory—would be set aside and neglected. But the innovations that could attract middle-class approval (and exploitation) were the ones that made our world today so different from the world of our grandparents and ancestors.
This middle-class character was imposed most strongly on the United States. In order to identify it and to discuss a very complex pattern of outlooks and values, we shall try to summarize it. At its basis is psychic insecurity founded on lack of secure social status. The cure for such insecurity became insatiable material acquisition. From this flowed a large number of attributes of which we shall list only five: future preference, self-discipline, social conformity, infinitely expandable material demand, and a general emphasis on externalized, impersonal values.
Those who have this outlook are middle class; those who lack it are something else. Thus middle-class status is a matter of outlook and not a matter of occupation or status. There can be middle-class clergy or teachers or scientists. Indeed, in the United States, most of these three groups are middle class, although their theoretical devotion to truth rather than to profit, or to others rather than to self, might seem to imply that they should not be middle class. And, indeed, they should not be; for the urge to seek truth or to help others are not really compatible with the middle-class values. But in our culture the latter have been so influential and pervasive, and the economic power of middle-class leaders has been so great, that many people whose occupations, on the face of it, should make them other than middle class, none the less have adopted major parts of the middle-class outlook and seek material success in religion or teaching or science.
The middle-class outlook, born in the Netherlands and northern Italy and other places in the medieval period, has been passed on by being inculcated to children as the proper attitude for them to emulate. It could pass on from generation to generation, and from century to century, as long as parents continued to believe it themselves and disciplined their children to accept it. The minority of children who did not accept it were "disowned" and fell out of the middle classes. What is even more important, they were, until recently, pitied and rejected by their families. In this way, those who accepted the outlook marched on in the steadily swelling ranks of the triumphant middle classes.
The lower, working class, he sets apart from the others as the only sane group in the bunch:
The working class in the United States is much smaller than we might assume, since most American workers are seeking to rise socially, to help their children to rise socially, and are considerably concerned with status symbols. Such people, even if laborers, are not working class, but are rather petty bourgeoisie. The real working class are rather relaxed, have present rather than future preference, generally worry very little about their status in the eyes of the world, enjoy their ordinary lives, including food, sex, and leisure, and have little desire to change their jobs or positions. They are generally relaxed, have a taste for broad humor, are natural, direct, and friendly, without large basic insecurities of personality. The world depression, by destroying their jobs and economic security, much reduced this group, which was always proportionately smaller in America, the land of aspiration for everyone, than in Europe.
Plutonia, I read the very engaging essay about the "cretinous stupidity of the English ruling class" and thought you'd find this interesting (also from "Tragedy and Hope"), and it echoes that theme of the "ascended" middle class, in this case in Britain:
...This idea of "unfairness," or, on its positive side, "fair play," is a concept which is very largely Anglo-Saxon and which is largely based on the class structure of England as it existed up to the early twentieth century. This class structure was clearly envisioned in the minds of Englishmen and was so completely accepted that it was assumed without need to be explicitly stated. In this structure, Britain was regarded as divided into two groups the "classes" and the "masses." The "classes" were the ones who had leisure. This meant that they had property and income. On this basis, they did not need to work for a living; they obtained an education in a separate and expensive system; they married within their own class; they had a distinctive accent; and, above all, they had a distinctive attitude. This attitude was based on the training provided in the special educational system of the "classes." It might be summed up in the statement that "methods are more important than goals" except that this group regarded the methods and manners in which they acted as goals or closely related to goals.
This educational system was based on three great negatives, not easily understood by Americans. These were (a) education must not be vocational—that is, aimed at assisting one to make living; (b) education is not aimed directly at creating or training the intelligence; and (c) education is not aimed at finding the "Truth." On its positive side, the system of education of the "classes" displayed its real nature on the school level rather than on the university level. It aimed at developing a moral outlook, a respect for traditions, qualities of leadership and cooperation, and above all, perhaps, that ability for cooperation in competition summed up in the English idea of "sport" and "playing the game." Because of the restricted numbers of the upper class in Britain, these attitudes applied chiefly to one another, and did not necessarily apply to foreigners or even to the masses. They applied to people who "belonged," and not to all human beings.
The functioning of the British parliamentary system depended to a very great extent on the possession by the members of Parliament of this attitude. Until the end of the nineteenth century, most members of Parliament, coming from the same class background, had this attitude. Since then, it has been lost to a considerable extent, in the Conservative Party by the growing influence of businessmen and the declining influence of the older aristocracy, and in the Labour Party by the fact that the majority of its members were never subjected to the formative influences, especially educational, which created this attitude. The loss of this attitude, however, has not been so rapid as one might expect because, in the first place, plutocracy in England has always been closer to aristocracy than in other countries, there being no sharp divisions between the two, with the result that the aristocracy of today is merely the plutocracy of yesterday, admission from the latter group to the former being generally accomplished in one generation through the financial ability of the first generation of wealth to send its children to the select schools of the aristocrats. This process is so general that the number of real aristocrats in Britain is very small, although the number of nominal aristocrats is quite large. This can be observed in the fact that in 1938 more than half of the peerage had been created since 1906, the overwhelming majority for no other reason than recognition of their ability to acquire a fortune. These new peers have aped the older aristocrats, and this has had the effect of keeping the attitudes which allow the constitution to function alive, although it must be confessed that the new businessmen leaders of the Conservative Party (like Baldwin or Chamberlain) displayed a more complete grasp of the forms than of the substance of the old aristocratic attitude.
Within the Labour Party, the majority of whose members have had no opportunity to acquire the attitude necessary to allow the proper functioning of the constitutional system, the problem has been alleviated to a considerable extent by the fact that the members of that party who are of working-class origin have given very wide influence to the small group of party members who were of upper-class origin. The working-class members of the Labour Party have proved very susceptible to what is called the "aristocratic embrace." That is, they have shown a deference to the points of view and above all to the manners and position of the upper classes, and have done so to a degree which would be impossible to find in any country where class lines were not so rigidly drawn as in England. The working-class members of the Labour Party, when they entered Parliament, did not reject the old upper-class methods of action, but on the contrary sought to win upperclass approval and to retain lower-class support by demonstrating that they could run the government as well as the upper class had always done. Thus the business-class leaders of the Conservative Party and the working-class leaders of the Labour Party both consciously sought to imitate the older aristocratic attitude which had given rise to the conventions of parliamentary government. Both failed in essence rather than in appearance, and both failed from lack of real feeling for the aristocratic pattern of thought rather than from any desire to change the conventions.
(This is late in the book when Quigley waxes philosophical, draws conclusions and expresses some old-fashioned opinions with which I often disagree. He was, after all, an essentially 'conservative' elite educator and historian, writing in the mid '60s. In any case, here I think he's on solid ground.)
Finally, considering the current campaign circus, I can't resist adding this somewhat off-topic tidbit, one of Quigley's many notes on the two-party illusion of choice, from the same chapter quoted above:
In these terms the political struggle in the United States has shifted in two ways, or even three. This struggle, in the minds of the ill informed, had always been viewed as a struggle between Republicans and Democrats at the ballot box in November. Wall Street, long ago, however, had seen that the real struggle was in the nominating conventions the preceding summer.
are they indeed? I'm guessing the author's experience of the "real working class" was somewhat limited.