seeking freedom in a proletariat run society.
These are some rough notes I came up with some time ago and have been refining over time. I've gotten no further than this, so I'm posting them in the hope that someone else can find some points which may help me refine the argument, and deduce some solid, extensible and useful conclusions.
I aim to show:
That the bourgeois are necessarily self-destructive
That the proletariat are their natural successors.
That proletariat ethics are necessarily the enemy of individual liberty
and that there is a means of keeping the proletariat from power.
I aim then, to provide this solution, not to be worked out as a group, but as an individual guide for the small businessman who wishes to survive and prosper, and perhaps to discover a greater life than might have lead him to the path of business in the first place. If I can succeed at this I will be much pleased. In the end though, this is a test for myself; a concrete manifestation of my thoughts, forced into the written form, and thus given concrete existence before I act upon them in my own company. In the end, even if no greater movement is realized, My own success will be the proof of their effectiveness or failure.
Who are the bourgeois?
The bourgeois are the necessary outgrowths of the merchants of feudal times, who, seeking to attain the status of kings, used the only tools they had, being the power of quantity over quality to raise up a power base, and to inflict their belief structure on the world around them.
Those who fell into these roles have as their highest ideal, commerce. Any place they can cut corners is a good place, and low price per unit is king. "Quality" is a gimmick, used to increase the price, and in the end, the monkey of commerce forced a common aesthetic on the business class. Homogeneous injection molded plastic is king. Witness shiny new cars and Macintosh computers.
The ability to produce things on the cheap allowed the bourgeois to propagate to those below and around them, and to reproduce like rabbits, until the aristocracy was buried under the disposable, single use mess.
Who are the proletariat?
The bourgeois do not produce; They market. They require a class of people focused on production, and these people to them are tools, just as a mill or loom would be. The tools they need for this case need to be technically competent, perhaps even innovative, but they can not be revolutionary. They must stay focused on the physical tasks at hand, and their highest honor must be the creation of a new and ingenious way of cutting cost, or speeding things up, or perhaps a way to use 0.05g less plastic in the forming of a door panel. This should give them great pride, even exuberance at their own cleverness.
Their ideals necessarily mirror, if poorly, the ideals of their ruling class, the bourgeois. Both are conspicuous consumers, although of different items, and both see no reason to slow expansion or spending. The key difference between the two is that the bourgeois are willing to command and to risk, and demand unchecked ability to do so, while the proletariat requires and even demands security and direction.
The nature of bourgeois expansion.
Since the highest ideal of the bourgeois is expansion, they will necessarily create an ever expanding and ever more powerful proletariat.
Furthermore, since they have no internal structure beyond expansion to rule them, they will in all things expand until they collapse under their own weight, be it as in the case of the oppression of the proles, or manufacturing to the point of worthlessness or debt based spending beyond their capacity to repay.
The solution to the proles.
In some cases the bourgeois have learned their lesson. Let us examine the bourgeois/prole relationship. The communist manifesto makes the claim (quite true in it's time) that "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains." and so it was, when the proles began their revolts, and unionization swept America, shortly after the communist takeover swept Russia. In America though, a middle ground was reached.
It used to be that the bourgeois WERE the middle class, below the aristocracy, and above the proles. However, as the aristocracy was edged ever farther out of the picture, the term became meaningless, and while we still hear people talk about the "middle class" as bourgeois, these people do not own their own means of production, they are merely proles with something to lose.
The creation of the "middle class" was brilliant, whether it was intentional or not. The proles now had homes (thus relieving the bourgeois of landlord duties and costs) and cars, and all type of "modern convenience" they could not live without. They had been given something to lose, and furthermore, a reason to keep working, a motivation to strive for, creating a more innovative and motivated worker than the one who does the bare minimum necessary to eat. A new carrot was introduced, without giving up any control of production.
This solution solved a key problem, and the class warfare was destroyed as, applying a label which no longer applied to them, to the proles, the robber barons allowed every hard working prole to feel that he already WAS a member of the class he would have at one time sought to overthrow.
The necessary ends of the bourgeois.
However, the problem the bourgeois face is not the proles. As soon as that disaster was overcome, they went out looking for a new resource to exploit to the brink of explosion. The destruction of natural resources had very little impact, as did the uglification of their surroundings, seeing as how their only aesthetic was that of production, and none of this mattered to them.
