Monday, December 12, 2011

Inequality and the Roots of Conservative Thought


From 40,000 years ago on, human history has been the story of increasing and accelerating change. This built in dynamism, change and modernization, driven primarily by climate and technology is always in tension and conflict with conservative forces desiring stasis and the good old days.

Demonstrable conservatism starts right at the beginning of civilization, with the default creation of hierarchical society. With civilization there comes an inherent asymmetrical power structure no matter what the form of government. The people who gain resources, advantage, power and control don’t want to lose it. This is not ideology; it’s human nature. The conservative impulse is for stasis, tradition and order, i.e. for those who have power to keep it. And since change is inevitable, uneasy sits the King; the Sword of Damocles and dynamic forces always threaten order and stasis.

There comes a built in conflict between the elite haves and the non-elite have-nots. This imbalance of power is the ruler’s Sword of Damocles. Underdogs always are in wait to take down the top dogs. The rights (control) of the few and the rights (desires) of the many have been in dispute for a long time and various cultural, philosophical overlays are used to justify one position or another. In the end this conservative/ dynamic struggle is one of human nature, between the haves and have-nots; dominance and control only last until usurpers come and initiate a new regime.

My general thesis here is that impulses for conservatism and dynamism both stem from legitimate threads of human nature. If you’ve got it good you don’t want to rock the boat; if you’re struggling and drowning, you do want to rock that boat.

Conservatism then represents justifications for inequality and for keeping power arrangements as they are. In this sense “liberals” are just variants of a general conservative type, only they throw a few more bones to the masses and have a bit more sense of common good.

The main initial premise in Western conservatism is religious and stems from the Hebrews and their covenant with Yahweh. Yahweh gave the Hebrews the Word, the law and male domination over nature, women and other nations. Power and control is established from this absolute, unchallengeable substrate. This is what conservatives ultimately hearken back to: elite men are in charge because God said so.

This core principle became fused with Greek Platonism as transcendent truth apart from nature. Additionally, Greek humanism and rational thought opened the door later to the Enlightenment, the reassertion of nature and the whole ball of wax was fused with Christianity in a Western synthesis where all tools available, God and nature, back up the stasis and justification of elite male control of all. 

Jumping to the Enlightenment, Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the founder of modern conservatism proposed that property is the basis of structure, order and control in society. Property goes hand in hand with class (haves and have nots) and class is a natural feature of society itself.

Taking a basic Age of Reason tack, Burke made the same equation others were making: reason deduces natural law, which ipso facto is God’s law. Therefore class, race and sexual differences, unequal distributions of wealth are at once representative of natural “laws of the market” and society and of God’s law. This is a primary conservative justification for power and control.

This justification stands in contrast with a parallel Enlightenment principle also deduced by reason: that all men are created equal and born with certain inalienable rights. This conflict of ideas goes back to the beginning of civilization and hierarchical society.  There are built-in tensions between dynamism and stasis and also between the few and the many. These tensions work together and periodically coincide to bring down status quo governmental orders.

To open up the roots of conservative thought: Burke was against the French Revolution and ideas of equality, that all might be citizens of the state. This was seen as against God and nature. Non-property owners such as wage laborers, peasants, women, slaves, the sum total of the Third Estate, these people deserved no rights as citizens. Why? The natural order of society is asymmetrical and ordained by God.

Conservative thought justifies power and stasis with the best tools available to mankind: reason and absolute religion. Mythical and rational modes of thought are fused in support of the worldly hegemony of the few.  Ideas of God and reason can easily be manipulated to serve worldly purposes and conservatives have hit on a potent combo. Whether something is ultimately true or not is another question.

Two and two can be put together to see that conservative stances in the US favor the stasis of those in power, hearkening back to the Founders: white Anglo Saxon Protestants.  Any social philosophies that deviate from the dominant paradigm are a challenge to the natural order of society, as justified by God. Immigration by any group other than northern European Protestants has been met with constant resistance. Social justice, civil rights, labor rights, women’s liberation, Gay rights, equality, these are anti-society forces growing from people who legitimately should have no rights. Conserving the environment goes against God’s granting man dominion over all of nature. Regulation of the economy is against natural law where the powerful rule the few. Any idea of the commons doesn’t matter as this is only peasant territory to be exploited.

