Free Life Commentary,
A Personal View from
The Director of the Libertarian Alliance
Issue Number 183
28th May 2009
Linking url: http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc183.htm
Available for debate on LA Blog at
http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/what-is-the-ruling-clas
s-by-sean-gabb/
Comments| Trackback
What is the Ruling Class?
By Sean Gabb
A Paper Given on Sunday the 24th May 2009to the Fourth Annual Conference
of the Property and Freedom Society
in the Hotel Karia Princess in Bodrum, Turkey
In giving this paper, I make no pretence to originality of thought.
Everything I am saying today has been said already - usually better, and
always in greater detail - by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, by Roderick Long, by
Kevin Carson, by Christian Michel, and by many others. If I can
contribute anything to the libertarian analysis of class, it is brevity
alone.
Libertarians often define a ruling class as that group of politicians,
bureaucrats, lawyers, businessmen, therapists, educators and media people
who derive income and position from the State. By definition, so far as
such people operate as members of a ruling class, they are parasitic on
the efforts of ordinary people. Their position comes from forcing others
to act as they would not freely choose, or by excluding them from
activities they might freely choose. Their income is based on forced
transfers of wealth.
The size and activities of a ruling class will be determined by the
physical resources it can extract from the people, by the amount of force
it can use against them, and by the nature and acceptance of the ideology
that legitimises its existence. None of these determinants by itself will
be decisive, but each is a necessary factor. Change any one, and the
working of the other two will be limited or wholly checked.
Of these determinants, the ideological are the most open to control and
change. In the short term, resources are fixed in quantity. At any time,
the amount of force available will be limited. What will always interest
ruling classes, therefore, is the nature and acceptance of its
legitimising ideology. This will vary according to circumstances that are
not fully within the control of any ruling class. It may involve averting
the Divine Wrath, or promoting acceptance of the True Faith, or
protecting the nation from external or external enemies, or raising the
condition of the poor, or making us healthier, or saving the planet from
us. The claims of the ideology may, in other times and places, seem
unfounded or insane. What they generally have in common is the need for
an active state directed by the right sort of people.
Since the function of these ideologies is to justify theft or murder or
both, they need to be promoted by endless repetition - which is a valid
form of argument if truth is less important than winning - and by at
least the discouragement of dissent. Efficient promotion will produce a
discourse - this being the acceptance of a language and of habits of
thought in which dissent cannot be expressed without also conceding its
immorality. Efficient promotion will also produce a state of almost
universal false consciousness - in which ordinary people are brought to
accept ideological claims as true that are opposed to their own interests
as these might be reasonably considered.
Now, to speak of ruling classes, and in these terms, will often produce a
strongly hostile reaction from libertarians and from conservatives. In
the first place, it sounds like Marxism. Indeed, in summarising my own
beliefs about a ruling class, I have deliberately borrowed terms from the
Marxist theory of class - "discourse", "false consciousness", "class
consciousness". This is sure to disturb many - and perhaps many in this
room. For at least three generations, our movement was at ideological war
with Marxism. We did all we could to refute its claims and to spread the
truth about its consequences wherever it was tried. To use its language
to express broadly similar concepts will appear to be making concessions
that amount to intellectual surrender.
In the second place, many libertarians deny that the concept of a ruling
class has any meaning in our own world. In 1605, for example, Guy Fawks
and his fellow conspirators tried to blow up Parliament while it was
being opened by the King. If they had succeeded, they would have killed
the King and the whole of the senior aristocracy and the leaders of the
Established Church and - give or take a few nominees - the leading men of
every shire and town in England. At one stroke, they would have killed
around seven hundred men, and this would have snuffed out the whole of
the English ruling class.
And this was a ruling class. Its members were largely there by virtue of
birth. They were often related to each other. They shared a common
education. They dressed differently and spoke differently from those over
whom they ruled. Generally, they were cleaner. They were committed to the
Protestant faith and to the land settlement of Henry VIII. Their class
consciousness was expressed in countless ways, and was reflected in their
language. They spoke of "persons of quality" or "persons of gentle birth"
or of "gentlemen".
In England or America today, whatever I call the ruling class is far
larger and has far less apparent unity. I have defined it as a group of
politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, businessmen, therapists, educators and
media and business people. Perhaps I should just call these a gathering
of groups, united only in their competition for power and income via the
State, and each with a different legitimising ideology. Perhaps they are
best compared not to the undoubted ruling class of Jacobean England, but
to the members of a French bus queue. The common defining characteristic
of these latter is that they all want to get on the bus. But it plainly
serves no analytical or propagandistic purpose to define them on these
grounds as a class.
Then there is the problem of collective action. Members of a supposed
ruling class, for example - just as of a cartel - have personal interests
as well as group interests. The former will often be more pressing than
the latter; and the tendency over time will be for the rich and powerful
to preach class solidarity while undermining it in their behaviour.
