It's All Kayfabe: Or, How I Learned to Love the Centre Left
Recently AA put out a series of videos where he declared himself to be against right-wing populism in order to claim the "realist" or sensible centre-left position in politics. Let's talk about this.
Ok, truth be told, I don’t love the centre-left. But much of modern politics is kayfabe and the modern managerial system makes all politics into centre-left politics. This much is true. A couple of weeks ago, Neema Parvini, also known as Academic Agent, or AA, put out an eight part YouTube series entitled: Neema Parvini vs. Right-Wing Ideas. The series came to my attention when, because of my extensive reflection on the writings of Jacques Ellul, a number of mutuals began sending me links to the fourth video in the series discussing the right’s supposed technophobia. At the conclusion of each of these videos, Parvini invites feedback and discussion about the problems he has raised with the right-wing as it exists both online and in the real world. Having gone through the videos twice now, I think that his assessment is more or less correct, even if I disagree with his decision regarding the question of “what next?” I don’t believe that embracing the centre-left is the correct path, even if in practice this is what ends up happening to most so-called “right wing” politicians, activists and lobbyists involved in the political and managerial system.
I am not going to do a moment-by-moment breakdown as the videos tend to wander a little. I will pick up what I believe to be the key themes that I think make most sense for developing my response, developing them along lines that I have touched on and have been hinted at or implied in the things I have written in the past. As I have wrestled with the videos, I found them fruitful for bringing together my thoughts over the last few months.
As someone who cut his teeth philosophically in area of hermeneutics and whose touchstone philosopher is Hans-Georg Gadamer, I just have to say at the outset that there is no such thing as a “value free analysis.” There just isn’t. Even trying to claim the position of the detached observer without a dog in the fight is not a hermeneutically honest position. That you were interested enough to write about it indicates that you are interested enough in the subject, have enough attachment and involvement in it, to produce eight videos on the subject. And the position of the elite theorists themselves, that they are merely making observations about the world of politics free from ideological and political aspirations, are still operating within a framework where they are making fundamental value claims. As much as I appreciate and agree with many “elite theory” insights, I feel it necessary to challenge the “value free analysis” position. I have written on this elsewhere and so will not belabour the point.
That said, I do think that Parvini is correct in claiming that within the current context, the totality of our social, economic and political realities, that the “sensible centre-left” is the only political position that makes sense. As long as you wish to participate within the game as it is currently set for us, there is only one “meta.” It is this way by design. That winning meta is technocratic managerialism. To win within the system, to control it and wield it, the exigencies of the system will demand of you that you conform yourself to some iteration of being a part of the sensible centre-left. Even positions that seem “right-wing,” once they are absorbed and translated into the machinery of the technocratic administrative system will eventually become part of the centre-left managerial system. My long-time readers will know that I have written about this on multiple occasions and is one of the cornerstones of my thinking and writing. I have written about it here:
And here:
As well as here:
Scrolling through the archives, I could probably pull up another three or four pieces all touching this theme and expanding on it in other ways. If you are participating in the system, a system which is all encompassing, touching almost every institution in government, business as well as non-profits above a certain scale, all are pulled towards some variation of centre-left thinking. These patterns of thinking often infect smaller organizations, especially if they aspire to become large organizations or want acceptance from larger organizations. Managerial thinking is essentially liberal and progressive in nature. What most think of as “conservative” or “right-wing,” once the business of instantiating these ideas within today’s context overtakes them, most of them soon become some form of “sensible liberalism.” Thus, the politically realist position is always some form of liberal progressive centrism. Most people just want the system to work and realize that radical ideology from the left and the right represent a threat to that “sensible centrist” approach. What is the most viable policy prescription that can be successfully implemented over time considering also the demands of what is propagandistically feasible? This is the realm in which most political operatives work. This is realm of “doing what works.” This is the realm of the soft power of the managerial state. The problem with “Wokism” is not that it is progressive, but that it is too radically progressive.
In order to operate within the political game as it is currently constituted across the west, as Parvini argues, you must understand that this world is a global technocratic commercial empire backed by American hard power. The lesser great powers, Russia and China, are major players, competitors and rivals within this system, but it is primarily the Americans that ensure its smooth running. Just-in-time supply chains are possible because the US deploys carrier groups around the world. This ability to project power globally sustains everything and it means that for the foreseeable future the Global American Empire will remain the dominant political reality. Any attempts to understand the reality of politics today must take into account the global political reality of the American Empire. Whether you are in Britain, Canada or even the United States, all politics is “imperial” in nature. “America First” is thus an anti-imperial political idea. This is why the regime rejects it.
Everyone’s standard of living today is largely dependent upon the continuation and health of the American Empire. It is disingenuous to discuss the politics of Britain, Canada, Germany and other places as if they are autonomous sovereign nations fully in charge of their own political landscape. Global power systems and their exigencies must be understood and taken into account when assessing issues that seem “national” in nature. Because this global power system is first of all a commercial empire, the demands of the global supply chain are of more importance for political realities than are the interests of the citizenry of any one location. This includes the United States of American. There is no “America First.” There is only “Empire First,” or “Imperial Commercial America First.”
