The Real Ruling Class May Not be Whom You Think

Con artist, or just dumb?

Marx misidentified the ruling class. He claimed the bourgeois were in control, and before them the landed gentry. Neither were ever in charge. They were just the wealthy class. The ruling class, the class that governed, and had the highest social authority, was always the educated class—the clerisy. The aristocrats and the bourgeois were subject to the law; even the king, since Magna Carta. And while kings might sometimes issue edicts, for the most part, who made the laws and stood in judgement? The clerisy—that is, the lawyers and the judges and the bureaucrats. Even the aristocrats were under their control. The bureaucrats always run the government—any government. If anyone else has power, either in an aristocracy or a democracy or a monarchy, they act only as a partial check on the clerisy, who manage most things day by day.

In pre-revolutionary France, when Louis XVI was required to summon the Estates General—required by the law, which he too had to obey-- who was the First Estate? Who was acknowledged as the top of the social scale? Marx’s bourgeoisie was jumbled in with the peasants in the Third Estate. The landed aristocracy was the Second Estate. The First Estate was the clerics, the clerisy, the educated class. 

Do not assume this meant just priests in the modern sense. Anyone who graduated university, in those days, was ordained. Cleric = clergy, but also clerk. Most of them spent little of their time in church. They held all the desk jobs; they were the civil service. They were the ones who knew how to read and write, how to keep accounts, how the system worked. Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Mazarin, Cardinal Wolseley, Thomas More, Cardinal Cromwell, and so on down.

In India, with its rigid caste system, who was the highest caste? Same as in France. Not the bourgeoisie; they were Vaishyas, third rank, above the Sudras, who were the manual labourers. Not the aristocracy, the Kshatriyas. As in Europe, they were second class. Highest caste was the Brahmins, the priestly, the educated class. They ran everything, and had to be deferred to by everyone else.

In pre-revolutionary China, the aristocracy was barely a thing. They were usually looked down on as uneducated boors. It was the Mandarins who ran the show.

This educated clerisy is the same group that form the backbone of the “progressive” movement in North America, which emerged in the early 20th century—the core “progressive” idea was rule by “experts.” The clerisy formed the backbone of the Nazis and the Fascists in Europe—it was the universities and the civil service, promoting state power: meaning power to the bureaucracy. In Russia the clerisy formed the Bolsheviks, as a supposed “vanguard of the proletariat”: like Marx, mostly well-educated pencil pushers. 

The continuing program of the clerisy in modern times is to consolidate power, to suppress any rival authority. For power is their coinage; telling others what to do, controlling them, governing them. By contrast, the capitalists are mostly only interested in making money. 

Why the Media is Left-wing

Rich Capitalist

 A left-wing friend asked me recently how it was that the media could have a left-wing when they are owned by rich capitalists.

Here is a relatively systematic answer, concentrating on the Canadian situation:

1. The media are not usually owned by rich capitalists. In Canada, they are generally owned by government (CBC) or large publicly-traded corporations: Bell, Rogers, Corus, Postmedia. Ownership is diverse—do you own any mutual funds? Are you a rich capitalist? Lots of shots are called by government bureaucrats, on the one hand, and by hedge fund managers, on the other. These folks are all from the same class: the managerial-professional class or clerisy. The managerial class or clerisy is strongly left-wing; it always wants more management, which is to say, more government. More government means more money, more status, and more power for them. It is the same class that became the “vanguard of the proletariat” and ran everything in the old Soviet Union. In Canada, it is the base of the Liberals and NDP.

2. Rich capitalists, even when they do own or control a media outlet, are no more likely to be right wing than left wing. Bill Gates is left wing. Mark Zuckerberg aggressively supported the left wing with Facebook and his other social media holdings. Jack Dorsey aggressively supported the left wing when he ran Twitter. George Soros is far left. And so on. Self-interest commonly drives rich capitalists to the left, because the left calls for more government regulation, and more government regulation reduces competition. Government regulation is almost necessarily written in collusion with big business, so big business is on the left. If you are on top, you want lots of hoops and restrictions any start-up must jump through, to keep you on top: the rich get richer, and the poor can’t move up.

3. Some rich people, generally entrepreneurs who built their own businesses, are constitutionally right wing and resent government interference and control. But even when media are owned by rich capitalists, and the rich capitalists are themselves right-wing, rich capitalists are generally most interested in making money. That’s why they became rich. They are not likely to spend their time closely managing the details of their business. They hire people to do that, and let them do as they like with the politics so long as the business generates good profits. So even in this case, the editorial tone of the medium is likely to be set by the clerisy, the managerial class, the guys who graduate from journalism school, not the people who own shares. You pretty much cannot graduate from journalism school without at least pretending to be left wing.

