Speaker 1: Aaron, what's happening? Man?
Speaker 2: We don't seem like the kind of guys who really
Speaker 2: like to read a lot, so this is this is
Speaker 2: getting weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't read so good, them words as hard.
Speaker 2: So you had the idea for doing this one, I
Speaker 2: will read it. But so tell me why did you
Speaker 2: want to do chapter three of James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution?
Speaker 1: So I knew that we wouldn't have enough time or
Speaker 1: willpower to do the entire thing. I I would, I
Speaker 1: would make that my life's work and my my magnum opus.
Speaker 1: But chapter three really stuck with me, mostly because of
Speaker 1: my my background and my my near group and in group,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the libertarian sphere, and uh,
Speaker 1: I I never really considered the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: I I've always had that binary brain of it's it's
Speaker 1: either capitalism or socialism. And you know, I've I've kind
Speaker 1: of adopted the uh, the way I thought that socialism
Speaker 1: is encroaching, and you know, it's not, it's not anywhere
Speaker 1: near what like somebody like Lenin would would view as socialism.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, and particularly for this book, when
Speaker 1: when when we were reading uh uh State and Revolution,
Speaker 1: m hm. The sheer amount of things that Lenin called
Speaker 1: like just called it. Uh. I mean throughout that reading,
Speaker 1: it was like he was spot on with a lot
Speaker 1: of things. And uh, throughout my incomplete reading of this,
Speaker 1: I'm still in the middle of it. Uh. Every page
Speaker 1: has something that I can immediately point to, a tangible
Speaker 1: aspect of something I deal with every day and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Burnham called it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read it this afternoon because it's only it's
Speaker 2: only a night nine pages, seven, eight or nine pages,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I was stopping constantly because I was just like,
Speaker 2: oh man, I have to ponder that. I really have
Speaker 2: to ponder that. So all right, well, I mean we
Speaker 2: usually do like twenty five or thirty pages and it
Speaker 2: goes so stop anytime I'll start reading.
Speaker 1: It, okay, absolutely, all right.
Speaker 2: Chapter three, The Theory of the Permanence of Capitalism by
Speaker 2: former Trotskyite James Burnham. During the past century, dozens, perhaps
Speaker 2: even hundreds, of theories of history have been elaborated. These
Speaker 2: differ endlessly among themselves in the words they use, the
Speaker 2: causal explanations they offer for the historical process, the alleged
Speaker 2: laws of history which they seem to discover, But most
Speaker 2: of these differences are irrelevant to the central problem with
Speaker 2: which this book is concerned. That problem is to discover,
Speaker 2: if possible, what type, if indeed it is to be
Speaker 2: a different type of social organization is on the immediate
Speaker 2: historical horizon. I will pause to say that this book
Speaker 2: was released in nineteen forty one, so he's positing what's
Speaker 2: going to happen, and he probably start he probably wrote
Speaker 2: this in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: And he's kind of setting you up, especially you know,
Speaker 1: us US libertarians or former libertarians of what I'd consider
Speaker 1: myself to be. So when you're reading this, whatever definition
Speaker 1: of capitalism he's using, he knows it's not real capitalism, bro,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't care. It's capitalism and its totality, whatever
Speaker 1: your definition is, that's what he's talking.
Speaker 2: About with reference to this specific problem. All of the theories,
Speaker 2: with the exception of those few which approximate to the
Speaker 2: theory of the managerial revolution, boil down to two and
Speaker 2: only two. The first of these. The first of these
Speaker 2: predicts that capitalism will continue for an indefinite but long time,
Speaker 2: if not forever. That is, that the major institutions of
Speaker 2: capitalist society, or at least most of them will not
Speaker 2: be radically changed. The second predicts that capitalist society will
Speaker 2: be replaced by socialist society. The theory of the managerial revolution
Speaker 2: predicts that capitalist society will be replaced by managerial society,
Speaker 2: the nature of which we'll be explained later. That in fact,
Speaker 2: the transition from capitalists to managerial society is already well underway.
Speaker 2: It is clear that although all three of these theories
Speaker 2: might be false, only one of them can be true.
Speaker 2: The answer that each of them gives to the question
Speaker 2: of what will happen what will actually happen in the future,
Speaker 2: plainly denies the answers given by the other two. If
Speaker 2: then the theory of the managerial revolution is true, it
Speaker 2: must be POSSI will to present consideration sufficient to justify
Speaker 2: us in regard to in regard the other two theories as.
Speaker 1: False, they're all mutually exclusive.
Speaker 2: Right. Such demonstration would by itself make the theory of
Speaker 2: the managerial revolution very probable, since apart from these three
Speaker 2: there are at present no other serious theoretical contenders. I propose, therefore,
Speaker 2: in this in the following chapter, to review briefly the
Speaker 2: evidence for rejecting the theory of the permanence of capitalism
Speaker 2: and the theory of the socialist revolution, and we're off.