The game being played is one of global capital and global competition. It is a world in which everyone under the purview of the empire is seen as a fungible cog in the machine. All that matters is the metrics and the spreadsheets. You must win the global competition game. Loyalty to any one place, nationality or ethnic group undermines your competitiveness. Parvini’s argument that in such an environment, the game of global competition, in-group preference will almost always be outcompeted by a situation where there is meritocratic hiring practices.
Even though this kind of talent meritocracy will not actually produce an “aristocracy,” he is correct in his observation that if you are competing in a global marketplace, there is enormous pressure to draw on the most talented individuals that you can find, regardless of source. It is the “tank problem” of the global business world. You might think it evil to build tanks on assembly lines using industrialized means of mass production, but your rivals will likely have no such qualms. So by necessity, you must do something in response to you neighbour’s tanks. You either must build tanks yourself, or have a means of neutralizing his tanks. You are limited in your moral response. You might think hiring someone other than you own sons to run your business is immoral, or that hiring someone other than your own countrymen is immoral, but you better have a plan to deal with your competitor who lacks your scruples. He will now have a competitive edge over you. If you desire to compete in a global marketplace, or against others who do operate in such an environment, your hands are somewhat tied.
We are talking here about operating within the game of global competition. Can you build from within and continue to compete at the highest level? It might be possible, but probably not. If you are successful, over how many generations can you continue this? And, any business that expands beyond a certain size, by necessity, will have to transition to a system of technical managerialism. One of the benefits of managerial systems is their ability to produce consistently predictable results over time. Once you scale up, you will be moving beyond in-group preference hiring anyways. You might be able to manage expanding your workforce or political networks in concentric circles outwards from family to village, or from family to faith community. And then with each expanding ring of scale, the incentives to always promote from within diminish. You might reach compromises where you bring outsiders in at the bottom and teach them your ways, inculcating them into your way. But they are still not family. They are still not strictly from your in-group.
The Christian church has always operated this way, bringing converts in at the bottom, teaching and discipling them, eventually allowing them to rise into leadership positions. The more that you wish to maintain tight in-group preferences, the more you limit your ability to scale up. You may be comfortable with this, but your lack of scale makes you vulnerable to larger predatory organizations, or politically to larger nations. This is the catch-22 situation that scale places you in. Do nothing and you risk being beaten by larger competitors who are willing to go after the “best and brightest;” or do you chase after the “best and brightest” and risk the dilution and atomization of the culture of your community or organization? That said, I do think that strong in-group preference does give an advantage, as Parvini will himself acknowledge in the next video, one that will suggest a path forward.
You and your people have conquered the world, or at least enough of it to be considered an empire. Obviously, you are a superior people. Right? You should be entitled to occupy the highest reaches of the imperium and reap its rewards, you think. But here is the thing about empires: integrating, stabilizing and maintaining the dynamism of all the territories within the empire requires you to integrate the elites from the various provinces. Peoples within the empire want to be able to move freely across the territories so as to take advantage of political, economic and social opportunities within the empire. Rome became more than a city. Britain was more than a country. America is now more than a nation.
Parvini is correct in this assessment and in the observation that when empires select for specific racial or ethnic groups, they tend to set themselves up for failure. The Global American Empire is unique in that it is first and foremost a commercial empire maintained by hard military power. At the same time, there is little formal political integration across the imperium. Thus, people working for multinational corporations whose seamless global operations are backed by American power do not become Americans. In the home territories there is this dichotomy where people still think that “Rome” is a city and not a globe spanning empire. The idea that America is for Americans fails to understand the nature of empires. Again, Parvini is correct in this assessment.
But that said, he makes an observation about upstart, tight-knit, homogenous groups. Even though empires need to become multi-ethnic in order to sustain themselves over time, the do so by expending the “asabiyyah” of the peoples who make up empire. Another term for this is the “IQ shredder.” This term, asabiyyah, drawn from Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century Arab theorist. It is the power or energy that a group has when they are small, unified, have a high degree of social cohesion and a shared sense of purpose. Parvini notes that it is these groups that are often responsible for bringing an end to empires. It is also the force that allows groups to exist within a larger political and social body as a minority, maintaining a strong sense of identity across time. We can see this dynamic at work in the Jewish community in Europe during the Middle Ages. Also, today we see it among Indian immigrants living in the west. These groups are ethnogenically shaped through the rigors of sustaining themselves. They are, as Parvini notes, better organized inferiors. The empire, to sustain itself, will absorb the best and the brightest, the most ambitious, giving them access to power and wealth. The empire, with the aid of the best and brightest, grows in power, wealth and scale, but as it does so, it loses its cohesion and energy until such as time as it is toppled by one or more of these smaller, tight-knit groups with high asabiyyah.
