Summary of previous posts
In previous posts, we have seen that the natural selfishness of humans (this roaring lion that wants to have everything and to the hell with everybody else) is contained by two kind of restrictions: practical restrictions and cultural restrictions. These are the bars of the cage that restrict the movements of the lion (that is the expression of the selfishness of every citizen), which are contained so they don’t harm other people.
In our society, practical restrictions have been drastically relaxed because of the incredible wealth that has produced the Industrial Revolution. Cultural restrictions have been drastically relaxed because of the ideology/religion of liberalism (which is a form of relativism). As we have seen in previous posts, this is the official ideology used as an ultimate justification of behavior and public policy in Western civilization and it is an ideology that can be used to justify anything. So it is as if it did not exist.
Its void is filled by another official ideology: leftism, which is the base of the law and culture in Western civilization. Leftism is an absolutist ideology with absolute goods and absolute evils. In this sense, it is not different from any other official religion. But there are two properties that make leftism an unprecedented phenomenon when it comes to official religion of a society.
1. Its restlessness. Leftism is always evolving and incorporating new absolute goods and evils in a process that has been accelerating. Its latest absolute evil (transphobia) won’t be the last. Some things that were common sense only five or ten years ago, now they are the evilest of evil things and they cannot be disputed.
2. Its opposition to obvious reality and natural law, which is constantly increasing. What is true and good for all societies is false and evil for leftism and vice versa. Leftism is a reality inversion and moral inversion, which constantly increases. So, for example, protecting your tribe is bad (if you are a white person) while promiscuity is good. A man being a man is false while a man being a woman is true. Men and women being different is false while men and women being equal is true. And so on and so forth.
The first property can be explained by the fact that leftism uses liberalism (a relativistic ideology) as its ultimate justification so it can justify anything, no matter what outrageous. So there is no mechanism for get leftism to be still. It is free to wander where he wants.
Fair enough. But why does leftism always evolve in the same direction: getting farther and farther away from obvious reality and the natural law? If leftism is free to wander, we should expect that it wanders in random ways. There must be some mechanism for it to always go left. Explaining this mechanism is the objetive of this post.
Might makes right
Once you have removed the practical and cultural restrictions to the selfishness, it is logical and natural that everybody wants to express his own selfishness to the highest extent. Since the selfishness of one person limits the selfishness of another person, this would lead to a world when everybody is fighting with everybody to express its selfishness as much as he cans. This is the «state of nature» that Enlightenment «philosophers» claimed it was
In fact, the state of nature is not real and has never been because power is and has always been unequally distributed. Without practical and cultural restrictions, when two selfishness conflict, the selfishness of the most powerful person wins.
So, without an official ideology that restricts the selfishness of the powerful, might makes right. Whatever the powerful want, it gets justified by liberalism and it gets incorporated to leftism. Might makes right.
We see in ancient societies that religion was a real restriction to the power of rulers. So the king had to do penance before the grave of Beckett because he had violated the sacredness of bishops, according to the official religion of Christianity. No amount of power could go against the rule that killing a priest was bad.
Those were the times. Now when the powers that be want something, he incorporates it into the official religion (leftism), so it is indisputable. To incorporate it, it justifies based on liberalism, which can justify anything. So yes, might makes right.
The structure of power in our society
So the evolution of leftism is explained based on the structure of power in Western society. This structure of power is currently composed by the following groups:
- The economic powers. These include the globalist financial powers: the Rotschild, the Rockefellers, the Wallenbergs, etc. The ones in power. They hide behind a myriad of organizations: Blackrock, the Open Society, the WEF, etc. They also include multinational corporations and national and regional banks.
- The clergy (these are the ones that create and enforce the religion). That is, the managerial class. Including the intellectuals that create the ideas in universities. The journalists and entertainers that transmit these ideas to the people. And the politicians, civil servants and white collars employees that enforce these in ideas in the public space and private companies.
- The true believers. The ones that belief the religion created and enforced by the clergy.
These groups of power are not exclusive. The vast majority of the clergy are true believers and many of the people belonging to the financial powers are too. However, there are true believers (progressives, LGBTI, feminists, immigrants who believe in uncontrolled immigration, etc.) that are not part of the financial powers or the clergy.
These groups of power can be conceptualized according to their :
The nobility. (or «the optimates» in the Roman sense) The financial powers and the upper classes of the clergy (international civil servants, well-paid civil servants, university professors, most important journalists and politicians, well-paid corporate managers).
The good serfs (or «the clients» in a Roman sense). The true believers that are not part of the clergy and the lower part of the managerial class (school teachers, your average civil servant, a white collar clerk in a private company, etc.)