Speaker 2: Oddly enough, the belief that the capitalists society will continue
Speaker 2: is seldom put in theoretical form. It is rather left
Speaker 2: implicit in what people say and do, and in the
Speaker 2: writings and sayings of most historians, sociologists, and politicians. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: there is little doubt that the majority of people in
Speaker 2: the United States hold this belief, though it has been
Speaker 2: somewhat shaken in recent years. When examined, this belief is
Speaker 2: seen to be based not on any evidence in its favor,
Speaker 2: but primarily on two assumptions. Both of these assumptions are
Speaker 2: flatly and entirely false. Here we go. The first is
Speaker 2: the assumption that society has always been capitalists in structure,
Speaker 2: and therefore presumably always will be. In actual fact, society
Speaker 2: has been capitalists from a minute fragment of the total
Speaker 2: of total human history. Any exact date shows in its
Speaker 2: the beginning of the good.
Speaker 1: How many times have you seen people cite instances of
Speaker 1: I guess, right wing anarchism, anarcho capitalism throughout history.
Speaker 2: I mean it always seems forced.
Speaker 1: But yeah, extremely like real, you.
Speaker 2: Know, medieval Iceland, medieval Scotland. Yeah, I mean Ireland. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, those are the two two ones that come
Speaker 1: to mind as well, and or like uh yeah, so
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm getting at is it's always forced. Uh,
Speaker 1: capitalism has only existed since maybe the late eighteenth century.
Speaker 2: I mean some people may say the Hanseatic League, which
Speaker 2: goes back further, but I mean on any grand scale
Speaker 2: in the West. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if if you if you compare it to
Speaker 1: what's what's that, uh, mercantilism. Yeah, uh, that's it's very
Speaker 1: hard when you start differentiating between capitalism and mercantilism. It's
Speaker 1: always kind of a uh, there's there's shape of each
Speaker 1: when you get into that sixteenth seventeenth century and before.
Speaker 2: All right, moving on any exact date chosen as the
Speaker 2: beginning of capitalism would be arbitrary. But the start of
Speaker 2: capitalist social organization on any wide scale can scarcely be
Speaker 2: put earlier than the fourteenth century AD, and capitalist domination
Speaker 2: must be placed much later than that. The second assumption
Speaker 2: is that capitalism has some necessary kind of correlation with
Speaker 2: human nature. That's man, yep, yeah, I've been I was
Speaker 2: reading John C. Calhoun's Disquisition on government. Got it down
Speaker 2: here somewhere, and his argument for why government is necessary
Speaker 2: is the exact same intro is the exact same argument
Speaker 2: that anarchists or lays fair economists make for why lays
Speaker 2: fair would work.
Speaker 1: Self interest yep, self ownership, private property or private property
Speaker 1: is an extension of self ownership. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: an appeal to human nature that I hear a lot.
Speaker 2: All right, So the second assumption is that capitalism has
Speaker 2: some necessary kind of correlation with human nature. This, as
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, is the same assumption as the first,
Speaker 2: but expressed differently. To see that it is false, it
Speaker 2: is not required to be sure just what human nature
Speaker 2: may be. It is enough to observe that human nature
Speaker 2: has been able to adapt itself to dozens of types
Speaker 2: of society, many of which have been studied by anthropologists
Speaker 2: and historians, and a number of which have lasted far
Speaker 2: longer than capitalism.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's unreasonable to kind of in part
Speaker 1: into your belief system of history.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. With these assumptions dropped, the positive case for
Speaker 2: the view that capitalism will continue doesn't amount to much.
Speaker 2: In fact, has hardly even been stated coherently by anyone.
Speaker 2: But apart from this lack of positive defense, we can,
Speaker 2: I think, lists certain sets of facts which give all
Speaker 2: the grounds that a reasonable man should need for believing
Speaker 2: that capitalism is not going to continue, that it will
Speaker 2: disappear in a couple of decades at most, and perhaps
Speaker 2: in a couple of years, which is as exact as
Speaker 2: one should pretend to be in these matters. These facts
Speaker 2: do not demonstrate this in any way that mathematical or
Speaker 2: logical theorem is demonstrated. No belief about future events can
Speaker 2: be demonstrated. They simply make the belief more probable that
Speaker 2: any alternative belief, which is as much as can be
Speaker 2: can be done. This is in parenthesis in what follows,
Speaker 2: for reasons which will become evident later, I do not
Speaker 2: include references to Germany, Italy or Russia. Okay, The first
Speaker 2: and perhaps crucial evidence for the view that capitalism is
Speaker 2: not going to continue much longer is the continuous, continuous
Speaker 2: presence within the capitalist nations of mass unemployment and the
Speaker 2: failure of all means tried for getting rid of mass unemployment.
Speaker 2: The unemployed, it is especially significant to note, include large
Speaker 2: percentages of the youth just entering working age I.
Speaker 1: Mean, pause, You're right, there is that applicable to today.
