Old James Burnham always said that true Liberals are wary of authority. They don't want to use violence, and usually when they have to, they don't do it the right way. And they don't psychologically accept hierarchy and authority comfortably. This is all a hallmark of their origins in the bourgeoisie, to whom the proper way to rule does not come naturally.
I don't agree with Burnham in many ways. I believe he was a progenitor of the neocon mentality, though he can hardly be blamed for that group's current excesses. But he had that hoary old amoral apologist for power in him, that has defined so many of the modern pseudo-conservatives. This shows how morally rudderless and adrift the remnant British Americans are.
But after that exchange with Sandor I'm reminded of James Clavell. He was himself of the military caste, and was captured in WWII by the Japanese, where he spent 3 years at Changi Prison in Singapore. He wrote novels primarily about capitalists expanding in Asia (although not in Shogun, although the person of James Blackthorne was not at all dissimilar to his other protagonists).
What is striking about the entire exercise is the idealized nature of the characters. James Clavell clearly paints pictures of Aryo-Nordic adventurers, and all but declares in a loud voice that these are the ones who are responsible for capitalism. There is nothing of the modern, spineless, drone businessman of modern times.
There was blond Englishman Blackthorne, ruddy Scotsman Struan, and the tough, self reliant American King. Even the villains were usually of the noble caste. Quillan Gornt and Igor Mzytryk don't come across like milquetoasts in the least little bit. Compare with modern day beta and less males of the office environments and laugh heartily.
And I am largely in agreement with him vis-a-vis the type who built capitalism in the imperial sense. They weren't managerial types, or more properly adjusted for historical context, shopkeep types. They were risk-taking soldiers and ruthless buccaneers. They ran over opposition, manipulated and intimidated when it suited them, and took women from local populations for wives.
All of this is very much in keeping with the Gobineau worldview, as indeed Ayn Rand's works also were (who Clavell claimed as an influence). There is, so far, little I can object to. I like his depiction of capitalism, and self-aware or no, he's pretty candid in his portrayals. But this again brings up the question - what happened?
Modern capitalism has ever so little in common with this type of man. I have argued in the past that the Aryan type turned over power to the bourgeoisie without much of a fight. The action was the important part for that kind of man, and once it was completed, the wealth didn't mean much.
The bourgeoisie, who do not have it in them to rule as divine order requires, nevertheless got around this issue in a novel way. They took the man of action and used him to build their empires, profiting without any of the risk. And this has continued to the present day. This is not, I must stress, a matter of 'outwitting' the aristocrat, which I generally don't think they are good at. It's more like using his essential nature against him.
This is really the issue, the aristocratic and Aryan type doesn't value what the bourgeoisie does, and it is the fundamental divide between their worlds of life that makes it possible for the one to 'dominate' the other. Quite simply, the Aryan is out of place in the modern world. He still could dominate, but it would require an awareness of the gravity of the situation that he hasn't, at least not yet.
I'd like to commend Clavell for, probably unwittingly, bringing attention to all of this by way of his novels.
Let me say now that I do not consider Clavell to be a stellar example of literature at all. He is one of those fellows who might be called an excellent storyteller but a middling writer. But the lack of pretension is a plus, really, in a literary world populated by all kinds of pompous mediocrities. I as a writer aim for a lack of pretension also.
ReplyDeleteHe occupies an area that I can't quite call lowbrow, considering that he has a more subtle understanding of human nature and of historical realities than many people who are more polished writers. He's an example of middlebrow literature that probably aims at a younger audience. I see little pandering to the modern libertarian set, though.
Ultimately, it was a fun thing to read his books at the age I did and it is interesting to reflect on the views he promoted, consciously or not, since they don't neatly fall into PC constraints - thank God. They are interesting food for thought, though, and no doubt about that.
My own literary interests have moved away from fiction, but I am not quite so unforgiving about it than some. I will probably write more about that in due time.
Thinking back on it, Clavell was one of many novelists influenced by the Tolstoy "epic" style. I still would recommend reading his works, especially for younger guys. Definitely better than the mentally ill slop they foist on the youth these days. Young men could do worse than to read books by men of action who lived in a less stagnant age (Clavell was a soldier in WWII and spent years as a POW, and later became a well-off bestselling author and spent a lot of his life traveling around the world).
ReplyDeleteI think, looking at the above, I'd be more careful in abusing the bourgeoisie than I was here. To be honest, reading some of this old material now, I do think I was a bit "intemperate" as Tan (who inspired the creation of this blog) called me once upon a time. The tone of this writing is a bit overheated, but that was pretty common in the Uranus in Aries era of revolt and rebellion. It fits with the Spenglerian perspective, who was also pretty much against the bourgeoisie.
ReplyDeleteBut on the other hand, the petit bourgeoisie are actually the people most likely to rebel and change things. They were the ones who built the NS movement in Germany, they were the leaders of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and they led the peasant uprisings in China (Mao, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin were all from the petit bourgeoisie). It is the haute bourgeoisie that wants to keep everything as it is and profit without too much risk. So in a sense, you can view the troubles of our time as a kind of civil war between the high and low bourgeoisie, who seem to be the only classes who do anything at all, contrary to what Spengler (and I) once thought. The proletarians are content to work for others and they never really do much as a collective on their own without leadership, the old aristocracy is mostly gone (either blended into the high or low bourgeoisie by now), and the lumpenproles are as dependent as ever. The peasantry remains the same as it always was, wherever it still exists, which is mostly not in any Western countries today.
The "overheated" tone of the above is partly because, obviously, I was pretty sick of the business world even then. The corporate office has even gotten more ridiculous since those days. Luckily I had left it for greener pastures by the time the mask and vax mandates came along...
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