Running out of things to exploit, they went back and began the formation of corporations. These brilliant contraptions allowed them to separate themselves from the risk, and run up huge debts, and crash systems, pulling out at the last instant with massive resources intact. If we look at the mismanagement of the proles in the 1800's and the current problems mega-corps face today, I believe we will see the exact same disaster replayed in a separate arena. The nature of the bourgeois is to expand to the point of self destruction.
The prole future.
Since the bourgeois course necessarily leads to destruction, let us look at what follows them. They have, out of need, created a huge proletariat, and furthermore, one which does not know itself as such. This group shares the bourgeois penchant for conspicuous consumption, but does not share it's penchant for risk and liberty. Being a good workforce, their demands are security. This group, not knowing itself to be repressed will continue, slowly and surely to work itself into the power structure, and I dare say is already the strongest force today, if only by a very slight margin.
When they do revolt, they take control, and the ethics of the new controlling power comes from the bottom instead of from the top. The problem with this, is that their have been trained for some time to depend on others.
Article 23 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."
Who provides these jobs? Are we so caught up in our own niche that we believe these things emerge from thin air? the governing powers of the new slowly moving jerk and stop subtle prole revolution expect to be free from responsibility, and are more than willing to give up control to get it. Legislators want police to protect them physically, and police rely on legislators to tell them what to do, shielding them mentally. Everywhere around us we see the government protecting us from ourselves, in the form of outlawing victimless crimes (smoking, seatbelt laws, etc) destroying privacy, and the modern homeland defense warrent-less search techniques surpass even the invasiveness of the German Gestapo.
In almost every instance, the rulership by the proletariat leads almost immediately to despotism.
The problem with conservatism.
If we wish to preserve individual liberty, we must stop this revolution, but it is now apparent that merely to stand athwart history, yelling "STOP!" will not suffice. As we have just demonstrated the previous bourgeois rulership was set on a path of self destruction. We must instead take on our own revolution, where we rob the barons of power over us, but do not allow power to go to community or feudal ruler either. We must create the new revolution of personal responsibility, where we do not give up our lives in the name of security, but rather live them fully, even though they may be shorter and harder, on our own terms.
The bourgeois revolution.
While the bourgeois is a wasteful and lacking aesthetic, they at least value the freedom to do their thing, and not be subjected to communal rule, and in this, as freedom loving individuals, we can say, if nothing else, that their state of things is superior to that of the proletarian oppressiveness we see forming across the globe today. If we wish to preserve this, we must be frank in our analysis of where it has failed, not in some greater humanitarian sense, but in so much as it has caused it's own extinction. We should endeavor to fix these fatal flaws, and from this base of (relative) freedom, seek to move to a higher place.
Above, we only addressed one fatal flaw of the bourgeois, being their interest in exploitation, which is only cured by working within ones means. This means building things out of savings, and not on a principal of debt. This means knowing the extent of your market, and working into that, without creating an unstable market which does not really need or desire your product, and then basing your companies survival on marketing to them.
A question of taste.
This idea of conspicuous consumption is not one of resources, and it's not one of worth, or even cashflow. Each of these are symptoms. The real question is the mask we've put over our own aesthetic. We've covered the world in the need to consume so strongly, that even we believe it now. We aim to be in all places, do all things, and possess all things. We could slow this down, and merely DENY ourselves these things, but that doesn't do anything but make us less successful at our stated goal. Instead, I propose, we search for something deeper. I do not think I will meet too much resistance if I suggest that consumption is not the highest underlying ideal of each man and woman.
A question of Will.
Rather, there is something else, and if we can quiet ourselves, we can find it. When we find this thing, we can work towards it, and we can eschew anything which does not lead to that thing. When we find ourselves dedicated to our work, and not to merely filling our time, we find we do not need nearly so much. And in not needing so much, we quit consuming, but we also quit expanding unduly. Thus, being ourselves freed from the need OF conspicuous consumption, we don't need the constant income stream that demands we espouse conspicuous consumption. To co-opt and only slightly corrupt Buddhist terminology, we have broken the chain of causation. All that then remains, is to gain freedom to be.