Speaker 2: It's applicable to every moment of every conscious moment of
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep. Mass unemployment now not in the traditional sense
Speaker 1: that people are looking for work and they just can't
Speaker 1: find jobs because there's no there's no productive positions for
Speaker 1: them to fill. But if you look at today, this
Speaker 1: call for universal basic income, universal health care, this this
Speaker 1: emphasis on work life balance, I think that's in response
Speaker 1: to not so much people being unemployed through no through
Speaker 1: no fault of their own, but this general drive towards uh,
Speaker 1: not having to work for your basic necessities is stemmed
Speaker 1: from the fact that there's just not a whole lot
Speaker 1: of people working and and at the same time, there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of people looking for work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would. Yeah. I don't know if
Speaker 2: I have anything to add to that. Yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna move on. Continuous mass unemployment is not new
Speaker 2: in history. It is in fact them that a given
Speaker 2: type of social organization is just about finished. It was
Speaker 2: found among the poorer citizens during the last years of Athens,
Speaker 2: among the urban proletariat as they were called in the
Speaker 2: Roman Empire, and very notably at the end of the
Speaker 2: Middle Ages, among the dispossessed serfs and villains who had
Speaker 2: been thrown off the land in order to make way
Speaker 2: for capitalist use of the land. I pronounced that, right, villains,
Speaker 2: I recognize that from Marx I think, so, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: what is a villain hold on? I'm trying to remember now.
Speaker 2: I looked it up once. I read feudal tenant entirely
Speaker 2: subject to a lord, so basically close enough to a serf.
Speaker 2: Mass unemployment means that the given type of social organization
Speaker 2: has broken down, that it cannot any longer provide its
Speaker 2: members with socially useful functions, even according to its own
Speaker 2: ideas of what is socially useful? Hey, uncle ted, how
Speaker 2: are you doing? It cannot support these masses for any
Speaker 2: length of time and idleness, for its resources are not
Speaker 2: sufficient the unemployed.
Speaker 1: That's where the Marxists would disagree. They would say, no, no,
Speaker 1: we have the resources. They're just not being diverted to it.
Speaker 1: You know, They're being diverted to socially unnecessary production.
Speaker 2: Right. The unemployed, however, on the fringe of society on
Speaker 2: the one hand, like a terrible weight dragging it down
Speaker 2: and believing it to death. On the other, a constant,
Speaker 2: irritant and reservoir of forces directed against the society that
Speaker 2: is brutal. Man experience has already shown that there is
Speaker 2: not the slightest prospect of ridding capitalism of mass unemployment.
Speaker 2: This is nineteen forty one, so eighty years ago. Eighty one.
Speaker 2: This is indeed becoming widely admitted among the defenders of
Speaker 2: capitalism as well as many spokesmen of the New Deal.
Speaker 2: Even total war, the most drastic conceivable solution, could not
Speaker 2: end mass unemployment in England and France, nor will it
Speaker 2: do so in this country. Every solution that has any
Speaker 2: possibility of succeeding leads directly or indirectly outside the framework
Speaker 2: of capitalism.
Speaker 1: That that right there, like just really hit home. When
Speaker 1: you have an ideology and you're trying to apply an
Speaker 1: ideological solution to reality. You're and let's say it's let's
Speaker 1: say you're an anarchic capitalist, for instance, You're trying to
Speaker 1: game out ways to apply solutions. The law of unintended
Speaker 1: consequences will take effect, and there's really nothing in the
Speaker 1: anarcho capitalist toolbox that can fix mass unemployment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean they will say that, you know,
Speaker 2: the freer of the market, the more jobs will be created,
Speaker 2: and you will have one unemployment. I mean, you'll have
Speaker 2: zero percent unemployment. Sorry, yeah, yeah, and the only people
Speaker 2: who at that point, the only people who will work,
Speaker 2: who won't work, or people who can't work. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I think that's pine in the sky.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. The the solutions
Speaker 1: applied to reality, if you take it, if you're in
Speaker 1: a capitalist framework, all of your solutions that are within
Speaker 1: that capitalist framework, there there's no uh, there's no solving
Speaker 1: it within it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think some may argue that because you're in
Speaker 2: an anarcho capitalist society and there are no entitlements, no welfare,
Speaker 2: no nothing like that, that people will be compelled to work,
Speaker 2: that they'll be forced to work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I've always kind of envisioned, uh
Speaker 1: not not not trying to straw man, but an anarcho
Speaker 1: capitalist society is like that ten thousand leak con shines
Speaker 1: more more of a corporate structure where you know, the
Speaker 1: cons Herman Hopp covenant communities. If you take the idea
Speaker 1: of a covenant community, will there be unemployment in a
Speaker 1: covenant community.
Speaker 2: And depends on it depends on the constitution of the
Speaker 2: covenant community exactly.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, So I mean either way, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a nice I love it. That's where I come from,
Speaker 1: and I would love to see that implemented. But I
Speaker 1: guess what constitutes mass unemployment would depend on the covenant community.
Speaker 2: Two. Capitalism has always been characterized by recurring economic crises,
Speaker 2: by periods of boom followed by periods of depression. Until
Speaker 2: a dozen years ago, however, the curve of total production
Speaker 2: always went higher in one major boom period than in
Speaker 2: the boom proceding. It did so not only in terms
Speaker 2: of the actual quality of goods produced, but in the
Speaker 2: relative quantity of the volume of goods compared to the
Speaker 2: increased population and plant capacity. Thus, in spite of the crises,
Speaker 2: there was a general overall increase in capitalist production, which
Speaker 2: was simply the measure of the ability of capitalist social
Speaker 2: organization to handle its own resources. Since the World Crisis
Speaker 2: of nineteen twenty seven through twenty nine, this overall curve
Speaker 2: has reversed. The height of a boom period relative to
Speaker 2: population and potential capacity is lower than that of the
Speaker 2: preceding boom. The new direction of the curve is, in
Speaker 2: its turn, simply the expression of the fact that capitalism
Speaker 2: can no longer handle its own resources.