This all fits like a glove with the initial premises. The Bible and the Constitution are the Word. All this implies that none other than powerful white males have rights and a collective stance of any groups other than white males is against the order of reason and God. This is your basic might is right doctored to fit the Western trajectory. Elites are only exceptional to the extent that they have the chutzpah to brazenly dominate others and deny them any humanity.

Modern US conservatives are for individual freedom as long as you are white and can pay the entrance fee of having property. Social mobility and advancement by merit are contingent on those qualifiers. This is the basis for all American conservative thought. The US Constitution backs it up: equality is reserved for white property owners. We had to have the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, Feminism and labor movements to take care of inconsistencies in word and deed in the application equality, freedom and liberty. Any effort at equality is a constant struggle with those clinging to power, i.e. Wall Street.

Unfortunately a fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of Western Civilization and the US Constitution, that between slavery and equal opportunity. All governments since the beginning have had to deal with tension between the few and the many. All we are seeing now is the incremental gains of people at the bottom being fought by those who are accustomed to having power and control. It’s the same old human story just different actors.

Since the Rise of the West was essentially the rise of Protestant northern Europe and the founding of the US coincided with the West’s domination of the entire world, this plays right into ideas of Western exceptionalism, which US conservatives buy hook, line and sinker. This is Providence, City on the Hill, Manifest Destiny, God justifying all. This is where the Protestant Ethic fused political and philosophical antecedents into a new justifying principle for the ascendance of capitalism, Calvinism and US dominance of the world.

This gradually morphed internally into allegiance to laws of the market and State’s Rights which are codes for maintaining white male dominance. To conservatives, all the equality and inalienable rights stuff is just a bunch of freeloaders who want a free ride on the backs of hard working industrialists and Calvinist taxpayers. Or alternately the freeloaders are challenging the divine right of the plantation Masters. “Taxpayers” is a new code word for increasingly disenfranchised little white guys who don’t want to share citizenship privileges with heathen immigrants.  

Conservatives are fundamentally anti-modern. Change is bad, the status quo is good and the appropriate status quo for the US is just as it was at the time of the Founders or the 1950s (never mind that that prosperity was all government funded) when the West was on the rise and at the top of its game.  Modernization implies change to the mythical rationale of God-given order and white male supremacy. Modernization means questioning the Bible and the Constitution and unequal social relations. Globalization means the hegemony of the West is being challenged. To conservatives there can be no relativity here, no middle ground as that would upend their whole applecart.

Hence secular academics is seen as one big liberal subversive plot, as any attempt at an objective analysis of history inevitably arrives at seeing primary unfairness issues and calling a spade a spade, and this challenges the master narrative of white male dominance. Hence the rise of conservative think tanks where intelligent rationales are bought and enforced, not with merit but with money.

Could society and human nature be a little more inclusive? No. So what we get in the end is a group of people who want stasis and for things not to change. However, these justifications represent stasis trying to hold on at any cost against the dynamic tides of history. Human nature and society have indeed evolved to include all as citizens. (Arab Spring) These things have even become part of the US Constitution. This having to share equality and social standing, having to give everybody a fair shot, to open up the club to a larger collective, this seems to be the fundamental conservative target issue today.  Equality is desperately resisted with Jim Crow, union busting legislation, neighborhood redlining, Nativism, accusations of communism and socialism, anything to not let the rabble close to the levers of power where big money white males are losing out to the tides of history.

But hey, these guys are not dumb; they have more or less a realistic view of society; it is unequal and always has been, that’s the way it is. To justify this is merely to call a spade a spade. Innumerable leaders, Kings, emperors and dictators have done the same. This is history and conservatives hearken back with a legitimate thread. To teach history from a conservative vantage would be to use religious, Machiavellian and Darwinian explanations for the nature of man and society. It is destiny, Fate. It’s a dog eat dog world and only those dogs powerful enough or blessed by God will prevail. Conservative thought puts the mythical as primary and then uses reason to justify it.