To do this deep searching, and find a core purpose, a meaning for life removed from rampant consumption is not going to lead to equality and all men being equal. Rather, those who have great dreams and a great Will to power, will be great, as they always have been, and those who do not, will not. however, as we move away from a universal ethic based on the lowest common denominator, we will allow more and more people the freedom to fulfill their dreams, and hence create greater and greater inspiration and tools.
A question of relations.
This puts us apart from the heard, but still highly subject to it. Our governments, like the people it represent, demands a constant stream of income, and even for the land owner and sustenance farmer, nothing is sovereign. We can not just "drop out" we saw what happened when people tried that. Further, we are wise not to oppose it directly, but rather to learn it's zeitgeist and ride across it's waves.
We are, inherently, against the people, but the people must not be against us. It is sufficient that most people are thoroughly brainwashed, and hence, the masses are of no danger. They don't want to be, they don' t desire to be. They desire leaders. We must be willing to lead, or we can not help be be overrun. The goal of freedom without the responsibility of leadership can only lead to hiding in a corner, unable to move.
The only time a leader has ever lost control was when they failed to recognize another leader, and expected all around him to act as the masses.
For those few who do seek freedom, they have thus stepped away from "the people" and are our brothers. To help them up is both to gain an ally, and to stop a potential corrupter and trouble maker amongst the masses. The only people who have fallen from power have been ones who were unwilling to lift a brother up, and so gained an enemy of the same power as they, but with the tool of the masses behind them.
What does this mean in practical terms?
Solvitur ambulando. I have no answers, merely some observations, and many questions. What this means for me, is to reduce my consumption and focus on my work. It means to become an employer and a businessman, where my income is determined not by my own work, and not by a need to continuously grow, but by finding a small niche I can serve which will support me without requiring me to be untrue to myself in their service. From this, I should get the resources I need, and a small cushion for safety. By being aware of the nature of people, I hope to be able to encourage them, that those who want freedom can use my work and my company as a stepping stone on their way, just as I am attempting to use the companies of others in my own. For those who want a steady job, I can only smile and provide it, not viewing myself as superior any more than I view myself as superior to the ocean, knowing that both can crush me if I were to act without respect and caution, but rather understanding and appreciating the difference between the desire for security and that for freedom.
I aim to show:
That the bourgeois are necessarily self-destructive
That the proletariat are their natural successors.
That proletariat ethics are necessarily the enemy of individual liberty
and that there is a means of keeping the proletariat from power.
I aim then, to provide this solution, not to be worked out as a group, but as an individual guide for the small businessman who wishes to survive and prosper, and perhaps to discover a greater life than might have lead him to the path of business in the first place. If I can succeed at this I will be much pleased. In the end though, this is a test for myself; a concrete manifestation of my thoughts, forced into the written form, and thus given concrete existence before I act upon them in my own company. In the end, even if no greater movement is realized, My own success will be the proof of their effectiveness or failure.
Who are the bourgeois?
The bourgeois are the necessary outgrowths of the merchants of feudal times, who, seeking to attain the status of kings, used the only tools they had, being the power of quantity over quality to raise up a power base, and to inflict their belief structure on the world around them.
Those who fell into these roles have as their highest ideal, commerce. Any place they can cut corners is a good place, and low price per unit is king. "Quality" is a gimmick, used to increase the price, and in the end, the monkey of commerce forced a common aesthetic on the business class. Homogeneous injection molded plastic is king. Witness shiny new cars and Macintosh computers.
The ability to produce things on the cheap allowed the bourgeois to propagate to those below and around them, and to reproduce like rabbits, until the aristocracy was buried under the disposable, single use mess.
Who are the proletariat?
The bourgeois do not produce; They market. They require a class of people focused on production, and these people to them are tools, just as a mill or loom would be. The tools they need for this case need to be technically competent, perhaps even innovative, but they can not be revolutionary. They must stay focused on the physical tasks at hand, and their highest honor must be the creation of a new and ingenious way of cutting cost, or speeding things up, or perhaps a way to use 0.05g less plastic in the forming of a door panel. This should give them great pride, even exuberance at their own cleverness.