Speaker 1: And again, uh, for all the mesessians listening, that boom
Speaker 1: and bus cycle. We know it's due to the expansion
Speaker 1: of credit. But you know Burnham, Burnham incorporates central banking
Speaker 1: into his view of capitalism.
Speaker 2: Well, he's also living in the real world. He's talking
Speaker 2: about what's happening now. And yeah, you can already hear
Speaker 2: people screaming, well, that's not real capitalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that boom and bus cycle. I mean again,
Speaker 1: like I love, I love an cap theory, but there's
Speaker 1: really nothing inherently, there's nothing to inoculate, say, a covenant
Speaker 1: community with a bank with a currency from a boom
Speaker 1: and bus cycle, because credit credit in and of itself
Speaker 1: isn't isn't tied to any type of ideology.
Speaker 2: Well, what I would like to say here is that
Speaker 2: it looks like Burnham is making like he did say
Speaker 2: he did make an immediate kind of prediction. The first
Speaker 2: sentence of part three here is the volume of public
Speaker 2: and private debt has reached a point where it cannot
Speaker 2: be managed much longer. Okay, so some people would say, okay,
Speaker 2: how are we still how are we still going well?
Speaker 2: I mean maybe they adjusted, they bring in a Paul
Speaker 2: Volker or someone like that to get it through. But
Speaker 2: what I want to say more about these timeframes is
Speaker 2: it's hard to predict when you know something is going bad.
Speaker 2: When you know something is going wrong, there could be
Speaker 2: somebody out there who has already figured out how to
Speaker 2: let how to keep that wrong going. For a long time,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people talking about the fall
Speaker 2: of the Roman Empire in the first and second century.
Speaker 2: It took a couple more centuries. It does not discount
Speaker 2: the arguments that they were making, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: And applying it to now, if you view the United
Speaker 1: States as the beacon of capitalism and Enlightenment values and
Speaker 1: all that, you can you can see its evolution or
Speaker 1: de evolution from its from its inception to right now.
Speaker 1: And you know, capitalism even, you know, even when deregulation
Speaker 1: and all these good libertarian policies were applied sparingly throughout history,
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough to manage the decline.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read the first sentence again and keep going.
Speaker 2: The volume of public and private debt had reached a
Speaker 2: point where it cannot be managed much longer. The debt,
Speaker 2: like the unemployed, sucks away the diminishing bloodstream of capitalism,
Speaker 2: and it cannot be shaken off. Bankruptcies, which formerly readjusted
Speaker 2: the debt position of capitalism, hardly make a debt in it.
Speaker 2: The scale of bankruptcy or inflation, which could reduce the
Speaker 2: debt to manageable size, would, at the same time, as
Speaker 2: all economists recognize, utterly dislocate all capitalist institutions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, going back to HAPA, any institution,
Speaker 1: whether it's a nation state or a company or covenant community,
Speaker 1: any institution is own to just that high time preference culture,
Speaker 1: of which leads to that racking up of unmanageable debt.
Speaker 1: And that kind of segues nicely into I'm why I'm right.
Speaker 2: Wing, all right. The maintenance of the capitalist market depended
Speaker 2: on at least comparatively free monetary exchange transactions. The area
Speaker 2: of these, especially on a words a world scale, is
Speaker 2: diminishing towards a vanishing point. This is well indicated by
Speaker 2: the useless gold hoard at Fort Knox and the barter
Speaker 2: methods of Russia, Germany and Italy. I believe if you
Speaker 2: were at this in forty or forty one, it was
Speaker 2: released to forty one. We get Breton Woods in five years, right,
Speaker 2: I think breton Woods is forty six. Oh done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the mortal wound to the whatever whatever gold
Speaker 1: standard we had left.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was a forty four summit. So yeah,
Speaker 2: the uh try to explain Breton Woods. The best I
Speaker 2: can is basically what it meant was that. Okay, So
Speaker 2: the delegates agreed that the gold standard would create a
Speaker 2: fixed currency exchange exchange rate, so there'd be no fluction.
Speaker 2: There'd be no fluctuation, no market. The agreement also facilitated
Speaker 2: the creation of immensely important structures in the financial world,
Speaker 2: the IMF, the International Bank for Reconstruction in the International
Speaker 2: Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is known today as
Speaker 2: the World Bank. So that's your Breton Woods. And yeah,
Speaker 2: you're you're right, there's no what did you.
Speaker 1: Say, No more market no more yeah, no more market
Speaker 1: forces affecting the exchange rate.
Speaker 2: Yep, all right. Four the maintenance of the capitalist market
Speaker 2: depended on, at least comparatively I already read that one.
Speaker 2: Since shortly this is part five, Since shortly after the
Speaker 2: First World War that there has been in all major
Speaker 2: capitalist nations a permanent agricultural depression. Agriculture is obviously an
Speaker 2: indispensable part of the total economy, and the breakdown in
Speaker 2: this essential sector is another mark of the incurable disease
Speaker 2: afflicting capitalism. No remedies and how and how many they
Speaker 2: are that have been tried produce any sign of cure.