Herein lies the path forward for those who wish to resist the regime. We will discuss this more as the piece goes on, but the realities of imperial power force a choice upon you. Do you wish to participate in the rewards of the empire? The cost is that you must give up the asabiyyah of your particular sub-group. Do you wish to reform the empire? You will expend the asabiyyah of your sub-group to do so. What about national identity? As we will discuss next, your nation exists in a dual state. On one level it maintains the local affairs of the country. On another level it is merely the servant of the demands of a global commercial empire. This is true even in America. Your elites are always trying to harness or coral your energy and enthusiasm to maintain their position in the empire. Resisting the demands of the empire, its rewards and punishments, from within the empire means existing and operating as a tightly knit group that acts to preserve itself against pull of the empire to integrate it into its structures. Or, these high asabiyyah groups exist to further their own interests within the empire. But they do not exist FOR the empire. The group must see its own interests, its own political exigencies, as paramount above all else, including the demands of the empire.
One of the things that becomes abundantly clear when you read an author like Bertrand De Jouvenel is that power always wants to expand. The technological society and the systems of technical managerialism detailed by Jacques Ellul makes the expansion of power possible at a historically unprecedented scale. History is the history of empires. Parvini is correct to note that there is no nationalism today. Political realities, if they are to be properly understood, are no longer the thing of nations, but rather of empires. Thus one is under the auspices of the American, the Russian or the Chinese empires. Nationalism is a stage on the way to empire, a stepping stone to something larger. It is always this way says De Jouvenel. The same systems of power that enabled the modern nation state to form would never be content to be limited to merely to the nation. The technological system facilitates this expansion. Empire is always the goal of Power. Even the three major global power blocks struggle to resist integration into a single global economic system.
In this regard, Parvini is correct in saying that your nationalism is being whipped up and used as a pawn in a larger political power game. This is true in Canada, in Britain but also in the United States. Your patriotism, your love for your country, your nationalism is an energy that the empire at once fears and wants to use. It must be understood that the systems of power that underpin the Global American Empire, its technocratic managerial systems, are, at their root, extremely conservative. They want these systems of power, this way of thinking, to remain dominant indefinitely. These technocratic systems work to mask themselves, to operate out of sight so that they are never challenged. They want you working on the surface level and interacting with the surface structures of power — at the level of party politics and the idea that there is a meaningful difference between left and right. This is where they want you to exist. The system, the empire, wants you expending your energy trying to “save America.” Ellul details how the the technocratic state works in this regard in his book Autopsy of Revolution:
“To appreciate the abuse of language fully [that is, the way we talk about the surface structures of the political and social system], we must recognize that technology produces a society that is essentially conservative (though rapidly developing, of course), integrated and totalizing, at the same time that it introduces far reaching changes: but these are changes of identity, of a constant relationship to itself.”
What Ellul is saying is that even though it seems like everything is changing all the time, it actually isn’t changing at all. New technologies. New devices. New systems. New organizations. It seems like we are constantly having to adapt to a constantly changing environment but this is all on the surface. Political parties change office. We get Democrats and Republicans, Conservative and Labour, Liberal and Conservative, but this is all on the surface. The fundamental rules of the system, the basic operating system, always remains the same even though the surface epiphenomenon are constantly shifting. Underneath all of the constant movement on the surface, the rationalist, abstract, technical, managerial system never really changes. In fact, the constant state of flux on the surface keeps everyone off balance enough, constantly destabilized, that the underlying system is never able to be challenged. That underlying system is enormously conservative in relation to itself. You are encouraged to never delve below the constantly shifting surface ephemera to challenge the system itself, what we call “the state,” in the totality of its multitudinous forms in government, business and non-profits, and the operating system upon which it runs, technique.
“Technology is anti-revolutionary yet suggests total change because of the ‘developments’ it brings, whereas in reality only forms and methods are altered.”
The all encompassing nature of the system actually prevents and kills the revolutionary spirit within the people. As we become ever more integrated into the technical system of the managers, we conform ourselves to its exigencies. Everything serves to strengthen the system.
“[Technology] destroys the revolutionary impulse by increasing conformity to its own integrated structure.”
Thinking about whipping the people up into a fervor to react against the system? Creating a messaging program to counter the regime in fact actually strengthens it. The very use of propaganda and counter-propaganda is in reality, counter-revolutionary. All propaganda is a part of the technical system. Its use, even in opposition to the regime, interiorizes within people all of the changes that strengthens the regime. We become mass man whose will has been replaced with the impulses of the machine.
“Even activist propaganda, arousing the masses and propelling them into the ordeal of revolution, is in fact anti-revolutionary in that what he expresses within the revolutionary movement is no longer himself but someone else whose watch words and obsessions live within him.”