Their ideals necessarily mirror, if poorly, the ideals of their ruling class, the bourgeois. Both are conspicuous consumers, although of different items, and both see no reason to slow expansion or spending. The key difference between the two is that the bourgeois are willing to command and to risk, and demand unchecked ability to do so, while the proletariat requires and even demands security and direction.
The nature of bourgeois expansion.
Since the highest ideal of the bourgeois is expansion, they will necessarily create an ever expanding and ever more powerful proletariat.
Furthermore, since they have no internal structure beyond expansion to rule them, they will in all things expand until they collapse under their own weight, be it as in the case of the oppression of the proles, or manufacturing to the point of worthlessness or debt based spending beyond their capacity to repay.
The solution to the proles.
In some cases the bourgeois have learned their lesson. Let us examine the bourgeois/prole relationship. The communist manifesto makes the claim (quite true in it's time) that "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains." and so it was, when the proles began their revolts, and unionization swept America, shortly after the communist takeover swept Russia. In America though, a middle ground was reached.
It used to be that the bourgeois WERE the middle class, below the aristocracy, and above the proles. However, as the aristocracy was edged ever farther out of the picture, the term became meaningless, and while we still hear people talk about the "middle class" as bourgeois, these people do not own their own means of production, they are merely proles with something to lose.
The creation of the "middle class" was brilliant, whether it was intentional or not. The proles now had homes (thus relieving the bourgeois of landlord duties and costs) and cars, and all type of "modern convenience" they could not live without. They had been given something to lose, and furthermore, a reason to keep working, a motivation to strive for, creating a more innovative and motivated worker than the one who does the bare minimum necessary to eat. A new carrot was introduced, without giving up any control of production.
This solution solved a key problem, and the class warfare was destroyed as, applying a label which no longer applied to them, to the proles, the robber barons allowed every hard working prole to feel that he already WAS a member of the class he would have at one time sought to overthrow.
The necessary ends of the bourgeois.
However, the problem the bourgeois face is not the proles. As soon as that disaster was overcome, they went out looking for a new resource to exploit to the brink of explosion. The destruction of natural resources had very little impact, as did the uglification of their surroundings, seeing as how their only aesthetic was that of production, and none of this mattered to them.
Running out of things to exploit, they went back and began the formation of corporations. These brilliant contraptions allowed them to separate themselves from the risk, and run up huge debts, and crash systems, pulling out at the last instant with massive resources intact. If we look at the mismanagement of the proles in the 1800's and the current problems mega-corps face today, I believe we will see the exact same disaster replayed in a separate arena. The nature of the bourgeois is to expand to the point of self destruction.
The prole future.
Since the bourgeois course necessarily leads to destruction, let us look at what follows them. They have, out of need, created a huge proletariat, and furthermore, one which does not know itself as such. This group shares the bourgeois penchant for conspicuous consumption, but does not share it's penchant for risk and liberty. Being a good workforce, their demands are security. This group, not knowing itself to be repressed will continue, slowly and surely to work itself into the power structure, and I dare say is already the strongest force today, if only by a very slight margin.
When they do revolt, they take control, and the ethics of the new controlling power comes from the bottom instead of from the top. The problem with this, is that their have been trained for some time to depend on others.
Article 23 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."
Who provides these jobs? Are we so caught up in our own niche that we believe these things emerge from thin air? the governing powers of the new slowly moving jerk and stop subtle prole revolution expect to be free from responsibility, and are more than willing to give up control to get it. Legislators want police to protect them physically, and police rely on legislators to tell them what to do, shielding them mentally. Everywhere around us we see the government protecting us from ourselves, in the form of outlawing victimless crimes (smoking, seatbelt laws, etc) destroying privacy, and the modern homeland defense warrent-less search techniques surpass even the invasiveness of the German Gestapo.
In almost every instance, the rulership by the proletariat leads almost immediately to despotism.
The problem with conservatism.
If we wish to preserve individual liberty, we must stop this revolution, but it is now apparent that merely to stand athwart history, yelling "STOP!" will not suffice. As we have just demonstrated the previous bourgeois rulership was set on a path of self destruction. We must instead take on our own revolution, where we rob the barons of power over us, but do not allow power to go to community or feudal ruler either. We must create the new revolution of personal responsibility, where we do not give up our lives in the name of security, but rather live them fully, even though they may be shorter and harder, on our own terms.