Speaker 2: The farming populations sink in debt and poverty, and not
Speaker 2: enough food is produced and distributed while agriculture is kept
Speaker 2: barely going through huge state subsidies.
Speaker 1: I don't know if today we have a problem of
Speaker 1: not enough food being produced, but I know that I
Speaker 1: just don't know a whole lot about the agricultural industry
Speaker 1: right now, but I know one thing I do know
Speaker 1: is that it is propped up entirely by state subsidies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, somebody is screaming right now though, that that
Speaker 2: FDR had them destroy food in the thirties so that
Speaker 2: he could keep prices high to affect supply and demand.
Speaker 2: But that's what you have under capitalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a solution well within the bounds of capitalism.
Speaker 1: You know, a private entity can do that just as
Speaker 1: well as a public one.
Speaker 2: Dan, no man, only the state's evil. Only the state's evil, dude.
Speaker 2: Capitalism is no longer able to find uses for the
Speaker 2: available investment funds, which waste in idleness in the account
Speaker 2: books of the banks. The mass unemployment of private money
Speaker 2: is scarcely less indicative of the death of capitalism than
Speaker 2: the mass unemployment of human beings. Damn, this mass unemployment
Speaker 2: of private money, that's a really good phrase.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it strikes a uh, I know, it strikes
Speaker 1: at my Mesessian sensibilities.
Speaker 2: Both show the inability of the capitalist institutions any longer
Speaker 2: to organize human activities. During the past decade, in the
Speaker 2: United States, as in other capitalist nations, new capital investment
Speaker 2: has come almost entirely from the state, not from private funds.
Speaker 1: Yep. And uh even now, I mean with with the
Speaker 1: literal trillions of dollars sitting in futures and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: investment portfolios and assets and all that, can we honestly
Speaker 1: say that it's being employed in any sense in a
Speaker 1: beneficial way to society. And this is where you get
Speaker 1: kind of people varying off and going towards Marxism.
Speaker 2: Seven. The continuance of capitalism was, we saw, dependent upon
Speaker 2: a certain relationship between the great powers and the backward
Speaker 2: sections and peoples of the earth. One of the most
Speaker 2: striking developments of the past fifteen years, which has been
Speaker 2: little noticed, is the inability of the great capitalist nations
Speaker 2: any longer to manage the exploitation and development of these
Speaker 2: backward sections. This is nowhere better illustrated than in the
Speaker 2: relations between the United States and South America. The United States,
Speaker 2: in spite of its imperious necessity for the nation's very survival,
Speaker 2: has not and cannot devise a scheme for handling the
Speaker 2: economic phase of a temisphere policy. Though during the past
Speaker 2: few years and above and above all during the war
Speaker 2: the road has been wide open. Nothing gets done here. Again,
Speaker 2: the only workable schemes are compelled to leave the basis
Speaker 2: of capitalism.
Speaker 1: Which is war and color revolutions, Yeah, publics and all that.
Speaker 2: This is why, if you ask somebody, you know, how
Speaker 2: did the United States get out of the Great Depression,
Speaker 2: they've been taught to say, well, world War two, you know,
Speaker 2: Because I mean, honestly, if war is the greatest thing
Speaker 2: for the economy, we should just be blowing up our
Speaker 2: own buildings and bridges just constantly Oh yeah, infrastructure, man
Speaker 2: Capitalism is no longer able to use its own technological possibilities.
Speaker 2: One side of this is shown by such facts as
Speaker 2: the inability of the United States to carry out a
Speaker 2: housing program when the houses are needed and wanted and
Speaker 2: the technical means to produce them in abundance or on hand.
Speaker 2: This is the case with almost all goods. But an
Speaker 2: equally symptomatic side is seen in the inability to make
Speaker 2: use of many inventions and new technical methods. Hundreds of these,
Speaker 2: though they could reduce immeasurably the number of man hours
Speaker 2: needed to turn out goods and increase greatly the convenience
Speaker 2: of life, nonetheless sit on the shelf. In many entire
Speaker 2: economic sectors, such as agriculture, building, coal mining. The technical
Speaker 2: methods today available make the usual present methods seem stone age,
Speaker 2: and nearly every economic field is to some degree affected.
Speaker 2: Using the inventions and methods available available, would, it is
Speaker 2: correctly understood, smash up the capitalist structure. Technological unemployment is
Speaker 2: present in recent capitalism, but it is hardly anything compared
Speaker 2: to what technological unemployed would be if capitalism made use
Speaker 2: of its available technology.
Speaker 1: He just talking about achieving post scarcity through automation and
Speaker 1: all that, and uh, you know, we we have that today.
Speaker 1: We have the means to automate almost every facet of
Speaker 1: the production process in any industry. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is where we get into the managerial state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these facts also show that capitalism and its rulers
Speaker 2: can no longer use their own resources. And the point
Speaker 2: is that if they won't, someone else will. Nine As
Speaker 2: symptomatic and decisive as these economic and technical developments, it
Speaker 2: as symptom hold on, here we go. As symptomatic and
Speaker 2: decisive as these economic and technological developments is the fact
Speaker 2: that the ideologies of capitalism, the bourgeois ideologies, have become impotent.