What Ellul is saying here is that the person who is a product of propaganda — whether he is programmed for or against the regime does not matter — because the changes within the man which come because of propaganda are the same regardless of whose interests they serve. The propagandized man appears to fight both for and against the regime, but always within the terms set by the regime system. Whether they are for this party or that party, whether they style themselves as revolutionaries or reactionaries, is the same person running on the same operating system whose will is controlled in the same way. Because both regime and its so-called opposition run on the same technical operating system, they are in fact both parts of the same system, reinforcing the totality of the technical system.
“Propaganda alienates men from each other and attempts to draw alienated men into a war against alienation.”
You might argue that what is needed is to shock men out of their condition. We need to be more radical, to go harder, to make the messaging more extreme. But whipping up people’s passions and radicalizing them actually serves to vent emotions and absorb tensions, stabilizing society. When Jews and Palestinians are fighting on the streets of New York, its good for the system. When Indians and Irishmen are fighting in the streets of Ulster, its good for the system.
“The more extreme, outlandish and offensive the art is, the more demobilizing its effects on the real problems of society.”
In this regard, the social politics agenda of feminism, casual sex, abortion, gay rights, and now the transgender movement are all stages in a kind of social theatre played out across society, like pro-wrestling kayfabe. On the one hand, its outrageousness, in each progression from one stage to the next, serves to vent energies within the culture through the boundary defying behaviors and the outlandish actions of its participants. It dissipates the energies that they might otherwise channel against the regime.
But the reaction against the culture war also has the same result. It vents the passions of the citizens which they also would otherwise vent against the regime. It is a catch-22. If you don’t oppose the culture war, the society is undermined and the imperial regime is strengthened because it will be called upon to address all of the problems it created. If you do oppose the culture war, all the energy you might have otherwise directed into destroying the imperium is now put into stopping the sexual “revolution” (which is in fact not a real revolution, just a series of rapid social changes affecting the surface layers but not the system itself) in all of its forms. Whether you fight or don’t fight the culture war, the techno-administrative system is strengthened, the empire is strengthened.
The same dynamic is at play with mass immigration. The regime system benefits whether you are in favour of mass immigration or if you are fighting mass immigration. There is the catch-22. If you do nothing, mass immigration dilutes and undermines the cohesion and energy of the society, effectively undermining the society’s ability to resist the regime system, draining your asabiyyah. If you fight politically against mass immigration within the system, you are expending energy that might otherwise be directed against the system itself. Either way, the trans-national systems of technical managerialism remain in place. Your fight to “drain the swamp” or to “save America” or to “Make America Great Again” has the effect of draining away your energy. Whether you are successful or not, the imperium itself remains. You cannot both save America (from the American Empire) and keep America. America was poured out to build the American Empire. There is no more America. This is the same for Canada as it is for Britain as it is for Germany.
It must be understood that all the things that conservatives harken back to, such as the Protestant foundation of the United States, were all expended to build the American Empire. The energy, the asabiyyah, that the Mainline American Protestant elites, the WASPs, had in the 1800’s was expended to build the American Empire of the 1900’s. There is no going back. The Neo-Con, in this regard, was a necessary transformation, putting conservatism into the service of the imperial project. So too, the asabiyyah of the young Canada was expended in World War One in service to the closing days of the British Empire; thus, its energy spent, facilitated its easy absorption into the emerging American Empire. You can go into almost every 100+ year old church in Canada and see plaques honoring the dead soldiers who gave their lives in World War One. There was a near religious fervour with which young Canadian men fought that war. By the end of World War Two, what remained of that energy was largely exhausted. Canada was now ready to become a meek, dutiful American client state.
Groups where real asabiyah might remain, say in the American South, in the streets of Ulster, in the Alberta prairies or among the Quebecois, this energy is often exercised against the regime. It is a threat to imperial stability. There is talk of “succession.” In the American South, propaganda has generally directed that energy towards patriotism, into a love of America, the country. But America the country is not really a thing. What still remains of such a thing is being bled dry to support America the Empire. The idea of “America” always conflates America-as-country with America-as-empire. This is purposeful. You are not supposed to notice the difference. The sons of America the country fight in Imperial America’s wars while believing they are serving their country. They rally around Donald Trump to Make America Great Again, but if he succeeds, it will not be the country that is made great, but rather the empire.
Nationalism is just a stepping stone in Power’s journey to empire. Unless your asabiyyah is being directed towards toppling the empire, it will be used in someone’s imperial power game to further the interests of the empire. This is true of Canada’s prairie nationalists. Alberta’s power elite are pawns in Trump’s attempts to reorganize the empire along lines and under terms that he deems more favourable to the empire. That America the empire and America the country are constantly confused and conflated is intentional. People need to believe that their energy is going towards fighting for and reforming their country. It is much harder to work up the same level of enthusiasm for the empire. Empire does not generate asabiyyah. It absorbs it and dissipates it. It is necessary for the imperial elites to contain these forces and energies or put them into service for the empire because they always represent a threat to the empire.