This brings up a core issue and paradox. Without an absolute moral substrate given by God then humanity is left to its own devices to figure what is right and just. With no God as primary cause we’re on secular shifting sand. Yet we were on shifting sand anyway as all top dogs in history have used gods to justify themselves and these gods were all different.  Gods and reason serve human purposes. There is no absolute god. It doesn’t matter where the shifting sand comes from, reason or religion; humanity is left with competing justifications for power and control.  The only difference is if these justifications come from the mythical or rational spheres. And by using reason, mythical thinking or a fusion of the two, some champion top dogs while others pull for underdogs. The very nature of freedom is different depending on what you are after. 

In reality politics and idealism are really a lot of bullshit to justify power and control. Power and control are traditionally held by the few, in tension with the many. The history of civilization is one big Myth of Sisyphus where every aspirant to power pushes the ball up the hill only to have it roll down and some other aspirant starts pushing again. It’s really got nothing to do with what is right or just; it is flat out Machiavellian, Darwinian innate behavior for male dominance. God, Darwin, Machiavelli, they have it all figured out. Winning justifies itself. Might is right. Winning blots out all ambiguity.

Given all of the above, current US politics and culture come into focus. The primary agenda of conservatives is to justify those in power and the primary objective of liberals is to open up the field to underdogs. Communism, Cold War, recession, the 1960s, unions, secular thought, are all great opportunities for conservatives to work their agenda against the Left. The cyclic rising tide of equality has been fought every step of the way. The US conservative movement has been a reaction to Progressivism, the New Deal, the 60s and the Great Society. The movement is essentially against change that enfranchises labor, blacks, minorities, women and secular thought.

The conservatives have essentially a negative program. It’s reactionary to change and modernization. Liberals are inclusive and have a positive plan, a plan for the many, not only the few. E pluribus unum (unity from diversity) was the national motto until conservatives changed it to In God We Trust at the height of anticommunist fever in 1956. Sound familiar?

It all gets back to basic conflicts between mythical versus rational thinking. This is why Plato wanted a benign dictator instead of democracy. Plato’s Athenian society was similarly torn apart as ours is today. The unenlightened masses have no wisdom, only passion, volume, partisanship and vindictiveness. This same scenario brought down the Roman Republic.

To sum up: The Protestant Ethic fused religion with capitalism, thereby creating a double whammy that wealth and domination is given by both God and natural law. Behind that is Judeo-Christian absolutism, a separation from nature, domination of other men and a free pass to brutalize all heretics and sub-humans. This got fused with democracy and Christianity though the Greco-Roman-Enlightenment synthesis and so we end up with a deep smokescreen of valuing/ justifying American power, Manifest Destiny, individual volition, merit and inherent right for white guys with property at the expense of the larger world community and the environment. No matter if the oceans are fished out, the climate tanks and water and air is all polluted; this world is just a stage for the afterlife, troubles won’t exist in heaven, to which the puppet masters have already bought all the tickets anyhow.

The whole enterprise since 1492 has led to a wholesale pursuit of growth, “progress”, markets, profit at the expense of a sustainable quality of life for people at large. This is our legacy system. What benefit to the people of earth is a system run by elites who destroy the very “God-given” foundations of success? The monkey masters do not own natural resources to the exclusion of the monkeys. It is no joke that the planet is seriously abused and the majority of earth’s people live in severe poverty.

What is the answer? No planning ahead or regulation will be necessary. God will take of everything in the afterlife, since God gave dominion over nature, other nations and over other people.  Democracy and the Republic gives this voice of the winners power. The current world conflagration is just some kind of cruel joke, a test of faith somehow and all you need to do is accept Jesus as your savior and all will be OK. I can’t think of anything more ridiculous.

Elite leaders have had their chance for 5000 years and have led us to naught and from all indications we can expect more of the same. 
From the very beginning it’s been a back and forth type of game between the haves and have-nots. Now the issues are of such a scale and the weaponry so powerful, having any hope seems almost pointless. Humanity has overrun the planet, fouled our nest and we are still stuck in primitive parochial bickering. The transparent paralysis of politicians is leading the world straight to the Terminator, Planet of the Apes and Mad Max. This is what conservatism is going to bring us, clinging to power and false myths until the whole house of cards falls.