Speaker 2: Ideologies we have seen, are the cement that binds together
Speaker 2: the social fabric. When the cement loosens, the fabric is
Speaker 2: about to disintegrate. And no one who has watched the
Speaker 2: world during the past twenty years can doubt the ever
Speaker 2: increasing importance of the bourgeois ideologies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, impotence.
Speaker 2: So already Humble bragged about this on Twitter. I was
Speaker 2: hanging out with Jarvin, who basically has gotten people to
Speaker 2: read Burnham, and I asked him about this quote, because
Speaker 2: this is a quote that a lot of people use
Speaker 2: to say that Burnham was not against ideologies. He says,
Speaker 2: ideologies we have seen are the cement that binds together
Speaker 2: the social fabric. So what I asked Jarvin was, are
Speaker 2: ideologies for the plebs and the people who are in power,
Speaker 2: who desire power, who understand power, understand that ideology is handcuffs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he seemed to agree with that. So you seem to
Speaker 2: agree that the powerful will push ideologies upon people and
Speaker 2: say this is what's going to hold you, this is
Speaker 2: what holds us together while they are While they are
Speaker 2: I have no ideology whatsoever, even if they're telling you
Speaker 2: they have the same ideology as you and they're just
Speaker 2: doing as they wish with the power that's been granted them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, particularly bourgeois ideologies like monarchism or or liberalism or
Speaker 1: you know, any of those. Those those I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that to you know, as a as being mean or anything,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, if if your middle class abides
Speaker 1: but by a general ideology like say liberalism in the
Speaker 1: United States, and then they have you know, different disagreements
Speaker 1: and factions scattered throughout, you could still have a cohesive society.
Speaker 1: If half your society is communist and the other half is,
Speaker 1: you know, liberal, then that's when you're going to see
Speaker 1: things like Russia, things like Germany, things like Italy, China.
Speaker 2: Yep, I'm going to read that again. Ideologies we have
Speaker 2: seen are the cement that binds together the social fabric.
Speaker 2: When the cement loosens, the fabric is about to disintegrate.
Speaker 2: And no one who has watched the world during the
Speaker 2: past twenty years can doubt the ever increasing impotence of
Speaker 2: the bourgeois ideologies. On the one hand, the scientific pretensions
Speaker 2: of these ideologies have been exploded. History, sociology, and anthropology
Speaker 2: are not yet much as sciences, but they are enough
Speaker 2: to show every serious person that the concepts of the
Speaker 2: bourgeois ideologies are not written in the stars, or not
Speaker 2: universal laws of nature, but aret best, just temporary expressions
Speaker 2: of the interests and ideals of a particular class of
Speaker 2: men at a particular historical time.
Speaker 1: That was a punch and look out to me too. Yep,
Speaker 1: we're all just dust in the wind man.
Speaker 2: It does not matter how non scientific or anti scientific
Speaker 2: and ideology may be. It can do its work so
Speaker 2: long as it possesses the power to move great masses
Speaker 2: of men to action. This, this the bourgeois ideologies once
Speaker 2: could do, as the great revolutions and the imperial and
Speaker 2: economic conquest prove, And this they can no longer do.
Speaker 2: That's so spot on, It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Are you going to die for libertarianism? You are you ready, comrade?
Speaker 2: I'm ready to die to end these lockdowns. When the
Speaker 2: bourgeois ideologies were challenged in the Sar and this day
Speaker 2: and land by the ideology of Nazism, it was Nazism
Speaker 2: that won the sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the people.
Speaker 2: All possible discounts for the effects of Nazi terrorism must
Speaker 2: not delude us into misreading this brute fact. Ben, that's
Speaker 2: a paragraph right there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Esz.
Speaker 2: Only the hopelessly naive can imagine that France fell so
Speaker 2: swiftly because of the mere mechanical strength of the Nazi
Speaker 2: war machine. That might have been sufficient in a longer run,
Speaker 2: but not to destroy a great nation with a colossal
Speaker 2: military establishment in a few weeks. France collapsed so swiftly
Speaker 2: because its people had no heart for the war, as
Speaker 2: every observer had remarked even through the censorship from the
Speaker 2: beginning of the war, and they had no heart for
Speaker 2: the war because the bourgeois ideologies by which they were
Speaker 2: appealed to no longer had power to move their hearts.
Speaker 2: Men are prepared to be heroes for very foolish and
Speaker 2: unworthy ideals, but they must at least believe in those ideals. Man, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's just throwing haymakers.
Speaker 1: No, I was. I was. It's kind of a like
Speaker 1: a you know, a blue collar trope that like the
Speaker 1: French are pussies and cowards and all that. But you know,
Speaker 1: when I read that paragraph, I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: He's absolutely right, there was. They're no different than anybody else.
Speaker 1: They just weren't moved. They didn't have they didn't have
Speaker 1: leaders worth following, they didn't have beliefs that resonated with them.