What this means, though, for the Trump movement, his base, is that it is an exercise in venting the energy of the American South and the American Heartland so as to integrate it more fully into the imperium. This hopefully will prevent it from being directed towards toppling and breaking up the empire, even if unintentionally. When Parvini talks about how nationalist movements are all now ops in someone’s imperial game, this is what he is talking about. Indians and native Brits fighting each other on the streets of London is a good thing, because it prevents both groups from directing their energy towards toppling the English corner of the American Empire. If Britain is stable and loyal, hard military power does not need to be employed to assure its cooperation in the welfare of the American Empire. Unless your energy is actually directed towards toppling the empire — we are not talking here about replacing one political party with another, but rather burning the whole thing to the ground, end of the Roman Empire level of destruction, so as to usher in another 400-600 years of “dark ages” — it will be used to serve some game within the empire to support its continued existence. If you want a dictator, great! That just means transitioning from American style “soft” managerialism to the “hard” technocratic managerialism you find in China or Russia.
Remember that Neo-Conservatism is conservatism that has been put into service for Imperial America. In the imperial reality of the technocratic managerial system, all politics are some form of centre-left politics. This is what the system demands. Translating any set of policies into the language of managerial systems makes it into some version of centre-leftism. This is why they don’t want you examining the structure of the system itself. Ironically, this is how the “conservatism” of the system manifests itself. An authoritarian hard power dictatorship will still, in the end, because of the exigencies of the maintaining the managerial system necessary to extend power at these levels of scale, be centre-left. If your so-called “right-wing” or “conservative” movement wants to seize power and make it work for the people, your movement too will become some form of centre-left in practice. You might try to maintain the language of radical politics, the language of conservatism, but you will become some variation of today’s Neo-Conservative. The process of bringing right-wing ideas into the regime system is the process of hollowing out the right-wing and wearing it as a skin suit while the actual ideas are slowly transformed into the kind of centre-left policies that the technocratic managerial systems demand and create. This is the nature of power at this scale and the nature of the systems necessary to maintain power at this scale. It is Conquest’s Law at work.
This brings us back to the tight knit group with asabiyyah. His fourth video on technophobia is the one that we will use to make the point that I ultimately want to develop, but first we should quickly offer a few words on the other four videos.
In the fifth video, Parvini argues that the binary between the free market and socialism is largely a false dialectic. There has never been a “free” market.
All markets are managed and most were developed and maintained by coercive state power. In this, he is correct. The free market is at once a myth and an idea that can be articulated rationally but cannot be instantiated in reality. The world simply does not work that way. This bugaboo that we have about managed economies is silly as well. There are corporations that operate at a scale larger than some countries and yet no one thinks twice about the fact that they do not emerge spontaneously. They were built on purpose and they are managed with intentionality. If this is true for corporations, it is also true about complex economic systems. If you wish to operate economically at scale, at the level of the nation state, the global supply chain, your economy must be managed, it must be “statist” and “socialist.”
In the next video, Parvini raises the question of falling birth rates. I agree with him that expanding the population is not in and of itself a “good.” It is good from time to time to allow the population to fall naturally. Growth is one of the demands of empire. Its natural impulse is to always be expanding. But there are times when a sudden steep decline in population can have a reinvigorating effect.
But, his example of the Black Death and the dynamism that emerged in its wake are somewhat different from today as in that time it was the old and the weak who died, leaving the young and the vigorous to pick up the pieces. Today we have an ever diminishing amount of young people who must now care for an ever growing cadre of the old and sick. My friend The Black Horse went into much more detail on this topic in this recent recording:
His seventh video is something of a red herring in my mind. This tug of war on the online right between “family values” and the “heroic alpha male” is something of a false dichotomy in my mind. Any society that wishes to continue over time needs men to settle down and have families. These same societies will also need men who will eschew these desires or put them at risk, to pursue riches and glory. A society that is successful over time finds a natural balance between these two male urges, sometimes within the same men.
The eighth video in the series is basically a critique against “vibes” based politics. The problem with vibes based politics is that they operate in the realm of propaganda. This is surface level politics. This is the politics of the masses and the easily manipulatable. Hearing this, if you made it this far, might ruffle your feathers, but here we strive to see things at a deeper level. “Vibes” always work for the imperial system. The point of doing analysis like this is to help you see things, as much as is possible, as they are.
This brings us to the video that I believe is the linchpin of the series, the one on the supposed “technophobia” of the right. Parvini correctly notes that there is a stream within the right that is hostile to technology. They celebrate Ted Kaczynski. They look to the Mennonites as a model. There is truth in this. There is also a “techno-futurist right” as well that sees the left as holding back societal and technological progress with “wokeness” and “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion). Parvini argues that “history” has a logic of its own. It is “forward looking.” It is on the side of Human Progress. The techno-skeptical side of the right has no answer for the “Tank Problem.” We talked about this above. Essentially, Parvini is correct when one is talking about empires. This is particularly true of the modern technocratic administrative state. Again, when one is operating within the game as set by global commercial empire adopting the position of the centre-left technocrat is the most sensible. I think, though, that it is important to understand what is happening at a deeper level. The key is to grasp that our current political and governance systems are themselves a form of technology. If one is going to oppose the technological system, one must understand the nature of what one is opposing and why.