4. Media generally depend for most of their revenue on advertising. And the single biggest advertiser in media is .... government. Next to that, of course, is publicly-traded corporations. Therefore, the bottom line in media, if they want to stay in business, is that they have to keep government and the bureaucratic clerisy happy—meaning a left-wing, pro-big government bias. And on top of this, we have in Canada massive direct government subsidies to approved media. 

Where to Source Immigrants

 

An American

There is much backlash now against mass immigration to the various countries of the developed West. The argument is that these large numbers of outsiders are not assimilating, nor augmenting, the resident culture, but introducing incompatible cultural differences.

The solution seems simple. The developed West is built on Judeo-Christian values and assumptions. What we now call “Western civilization” is simply what was previously called “Christendom.”

If we arguably need immigrants to keep the social services solvent, and to keep us economically competitive, there are ample sources available for Jewish and Christian immigrants who would, by this logic, fit in easily and become contributing Canadians, or Americans, or Englishmen, or Germans.

Perhaps most obviously, the Philippines. Although Filipinos have already come to Canada in large numbers, there are no Filipino ghettos. Filipinos assimilate readily, attend the local churches, and keep the laws. So too with Korean Christian immigrants. So too with Lebanese Christians. You do not see street riots, or demands for special treatment, or the changing of laws.

And note, importantly, that these groups are racially diverse, not “white.” Skin colour or race is not the issue. 

Another large group available: Central and South Americans—historically Christian, and interested in emigration for economic reasons. The US is concerned, legitimately, about illegal immigration, but, that said, Hispanics or Latinos do seem to assimilate within a couple of generations.

Regrettably, Christian immigrants from the Caribbean or from Africa do not seem as readily assimilable. But it is not because of race per se. It is because they tend to have a chip on their shoulder against “white” people due to the popular narrative about slavery, colonialism, and the struggle for racial equality in the US and South Africa. Their self-identity is deeply involved with the “African” group identity and with being alienated from “whites.” They import racism. 

So, if we must have large-scale immigration, it should be from historically Christian lands, or of historically Christian or Jewish minorities elsewhere. “Historically,” because otherwise it would be easy for desiring economic migrants to convert nominally to Christianity to gain entry.

All Somalis?

The public conversation is clearly shifting. Recently I heard Trump condemn Somalis in America without bothering to add the formerly obligatory “not all Somalis.” I hear increasingly of “black fatigue,” meaning people getting tired of the constant demands and hostile attitude of blacks. A reporter and author laments that nobody trusts the word of Canadian “First Nations” any longer. That is striking, since until recently the governing principle of public discourse, absurd as it was, was that no Indian could ever tell a lie.

Not long ago, you used to have to say you supported feminism. Now I hear men complaining about Karens, modern women in general, and feminism all over the Internet.

Of course, you still hear also from the Karens, oblivious to all this. You still hear claims of white genocide against First Nations, and demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism and for simply being male or white. 

But what has happened, I think, is that the inevitable openness of the Internet, in which everyone has a printing press and a broadcast studio, has finally burst the bonds of censorship. This of course after an obvious and desperate rear-guard effort to shut down all unauthorized opinions. But it has now failed.

People are suddenly allowed to speak their minds again. Now we are suddenly hearing both sides.

This of course necessarily means hearing some opinions with which we will strongly disagree; ideas that may upset us. But this is necessary in order to hold an honest, open dialogue. This is necessary to know where truth lies, and where public opinion lies. Much argument is the antidote to much violence.

It’s about to get wild, and creative things are going to happen. Much like they did when the old media censorship regimes were lifted in the Sixties. It is hard to create great art when you cannot express yourself freely.

Musk on Universities

McGill Campus

Elon Musk has recently spoken against the model of the university. He himself holds two bachelor’s degrees, but he points out the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison are all dropouts.

Universities, Musk says, are geared to the average brain. Ever since the postwar years, it has been the stated ideal that everyone ought to have the opportunity to attend university. Governments promoted this idea: they were afraid of an unemployment crisis with all the soldiers returning from the war, and civil unrest as a result; for this had happened in the years after the First World War. So they passed the GI Bill—university for the masses. And the cachet of the college man was pushed relentlessly by popular culture through the 1950s.

This meant that ordinary folks without a great passion for scholarship started attending universities.

The universities could not fail more than a limited percentage of students. After all, they had paid their tuition. If most of your students fail, you go out of business. So the schools had to adjust the curriculum and the standards so that the average intellect could get through, without too much effort.