Speaker 1: And uh, now that's why we're having a retention crisis
Speaker 1: right now in our military.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, say the French were pussies in seventeen eighty nine. Well,
Speaker 2: nowhere is the impotence of bourgeois ideology is more apparent
Speaker 2: than among the youth, and the coming world, after all,
Speaker 2: will be the youth's world. The abject failure of voluntary
Speaker 2: military enlistment in Britain. In this country tells its own
Speaker 2: story to all who wished to listen. It is underlined
Speaker 2: in reverse by the hundred of Distinguished Adult Voices, which
Speaker 2: during nineteen forty began reproaching the American youth for indifference,
Speaker 2: unwillingness to sacrifice, lack of ideals. How right these reproaches
Speaker 2: are and how little effect they have? Man, do you
Speaker 2: do you see how inconsistent you're thinking?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Come on, man, it's like, yeah, it's like telling
Speaker 2: a leftist that they're inconsistent.
Speaker 1: I just think when I read that, I was like,
Speaker 1: I just just wait a few months, when you know,
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor happens, then I like, I honestly don't know
Speaker 1: if we would have even needed a draft. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's not so much them being motivated by any type
Speaker 1: of patriotism or you know, love of liberalism and democracy
Speaker 1: and all that. That's it was a revenge thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it has nothing to do with ideologies or
Speaker 2: that's what they've been able to manufacture. With the terror wars.
Speaker 1: They saw how effective Pearl Harbor was, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on depending on where where you sit on that
Speaker 1: they created more or they you know, literally created more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if you can't sell love of country
Speaker 2: or anything anymore, but then let's sell that. You know,
Speaker 2: the Commis are encroaching Korea and Vietnam, the Commis are croaching,
Speaker 2: encroaching Grenada, the radical Islamic terrorism, Iraq War one one
Speaker 2: and a half two, Great Afghanistan nine to eleven. Wherever
Speaker 2: you stand that nine to eleven. In truth, the bourgeoisie
Speaker 2: itself has in large measure lost confidence in its own ideologies.
Speaker 2: The words begin to have a hollow sound in the
Speaker 2: most sympathetic capitalist ears. This too, is unmistakably revealed in
Speaker 2: the policy anditude of England's rulers during the past years.
Speaker 2: What was Munich and the whole policy of appeasement but
Speaker 2: a recognition of bourgeois impotence. Oh Man going after Chamberlain
Speaker 2: bad Huh. The head of the British Government's traveling to
Speaker 2: the feet of the Austrian house painter was the fitting
Speaker 2: symbol of the capitalist loss of faith in themselves. Let
Speaker 2: me read that again. The head of the British Government's
Speaker 2: traveling to the feet of the Austrian house painter was
Speaker 2: the fitting symbol of the capitalist's loss of faith in themselves.
Speaker 1: The Austrian house painter.
Speaker 2: Wonder who that is. Every authentic report during the autumn
Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty nine from Britain told of the discouragement
Speaker 2: and fear of the leaders in government and business. And
Speaker 2: no one who has listened to American leaders off the record,
Speaker 2: or who has followed the less public organs of British
Speaker 2: of business opinion, will suppose that such attitudes are confined
Speaker 2: to Britain. All history makes clear that an indispensable quality
Speaker 2: of any man or class that wishes to lead to
Speaker 2: hold power and privilege in society is boundless self confidence.
Speaker 2: Other sets of facts could easily easily be added to
Speaker 2: this list, but these are perhaps the most plainly sympathetic,
Speaker 2: a symptomatic sorry. Their effect, moreover is cumulative. The attempted
Speaker 2: remedies for them experience shows only gravity only aggravate them. Sorry.
Speaker 2: They permit no other conclusion than the capitalist organization of
Speaker 2: society has entered its final years. Let me read that
Speaker 2: last sentence of the body of that again. All history
Speaker 2: makes clear that an indispensable quality of any man or
Speaker 2: class that wishes to lead to hold power and privilege
Speaker 2: in society is boundless self confidence. It's I mean, can
Speaker 2: is there any way you can argue with that?
Speaker 1: Not at all, not recently. No, And you know, whether
Speaker 1: you're talking about Trump or you know, the Four Horsemen
Speaker 1: or whoever else, I mean boundless self confidence like just
Speaker 1: having having the ability to be persuasive to the masses.
Speaker 1: You could be speaking you could be speaking Chinese and
Speaker 1: you know they'll they'll follow you. Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of those things that I remember
Speaker 2: middle school teacher telling me, you know, and we didn't
Speaker 2: have the Internet at this time, so it was kind
Speaker 2: of hard to find. But he's like, if you can
Speaker 2: find a video of Hitler speaking, you won't even have
Speaker 2: to know what he's saying. You will be moved.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's hard for you know, to hear when you're
Speaker 2: in middle school and you've already had, you know, a
Speaker 2: good ten years of indoctrination into the you know that,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Hitler. No, No, there's no way, and
Speaker 2: then you like listen to him and speak and you're like,
Speaker 2: holy crap. And then it.
Speaker 1: Becomes the joke like say what you want about Hitler
Speaker 1: but you know, fantastic orator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, say what you want about Ussolini with those trains
Speaker 2: right on time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, if you if you kind of
Speaker 1: apply that that idea to our sphere or former sphere
Speaker 1: or whatever, it's something that even even the leadership like
Speaker 1: at the top can't can't really make that happen. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole boundless self confidence thing. I mean, when you're
Speaker 1: in a leadership position and you're trying to move people
Speaker 1: like you can't you can't be self deprecating, you can't
Speaker 1: be speaking a language like you know that comes off
Speaker 1: to normal people like you're some type of bug man.