As we discussed above, the acquisition of power generally begets the desire for more power. Thus, this thing that we call “history” tends to revolve around people groups and elites that are expansive. We tell the stories of those peoples who made the transition from tribe to kingdom, kingdom to nation, and nation to empire. It is the story of conquest, battles as well as the machinations and intrigues of court among the elites. Jacques Ellul, in his work, Autopsy of Revolution, points to this dynamic, the growth of power, as roughly equivalent with this thing we call “history.” In the eighteenth century a change occurs that ushers in what Ellul calls the “Revolutionary Era.” The decisive element that emerges fully on the world stage during this time is that of “the state.” What is “the state” and why was it introduced? Its not like there wasn’t any governance and rule before the introduction of the this thing we know today as “the state”; but during the revolutionary period some key changes were introduced, mainly the governing of nations was taken over by the bourgeoisie. Let’s unpack what happened and why.
Even though generally I am not a fan of the idea of “history,” it does sometimes have its uses. In this case, Ellul applies it to help us understand the nature of revolts. Prior to the revolutionary period, most revolts came against the abuses of power as it attempted to grow and expand, placing ever more demands upon the lives of the people. As the regime grew harsher in its treatment, more oppressive, a segment of the population would revolt against the powers that be. If we understand “history” as the expansion of power, revolts, then, were traditionally a reaction against power. They were usually composed of a cross section of society that said, “no,” to the powers that be. The vast majority of revolts we have recorded ended either by being put down or by the rulers making accommodations to the demands of the rebels, or usually some combination of both. Once the reforms were instituted and the bodies buried, the energy of the revolt would dissipate. These revolts were a rejection of “history.” They wanted what was traditional and customary as opposed to innovation, excess and change.
A revolution, a true revolution, says Ellul, begins with ideas.
“Revolution contains a concrete ideology.”
A revolt lacks this ideological component.
“Revolt at its source is a void of thought; it is visceral, physical. Revolution implies a doctrine, a plan, a program, a theory of some kind, though the term ‘theory’ need not have a very precise meaning.”
Revolutions, and with it the revolutionary era, really only becomes possible with the particular skillset of the emerging bourgeoisie in the area of rational planning and institution building. Revolution becomes a possibility when you combine the desire to revolt against the existing order with the animating spirit of the merchant managers. What makes a revolution a revolution is a concrete plan to turn the ideals of the revolt into a set of enduring institutions for society.
“What characterizes the transformation of the revolt into revolution is the attempt to provide a new organization.”
With this change, no longer is an aggrieved segment of society saying “stop” to the forces of “history” at work among the ruling elites as they quest for the expansion of power. Rather, there is a desire for a fresh start. The present order must be swept away so as to provide a blank slate for the plans of the managers to create a better, freer society.
“Revolution is not an attempt to transform what exists; it has nothing to do with reform. It is a fresh start from zero.”
What makes this possible is the combination of the rebels with the managers. Without this there is no revolution.
“The revolt itself is the liberating movement. Revolution seeks to organize the situation, to find a stable structure for freedom.”
Providing this stable structure, a set of institutions that will successfully endure over time, is the defining strength of the bourgeoisie. The transition from revolt to revolution is the transition from agitation to integration, from fighting to governing. In order to succeed, the revolution must kill the spirit of the revolt in the transition. The ideals of the revolt must be institutionalized in order to succeed. But in so doing it effectively ends the revolt. This, argues Ellul, is why Hanna Arendt’s understanding of revolution and totalitarianism is flawed because she confuses liberty with constitutionality and the institutions that are established as the so-called guardians of liberty.
Additionally, the idea of revolution fosters the myth that a new world can be obtained and established without new men, that it can be done merely by establishing new institutions. Freedom is not primarily a virtue, a moral and spiritual quality; rather, freedom is a universal, a rational idea, that must be instantiated by means of law and institutions. This process of institution building, of establishing a new society in and through these institutions, shifts the dynamic. The revolt is an attempt to put a stop to history. The revolution becomes the means of securing and instantiating history. This is revolution’s betrayal of the revolt.
“Revolution was no longer a repudiation of the predictable future or an acceleration of the pace of history; it was the process of creating history.”
The nature of the bourgeoisie creates a confusion here. On the one hand they are establishing a set of institutions that are enduring, a stable system upon which everything else rests — as we noted above, observing the “conservative” nature of the technological system — while at the same time creating a context of constant flux built on top of that system. This is the inherent progressivism of the technocratic managerial system. It is always looking to the future. History is that which has yet to be written. It is positive. Tomorrow will always be better than today. There will be endless rewards without sacrifice. This notion of human progress is central to the bourgeoisie ethos. Politically, this is captured by the space occupied by the centre-left. The goal of the centre-left is the supremacy of the well ordered state.
