Civilized society has a plutocratic bias
Last edited Tue Mar 13, 2012, 05:06 PM - Edit history (2)
Throughout human history the "haves" have operated in the context of expecting the "have-nots" to come into the manor and cut their heads off. The common masses have always had the power to take over at any moment.
I am not advocating the traditional bloody peasant's revolt, but the threat has always been a deterrent.
I feel that American society has, as we have become more civilized in terms of order, moved further and further from that (implicit) threat to the point where the haves are unusually emboldened.
It may well be that a less violent society has a reactionary bias because the have nots have only their numbers and the implicit threat of those numbers. The less violent and more orderly the society the less the haves are motivated by fear. And we have an amazingly civilized society! How could we have an economic collapse with so little civil unrest? It's impressive, historically.
The have-nots also benefit greatly from a less violent society, of course. I'm not suggesting that civilization is bad across the board. But damn these billionaires are fearless! (The popularity of libertarian thinking really shows how divorced we are from the practical notion that your property is only yours at the sufference of everyone else, which it is.)
Also, moving wealth from land holdings to numbers in bank computers has a reactionary bias. Back in the day the haves could flee, but could not take their true wealth with them.
(I could have entitled this, "Thoughts on the DOW hitting records in a high unemployment environment."
ON EDIT: Regarding deterrence. It has always been a mixed bag, of course. The fear of the people has sometimes lead to reform and moderation and sometimes lead to increasingly brutal oppression. For instance, in the American south has always had a cultural sense that if the mechanisms of control were eased even a fraction that the slaves (and later the freed slaves) would kill their masters. There was a rationalized guilt reaction that led to more opression. Same thing in South Africa. And the haves will never *admit* to being moved by fear. So in the wake of the 1960s race riots Nixon was all about "law and order" while at the same time quietly expanding the welfare state more than any other president. Monarchs met the particular of the execution of the royal families of France in the 1700s and of Russia in the 1990s, and of the anarchist assassinations of dozens western leaders circa 1900 (including a US president), with violence and bluster, but also with unprecendented reform. (Many policy demands in the Communist Manifesto were realized and exceeded throughout the west, but nobody ever liked to admit that it was the haves bowing to the revolutions of 1848 out of raw fear.)
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