I will deal with the second of these objections in a moment. The first is
easily answered. There is nothing specifically Marxist about the analysis
of class and of class conflict. The Wealth of Nations is largely an
exercise in class analysis. In France, J.B. Say was the father of a whole
school of classical liberal class theory that was developed by, among
others, Charles Compte, Charles Dunoyer and Augustin Thierry. In England,
Cobden and Bright conceived their struggles against the corn laws and
against war in terms of a class struggle. Marxian class theory, when it
emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century, was one theory among
many, and not at all the most prominent or most widely accepted.
This being said, Marxian class theory has, since then, received by far
the most attention, and has been most fully developed. It is natural for
many of us to feel uncomfortable about accepting any parts of this
theory. But, if understandable, this is to be regretted. Marxism is false
as a theory of human behaviour. But it has been developed by men of
sometimes considerable talent and insight. To reject the incidental
truths found by these men is rather like denouncing motorways because the
first person to build them was Hitler. Astrology and alchemy were false
sciences. Their claims about prediction and transformation were long ago
falsified. Even so, the real sciences of astronomy and chemistry owe many
incidental debts that no chemist or astronomer is ashamed to admit.
It should be the same with libertarians and conservatives in their view
of Marxian class theory. Marx himself, together with Marxists like
Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser and even Michel Foucoult, have much
to tell us, and I am not ashamed to use Marxist terminology when I think
it suits the needs of a libertarian class theory.
The main difference between Marxist and libertarian theories of class is
in where each side locates the source of class power. For the Marxists,
class power derives from ownership of the means of production. Standing
in the tradition of Rousseau, Marx and his followers believe that mankind
lived at first in a state of primitive communism, in which the means of
production were held in common. This ended with the rise of a class that
was able to take the means of production into its own possession. This
class then set up the State as an executive committee to assist in its
domination of everyone else. Since then, there have been successive
revolutions as changes in the means of production have raised other
classes to wealth, and these classes have then consolidated their own
leading position by taking over the State.
According to this theory, therefore, the source of class power lies in
wealth, and political power follows from wealth. This explains the
Marxist belief that a communist revolution, by abolishing class
domination, will rid the State of its oppressive nature. The State may
then be dispensed from the liberal requirements of limitation and due
process, and can be safely used as an instrument for ending such class
power as remained. It will then, of itself, wither away.
This theory is manifestly false. Even without the thirty or fifty million
corpses piled up by Marxist tyrannies in the twentieth century, it shows
a terrible ignorance of human nature. Whether we dismiss the Marxists, in
their main theory, as idiots or as villains depends on who is being
discussed. But this is not to deny the incidental truths uncovered by
Marx and his followers.
And these can be fitted into a libertarian class theory that locates the
source of ruling class power in the State. For us, the State is not
something created by the already powerful. It is, instead, something
captured by those who want to become powerful - and who cannot become
powerful by any other means. Without a state, there can be no
exploitation. Without a state, the only transactions would be exchanges
of value between free individuals from which all parties benefit
according to their own conceptions of their interests. It is the State
that can steal and kill. It is the State that raises up or calls into
being groups that hope to benefit from the use of these powers, and that
then constitute a ruling class. Abolish the State - or severely limit its
size and power - and class domination will fall to the ground. The groups
that comprise the ruling class will either die like tapeworms in a dead
rat, or will be forced to offer their services on terms attractive to
willing buyers.
I will now deal with the second libertarian objection to the concept of a
ruling class. I accept that there is a problem of collective action. But
this does not make an absolute refutation. For some purposes, group
solidarity may be weaker than the pursuit of individual interests - but
not always. Anyone who doubts this has only to look at the large number
of young men in every generation who allow themselves - or volunteer - to
be put into uniform and sent out to die for their country. Cartels are
generally accepted to be conspiracies against the public interest. Class
solidarity - so long as based on a legitimising ideology that is as
firmly accepted by rulers as by ruled - can generally underpin collective
action for many purposes and over long periods. Indeed, one of the sure
signs that a ruling class has lost its will to rule is when significant
numbers of those within it make fun of their legitimising ideology, or
merely cease in private to believe in its truth. It is then that class
solidarity becomes a sham, and the rulers begin to act like members of a
cartel.
I also accept that ruling classes are, in our societies, much larger and
more diverse than in the past. But accepting its size and diversity does
not refute the claim that there is a ruling class. It is not necessary
for the various groups I have mentioned to agree with each other in all
respects. There is no reason for the ruling class to be monolithic. The
medical establishment and tax gathering bureaucrats do not agree about
state policy on smoking. Big business may disagree with the education
establishment about what and how children are taught. Just a few years
ago in England, the Government and the state-owned BBC fell out very
bitterly over the Iraq War. During such disputes, different groups within
the ruling class may even turn for physical or moral support to groups
far outside the ruling class. They may even, from time to time, recast
themselves - by accepting newly attractive groups, or expelling groups
that no longer contribute to the class as a whole, or that endanger the
continued existence of the class as a whole.