The bourgeois revolution.
While the bourgeois is a wasteful and lacking aesthetic, they at least value the freedom to do their thing, and not be subjected to communal rule, and in this, as freedom loving individuals, we can say, if nothing else, that their state of things is superior to that of the proletarian oppressiveness we see forming across the globe today. If we wish to preserve this, we must be frank in our analysis of where it has failed, not in some greater humanitarian sense, but in so much as it has caused it's own extinction. We should endeavor to fix these fatal flaws, and from this base of (relative) freedom, seek to move to a higher place.
Above, we only addressed one fatal flaw of the bourgeois, being their interest in exploitation, which is only cured by working within ones means. This means building things out of savings, and not on a principal of debt. This means knowing the extent of your market, and working into that, without creating an unstable market which does not really need or desire your product, and then basing your companies survival on marketing to them.
A question of taste.
This idea of conspicuous consumption is not one of resources, and it's not one of worth, or even cashflow. Each of these are symptoms. The real question is the mask we've put over our own aesthetic. We've covered the world in the need to consume so strongly, that even we believe it now. We aim to be in all places, do all things, and possess all things. We could slow this down, and merely DENY ourselves these things, but that doesn't do anything but make us less successful at our stated goal. Instead, I propose, we search for something deeper. I do not think I will meet too much resistance if I suggest that consumption is not the highest underlying ideal of each man and woman.
A question of Will.
Rather, there is something else, and if we can quiet ourselves, we can find it. When we find this thing, we can work towards it, and we can eschew anything which does not lead to that thing. When we find ourselves dedicated to our work, and not to merely filling our time, we find we do not need nearly so much. And in not needing so much, we quit consuming, but we also quit expanding unduly. Thus, being ourselves freed from the need OF conspicuous consumption, we don't need the constant income stream that demands we espouse conspicuous consumption. To co-opt and only slightly corrupt Buddhist terminology, we have broken the chain of causation. All that then remains, is to gain freedom to be.
To do this deep searching, and find a core purpose, a meaning for life removed from rampant consumption is not going to lead to equality and all men being equal. Rather, those who have great dreams and a great Will to power, will be great, as they always have been, and those who do not, will not. however, as we move away from a universal ethic based on the lowest common denominator, we will allow more and more people the freedom to fulfill their dreams, and hence create greater and greater inspiration and tools.
A question of relations.
This puts us apart from the heard, but still highly subject to it. Our governments, like the people it represent, demands a constant stream of income, and even for the land owner and sustenance farmer, nothing is sovereign. We can not just "drop out" we saw what happened when people tried that. Further, we are wise not to oppose it directly, but rather to learn it's zeitgeist and ride across it's waves.
We are, inherently, against the people, but the people must not be against us. It is sufficient that most people are thoroughly brainwashed, and hence, the masses are of no danger. They don't want to be, they don' t desire to be. They desire leaders. We must be willing to lead, or we can not help be be overrun. The goal of freedom without the responsibility of leadership can only lead to hiding in a corner, unable to move.
The only time a leader has ever lost control was when they failed to recognize another leader, and expected all around him to act as the masses.
For those few who do seek freedom, they have thus stepped away from "the people" and are our brothers. To help them up is both to gain an ally, and to stop a potential corrupter and trouble maker amongst the masses. The only people who have fallen from power have been ones who were unwilling to lift a brother up, and so gained an enemy of the same power as they, but with the tool of the masses behind them.
What does this mean in practical terms?
Solvitur ambulando. I have no answers, merely some observations, and many questions. What this means for me, is to reduce my consumption and focus on my work. It means to become an employer and a businessman, where my income is determined not by my own work, and not by a need to continuously grow, but by finding a small niche I can serve which will support me without requiring me to be untrue to myself in their service. From this, I should get the resources I need, and a small cushion for safety. By being aware of the nature of people, I hope to be able to encourage them, that those who want freedom can use my work and my company as a stepping stone on their way, just as I am attempting to use the companies of others in my own. For those who want a steady job, I can only smile and provide it, not viewing myself as superior any more than I view myself as superior to the ocean, knowing that both can crush me if I were to act without respect and caution, but rather understanding and appreciating the difference between the desire for security and that for freedom.