“They recognized the desirability of the state: an abstract, rigorous, perfectly designed, a supreme authority, dispassionate and impartial, vested neither in perpetually fallible man nor in a too remote deity; precise as a scale, yet simple as a squaring tool; a state that functioned in society as the brain in a human organism — a recurring image throughout the period.”
Above all else the bourgeoisie desire a rational state. The unpardonable sin of the old monarchic order was not that it wielded power, but that it did so inconsistently and haphazardly without due process or established rights. It was not much the fact of taxes, but their irrationality. A rational, high tax system is preferable to one that is arbitrary. The rational state through which the managerially minded bourgeoisie could perfect society through its use of institutions is the defining characteristic of the revolutionary period that pretty much all men everywhere now live under.
The “state” is the product of the revolution. Liberty became identified with institutions, with constitutions, legislative bodies, courts of law and the bureaus. Power, rather than being the enemy of liberty, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, became the champion of liberty, its guarantor.
“Liberty became identified with institutions, an innovation that evolved into liberalism.”
Further,
“[Liberalism] was an extension of the idea that freedom resides in the application of the Constitution. Thus liberty was the victim of both rationalism and abstraction.”
The point of raising this is for us to grasp the full nature of the problem. Any plan for reforming the system, is another rational plan and thus contributes to the expansion of the system. Why? Because you need the same people with the same skillset, the same rational systems, in order to implement your plan. The fact that you have a plan, identifies you as a “manager.” This is the true revolution. This is the insidious nature of modernity. It is a totalizing system in which all problems are approached in the same manner: you develop a rational plan and you implement it. You become another technocratic manager.
“Whether we like it or not, a type of constant revolution has existed since 1789. Each successful revolution has left the state enlarged, better organized, more potent, and with wider areas of influence; that has been the pattern even when the revolution has assaulted and attempted to diminish the state…nowhere has the state receded since 1789.”
There are three realities that we must confront when grappling with the reality of the state:
The state gradually assumes responsibility for ever more of the activities of society. Even if the state itself does not directly control a facet of social activity, it almost always finds itself using the mechanisms of rational systems of governance. There is an institutionalized plan in place to direct the future of the organization. The state and other large organizations are the only entities that can exercise oversight in an increasingly complex world.
The state grows more and more abstract, becoming the framework for all of society. It is the reality within which the people live and move and have their being. The state becomes self-developing according to its own needs.
Even though men profess hatred and revulsion against the state and demand freedom from it, their hopes necessarily reside in the state. Everything happens through the state. “The State” writ large is the instantiation of the technical control over all things, over all areas of life.
The current situation is rather bleak. As we discussed above, the nature of the technocratic managerial system renders all activity within the system as more or less the same. Even when you think you are attacking and reforming the system, this too is working to integrate you into the system, strengthening it.
Is this it? Do we merely surrender? Is there nothing we can do to fight? Be careful what you wish for.
“Of course, the system can be rendered useless and destroyed, but that dazzling prospect, built on the assumption that the state is merely a relatively ineffectual superstructure, becomes a nightmare face-to-face with the reality of that organism’s pervasive presence throughout the social body, and its cancer like diffusion, which is impossible to check without destroying the entire society.”
To deal with the problem of the state, the problem of liberalism and its excesses, would largely require you to tear down the entirety of the managerial construct built by the bourgeoisie managers. This would mean the end of modernity as we know it. To operate within the system requires you to be and become some manner of centre-left. Even if you desire to be otherwise, operating within this system will exert tremendous pressure upon you to conform to the ways of the system.
So what do we do? This is where the concept of tight in-group identity and asabiyyah come in. You can either fully participate in the system and give your energy and vitality to the system, either individually or as a group, or you can set yourself apart from the system and maintain your group’s integrity and with it the energy and vitality of the group. For the Christian, the regime represents a particular danger because there is the belief in the Kingdom of God, that the church is the vehicle by which God reveals the first-fruits of his salvation in Christ to the world, and that this has political implications, especially if the Christian is successful in making converts.
“The overpowering attraction of revolution is the panic of the Christians confronted by the curtailment of their role in history. History has assumed such importance that everything relates to it. One is lost if not part of history’s course. The answer therefore, is to plunge into revolutionary action because it alone is certain to make history.”
And so the Christian is tempted to join the revolution or the counter-revolution, believing that God is at work in such movements. In the end, Christ generally gets subordinated to the demand of the revolution and the institutions that instantiate it in society. The Christian faith becomes absorbed into the technocratic managerial construct.
Can you hold yourself apart? Yes and no. You can have a strong in-group bond. You can hold yourself apart from the main centres of power and money. This will of course come with a price. You will almost assuredly be poorer than your neighbours, less influential in society, always on the outside. You will be a target for scapegoating. But, in holding yourself apart, you can endeavour to strengthen the energy and vitality of your group, increasing its asabiyyah. There are no guarantees that this will be the case. And there will always be certain necessities that will force you to deal with and interact with the state system. The “tank problem” does not go away. But you can hold yourself apart as a community in spite of these difficulties.