Among other things, this created teenagers starting in the 1950s. That is, a distinct culture of young people alienated from the mainstream culture. This was an inevitable result of holding them back from joining the adult world, starting a family, and assuming social responsibilities. They were all dressed up, with nowhere to go. By contrast, George Washington had a profession and was earning his living as a surveyor at age 16.

For the most intelligent, high school would already have been mind-numbingly boring: forced to do time-consuming yet meaningless dog work all day instead of reading great novels, designing software, or building a business. Now university had gone the same way, was just a continuation of high school, and they were kept in that same intellectual straightjacket for an additional four years or more.

Now that everyone was going to college, entry requirements for almost any job went up. After all, every job wanted to look like a “profession,” and therefore command higher wages.  Now you needed a four-year degree, with all the time and money that cost, to get a job as, say, a newspaper reporter or a graphic designer. Or two degrees to be a public school teacher or librarian.

This drove the very intelligent out of fields that might in the past have been their escape hatch. As a result of that, the objective quality of journalism, graphic design, teaching, and librarianship, went down.

Meantime, university tuition fees have been going up at exponential rates, especially in the US, as they spend more money on administration and less on teaching. This looks suicidal, as if they know in their hearts they are doomed, and want to soak up as much cash as they can before the gravy train ends.

The Internet and now AI should happily lance that bubble. As a practical matter, nobody needs to go to university anymore. All the information you need is on your smartphone, available when you need it. Were it not for international students, the North American colleges would already be dead. They remain relevant as a cultural experience for Asian students; now more or less a branch of the tourism industry.

I for one deeply mourn the passing of Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, McGill, Queen’s, Yonsei, the Sorbonne, and the like. They were once places of dreams—of my own dreams. But that dream really died a long time ago.

On Going Mad

 A useful how-to, available free on our SubStack feed.

Why We Shouldn't Defund the CBC

The CBC and APTN have been revealed to be trying to entrap and embarrass conservative voices for a supposed parody show. What alarms me is not the blatant partisanship in a public broadcaster so much as the revealed systematic attempt to destroy Canada. The program sought to discredit Sir John A. Macdonald, our founder. It falsely accused Canada of genocide. Perhaps worst of all, it mocked and derided the RCMP, a longstanding national symbol.

This shows actual hatred of Canada: it was hate speech targeting Canada and Canadians. Paid for by Canadian taxpayers without their consent. Nothing could be more precisely calculated to harm Canada and its foundational mission of “peace, order and good government” than to attack the RCMP. Nothing could be more calculated to make the life of the average Canadian less peaceful, less orderly, and less pleasant. Attack the founder? That is to attack his vision, his agenda, and that is Canada.

And falsely claiming a genocide against the indigenous people is fomenting extreme ethnic hatred and division, in a highly ethnically diverse nation.

It is not enough to defund the CBC. Given this malicious indoctrination for the last couple of generations, given a sparse, geographically dispersed population not naturally in close contact, given our rapidly increasing ethnic diversity and large number of unassimilated immigrants, we actually desperately need a national broadcaster: a national broadcaster that will foster and promote national identity and unity. Something the very reverse of the CBC.

How do we get there? 

Trump does seem to be turning the culture around in the USA. A lot has to do with sending a very clear message from the top. Fire those at the top, and most lower ranks will fall in line. They will go along to get along. Most likely, that is what they are doing now: it defies belief that the average CBC employee actually believes in and endorses the toxic narrative they are obliged to present. It is probably peer pressure below a certain level.

A new cabinet, a clear direction, and a few dramatic first moves should set the tone. Some things can be done almost at once, as Trump did in the US, to clearly send a message:

1. Order of Canada for Don Cherry.

2. Order of Canada for Ezra Levant.

3. Order of Canada for Chris Barber and Tamara Lich. 

4. Put these four on a board to oversee and vet content at the CBC.

5. Open a public inquiry into Chinese interference in Canadian elections, with full transparency and broad powers.

6. Pass a blanket “notwithstanding clause” applying to all future and previous federal legislation, to signal objection to judicial overreach—as Quebec did in 1982.

7. Place a moratorium on all immigration beyond net zero for the foreseeable future, to allow time for new arrivals to assimilate into Canadian culture.

8. Amend the Emergencies Act to insert penalties for any government that employs it illegitimately. 

9. Rescind approval for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

10. Repeal all “hate laws.” Reassert the Canadian right to freedom of expression, as in the US.

11. Declare DEI discrimination in hiring illegal, as it indeed is constitutionally.

12. End all government funding to special interest and political action groups.

That should help correct the course.