Even so, there is a general solidarity of interest that holds an
effective ruling class together. No matter how they argue over the
details of what the State is to do, its constituent groups will extend
each other a mutual recognition of legitimacy. They agree that the State
is a force for good, and that they are the right people to direct it.
Their disputes will not be carried to the point where they knowingly
undermine their overall legitimacy as a class - or the legitimacy of any
of the constituent groups. Roderick Long has likened modern ruling
classes to Church and State in old Europe. For the better part of a
millennium, these institutions fought - and often bitterly - over which
should be the predominant force in their societies. They hardly ever lost
sight of the fact that they had a common interest in keeping the rest of
the population subject to authority.
Sot it is now. Anyone who has ever taken money from big business will
surely have noticed how his paymasters have been willing to use weakened
forms of libertarian ideology to make specific points - but have never
shown interest in promoting libertarianism as a full agenda of attack. In
all cases, libertarian defenders are brought in to argue for concessions
from the taxing and regulatory groups of the ruling class. They are never
permitted to argue against the general legitimacy of taxes or
regulations. That would risk undermining the system from which all groups
-even if they might lose out in the short term - derive income and
position in the long term.
This may be the common defining characteristic of a modern ruling class -
a belief in the State and in the right and fitness of the groups I have
described to direct it, and to gain income and status from their
positions within the State. And, as in the past, class consciousness is
reinforced by more than commonality of interest. I grant that, in America
and to a lesser but similar extent in England, individual position is no
longer rigidly fixed by birth, and it is common for people, wherever they
start in life, to rise or sink according to their abilities.
Nevertheless, we can still see families and networks of families that, in
generation after generation, turn out individuals who occupy positions
within the ruling class. Remember names like Toynbee and Gore and Kennedy
and Cecil.
Otherwise, members of the British and American ruling classes share a
common outlook on the world that is gained by attending the same schools
and universities, and that is maintained by small but significant
movements from one group to another that comprise the ruling class. In
England, for example, it is common for politicians to begin or to end
their careers in the more privileged big business corporations or in
other agencies that look for their existence to the State. And it is
fairly common for people from these groups to be recruited into senior
political or administrative positions. There may be cultural differences
between these groups. But these are not so great as to endanger close
cooperation between them in the common project of exploiting ordinary
people.
I agree that this is not an entirely satisfactory account of the ruling
class. If I were a Marxist, it would be much easier. A member of the
ruling class is someone who owns the means of production. I cannot supply
an equally clear common defining characteristic. I cannot even put too
much emphasis on the parasitic nature of a ruling class. The groups
comprising a modern ruling class are parasites so far as they act as a
ruling class. But they will often act both as members of a ruling class
and as members of the productive class.
Companies like Wallmart and Tesco, for example, are privileged
organisations. They benefit from incorporation laws that let them exist
in the first place, from transport subsidies that externalise their
diseconomies of scale, from taxes and regulations that disproportionately
harm their smaller competitors, and in many other ways. At the same time,
they provide cheaper and better food than their customers might once have
thought possible. The media may be a producer or and conduit for
propaganda. At the same time, it provides entertainment that people
appear to enjoy. The medical establishment wants to coerce us into giving
up probably harmful things like tobacco and probably beneficial things
like vitamin pills, and procures laws that limit patient choice. At the
same time, it does appear to be encouraging rapid medical progress in at
least some areas.
Western ruling classes are not like the Soviet Nomenklatura. Many of the
groups within these ruling classes have double functions inside and
outside reasonably functioning market systems. Their activities are
illegitimate only so far as they take place outside the market.
And so, while I do believe that the concept of a ruling class has meaning
in our societies, I cannot dispute that it has problems. Nevertheless, in
spite of all reservations, I do believe that the concept of a ruling
class is not wholly useless, and I do suggest that those of us who have
so far paid it little attention might do well to give it some thought.
NB-Sean Gabb's book, Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives
Lost England, and How to Get It Back, can be downloaded for free from
http://tinyurl.com/34e2o3
--
Sean Gabb (away from home computer)
Director, The Libertarian Alliance - Carbon Positive since 1979
sean@libertarian.co.uk
Tel: 07956 472 199
Skype Username: seangabb
http://www.libertarian.co.uk
http://www.seangabb.co.uk
http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk
http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com
Wikipedia Entry: http://tinyurl.com/23jvoz
Posts