That said, just because you are not necessarily in the main corridors of power and wealth, does not mean you cannot be successful in life or as a community. You may do a significant amount of business with each other. You may try to retain sovereignty over as many areas of your social life as is possible. You should be acting as a group with its own political consciousness and interests visa-a-vis the state system. Some modern examples are Indian immigrants. In the US they have taken over a sizable portion of the hotel industry. In Canada they have made significant inroads into the trucking industry. They have managed this via coordinated in-group effort. Also, think of the Jewish community. While they have generally embraced left-wing progressivism, they have done so with a high degree of coordination. Think of the influence of AIPAC.
Now, identifiable groups that grow too powerful within the system do expose themselves to state sponsored pogroms. But this is one of the risks that you have to accept. Generally, it means that you must operate on the outside of the main of society. If you interact with the state system, you would not be striving towards the good of the state system, but for your own interests vis-a-vis the state. The modern managerial state is the 600 lb gorilla in the room. You are looking to protect yourselves as a group and to exploit the power systems of the state for your advantage as a group. You are not looking to preserve or reform the system itself. You understand that the state is always a threat to you, your faith and your faith community (or ethnic community, or both, in some cases). You recognize that the state system is always striving to either integrate you or eliminate you.
The administrative state system represents a particular threat to the Christian community in that it always demands ideological conformity to the centre-left. If not the centre-left, then a position where the centre-left does not see the Christian as a threat. Because of this, the Christian faces a real dilemma. They can either expend their energies on the system, trying to advance it or reform it, or they can remain on the outside of the elite power systems of the empire. Judaism had largely allowed itself to be coopted by the managerial system. The “rule of law” by which the managerial systems operates is very similar in character to Talmudic thinking.
A high group self-identity combined with a general acceptance of how the systems of power operate has given them as a group an advantage, an ability to exercise influence across the system to advance the system, and their interests within the system, in various ways, AIPAC being a key vehicle of that influence.
Morally and socially conservative Christians will generally find themselves swimming upstream against the system. The question that Christians face is whether or not to engage the imperial power system. This is particularly true in the American context. Because of the propaganda environment, many believe that they are engaged in an effort to save their country, but are in reality expending their energy trying to reform the imperial governing system. It is time for Christians to begin seeing themselves not as “Americans” first, but rather as a unique group, almost like a distinct ethnic group like Jews, Palestinians or Indians, operating with a high degree of in-group cohesion and alignment to defend and assert their interests as a group within the imperial governance system. The goal should be to build the kind of asabiyyah that would make Christians enough of a threat that their interests must be taken seriously.
Additionally, Christians should be building and preparing for the end of the technocratic administrative regime system. This means surviving the end of the west. It also means cultivating ways of governance that do not rely on administrative systems. The enemy is the state. It is fundamentally anti-human in its orientation. The enemy is not “the left” or “the right” — both of which are forms of kayfabe operating within the rules established by the system and not real options — but the administrative state and the scale of mass society. The alternative is not ideological. All ideology serves the interests of the state, the mechanism by which those with managerial skills will try to institutionally instantiate this same ideology. Left or right ideology is still ideology. Left or right managerialism is still managerialism. So, understanding this, any real opposition will come from outside the managerial state system and will represent a potential threat to this system. It is groups of tightly knit barbarians at the gates or within the city walls. Your strength is not your ideas, is not ideology, is not your plan, but the deep bond you have as a people for each other.
This is what the essence of parallelism is about. It is geared towards cultivating the kind of tight-knit in-group self-identification that allows for the growth of asabiyyah. It is this energy that is the strength of your group. Not that they are the most intelligent. Not that they are the wealthiest. Not that they are the strongest. But their vibrancy and cohesion allows them stand against and apart from the system with an existential desire to continue and thrive as a group. As Carl Schmitt argues at the end of The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy that there is no greater danger to a group’s struggle — in the example given he was thinking of the working class — than participation in parliamentary business, the stuff of government in the modern era. It saps your energy, wears you down and paralyzes you. You become concerned about losing the privileges that the system provides for you. To resist this you must be able to resist both the rewards and the punishments of the system. If you want the rewards of the system, the system will own you and integrate you. You will become some version of the centre-left. For the American right, it means you have to let go of the idea that you can save America. Saving America means saving the American Empire. Yours must be the attitude of the Afrikaner. High in-group identity. Reclaiming as much of your own sovereignty as possible. Prepare for the end of modernity and what comes next. The survival and thriving of your own people as a people are primary. Perhaps it is your Christian faith that binds you. Perhaps it is an ethnic group. Maybe its an attachment to your locality and the people who live there. Perhaps it is something else or a combination of these elements. Asabiyyah. Begin cultivating it now so you have it when you need it.
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In the grim dark present, there is only... Managerialism