The nobility gives money and psychological rewards (status, self-perceived morality and intelligence, meaning, etc.) to the good serfs while the good serfs give votes and enforcement of the ideology to the nobility. This is the
What do I mean by enforcement? The good serfs ensure that the ideology is enforced in real life, even in the smallest spaces, by attacking the ones that don’t comply with a series of tools: defense of the ideology in private and public life, shaming (you’re an homophobe! in private life and social networks), withdrawing of means of life (dismissal of a job, demands of resignations, removal of customers, etc.), reporting violations of the ideology to the administration, etc.
In reality, the good serfs also give money to the nobility but this is done in a not obvious way so the good serfs don’t notice too much (taxes, debt, printing of money, prices of goods and services, etc.) and, when they notice, they blame the enemies of the ideology (foreign actors, bad serfs or some mythological entities: «the rich and capitalists that don’t belong to the nobility»).
The citizens that are not part of the groups of power are called:
The bad serfs. People who create its own wealth and don’t (totally) believe in the leftist religion.
The main characteristic of the groups of power is its parasitism. With the exception of true believers that are not part of the clergy, all other people belonging to the structure of power live out of the money not created by them. The financial powers make their money by using other people’s wealth . The clergy lives «of»** the taxes of other people.
Leftism as a power grab
What does this have to do with leftism as an official religion? Leftism is a rationalization (an ideological justification) of the increasing parasitism of the groups of power.
Power has always had a tendency to concentrate but they faced practical and cultural restrictions. Technology has decreased practical restrictions and liberalism has decreased cultural restrictions. So we are in an era of concentration of power like the world has never seen.
More specifically, the nobility rules how money, power, status and morality are to be created, used and distributed. They are judge and jury. This is why they have an incentive to expand by taking more and more of these good things from other people.
All innovations in Western civilizations are ways to take more wealth from the serfs to give to the nobility. And Leftism is the ideological justification to do that:
More specifically, all innovations can be categorized in three classes:
- In favor of the structure of power. Taking material wealth, power and psychological rewards (status, virtue signaling, self-perceived morality and meaning) from the bad serfs and giving them to the nobility and good serfs.
- In favor fo the nobility. Taking material wealth and power from the serfs (good and bad) and giving them to the nobility.
- Expanding the number of good serfs and decreasing the number of bad serfs.
(As you see, the second way implies that good serfs work for their own destruction, although they are so ideologically blinded that they don’t notice.)
The end game is the expansion of the number of good serfs until they are no bad serfs. So good serfs are parasitized by the nobility while being satisfied about the order of things. People will have the barest minimum to live but they will be happy because they think they are fighting for the common good or the planet or some other vague concept. You will own nothing and be happy.
Leftism is the rationalization of these actions. Their alibi. It has evolved to justify the transfer of wealth power and psychological rewards that has been explained. So it has a very definite direction.
The political cause
How do Leftism justifies this transfer of good things and expansions of the groups of power? The concept this justification is based on is «the political cause».
A «political cause» is an initiative to change society in some aspect. This change is considered to be good and justified based on liberalism (it is said that this change will produce more freedom, more equality and more rights). The «political cause» is perceived by its supporters as a «moral crusade»: a fight of good against evil. That is, a fight of the good people to remove some aspect of society that is considered evil.
The goal is to remove this aspect of society so the society works the same way but without this evil. There is no understanding of Chesterton’s fence. There is no concept that some things perceived as evils can be preventing greater evils. Almost always, if the cause succeeds and that aspect of the society is removed, greater evils are produced, which can be addressed by new political causes in a cycle of destruction of the society.
The most important causes have been: the abolition of slavery, the social gospel, the feminine suffrage, the illegalization on alcohol, second-wave feminism, civil rights movement, LGBTI causes, the cause for the uncontrolled immigration and its legalization and the environmental cause. The movement to restrict movement and rights under Covid can be seen as a short-lived cause: it was expressed in moral terms and as a fight of good against evil, altruism against egoism.
Some of these causes are composed of other smallest causes. So feminism has a cause about equality in the workplace, removing of social stigma of female promiscuity, divorce, abortion, etc. And some other movements can be political cause in the future: incest, pedophilia, polyamory or reparations for black people.
How political causes work
Leftism evolves to justify this transfer of wealth and psychological rewards listed above.
Yes, but why does this direction coincide to getting farther and farther away from obvious reality?
EXPANSION OF THE GOOD SERFS.
The rest of the population
The high echelons of the managerial classe. The leaders of the international civil servants
The rest of the managerial classe
Why is this against the natural law?