Speaker 1: You know. That's that's why populism's taking a grip, both
Speaker 1: left wing and right wing populism is taking a grip
Speaker 1: right now. It's because they have fantastic, relatable, persuasive orators.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or tweeters or what was the last time he
Speaker 2: saw Anthony Sabattini put something out that was like slightly cringe.
Speaker 2: I don't remember. People who don't know Anthony Sabattini is
Speaker 2: a state senator in Florida who would be nice to
Speaker 2: see on the on the big stage just because he
Speaker 2: has no filter whatsoever.
Speaker 1: What's uh, what's going on with Matt Gates?
Speaker 2: I don't know. They're trying to they try to take
Speaker 2: him down with that whole thing and everything. But I
Speaker 2: though was mentioning something this weekend about that about Matt Yeah, he.
Speaker 1: You can tell that it's bullshit because the Republican Party
Speaker 1: as a whole has not at all distanced themselves from him, right,
Speaker 1: it's only the people that have like said anything. We're
Speaker 1: like the you know, the anti Trump Republicans that didn't
Speaker 1: like him to begin with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and them too.
Speaker 1: But that's that's how I can kind of gauge what's
Speaker 1: bullshit or not, because you know, the top leadership of
Speaker 1: the party isn't saying anything. They're treating him exactly the
Speaker 1: same as they were before, so you could be rest
Speaker 1: assured that they don't have anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a hard hitting essay because when you
Speaker 2: define capitalism properly, because there is no free market lays fair,
Speaker 2: and there is not going to be a free market
Speaker 2: lays fair, at least not in our lifetime, and people
Speaker 2: can make, you know, you can make the argument that
Speaker 2: when I was reading it, I was thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're in the black market, it's free
Speaker 2: and everything. It's like, well, it's really not that free.
Speaker 2: I mean, you like literally might have to protect yourself
Speaker 2: with with a lot of firepower, protect your business, and
Speaker 2: you never see best You never see best Buy running
Speaker 2: drive bys on brands Mart. So yeah, but capitalism. If
Speaker 2: you're going to use the term capitalism now, and you're
Speaker 2: going to use it in any other way than something
Speaker 2: that is pure theory, just use it. It's amazing to
Speaker 2: me that the same people that will say, you know, well,
Speaker 2: real capitalism hasn't been tried, will argue that capitalism has
Speaker 2: gotten out gotten a billion Asians out of out of
Speaker 2: poverty in the last thirty years. Yeah, and that I say, well,
Speaker 2: that was neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then it becomes like, oh, I don't like that.
Speaker 2: Though, because it was neoliberalism, and it really was. I mean, stop,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, neoliberalism is horrible when you look
Speaker 2: at idea, you know, when you look at it from
Speaker 2: an ideological perspective. But they did get a billion people,
Speaker 2: a billionass out of out of poverty in the last
Speaker 2: thirty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you view the onset of capitalism as you know,
Speaker 1: the old school medieval burgers sezed literally seizing power and
Speaker 1: solidifying private property rights from the King that that that
Speaker 1: that kind of gives you a historical perspective, and eventually
Speaker 1: that system of private property rights, you know, seizing private
Speaker 1: property rights, seizing free markets. You know that that came
Speaker 1: at a cost. And now we're entering an era where
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's evolving into something else, whether it's socialism, fascism,
Speaker 1: or as Burnham pos, it's a managerial state. Regardless it is,
Speaker 1: it's fundamentally departed from, you know, the liberal ideal of
Speaker 1: what capitalism is.
Speaker 2: Well, what we did find was that managerial, the managerial
Speaker 2: state is a lot better than what South Korea had before.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, able to drive able to drive a lot of
Speaker 2: people out of cap out of poverty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, it's it's another thing, like you know,
Speaker 1: I I would rather have a managerial state that you know,
Speaker 1: I share values and a culture with than a libertarian
Speaker 1: utopia of like blue haired opese trannies that you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that just reminded me I need to
Speaker 2: ask just the Jeff Dice, the question all that I
Speaker 2: got write this now, do you still believe I just
Speaker 2: think of one of his famoue, one of his famous
Speaker 2: quotes from a few years ago, and I want to
Speaker 2: see what he has to say now that COVID and
Speaker 2: everything is completely insane. But the yeah, I mean Burnham Man,
Speaker 2: there's something in every friggin reading. And what's funny is
Speaker 2: this is I'm doing this with you and very well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to release this next is my next episode,
Speaker 2: the very next episode. Maybe myself and Buck Buck Johnson
Speaker 2: reading Samuel Francis's chapter out of this his review of
Speaker 2: Suicide of the West by Burnham. This is Sam Francis
Speaker 2: Thinkers of Our Times James Burnham, where he basically does
Speaker 2: a commentary on every James Burnham book I have. I
Speaker 2: went and bought another one of these because I'm tearing
Speaker 2: this up so bad. I just wanted to have one
Speaker 2: because this is right now, this is the book I
Speaker 2: can't put down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm you know, going from Lenin to Burnham,
Speaker 1: it you can tell that he was kind of in
Speaker 1: that sphere at one point because he has the same
Speaker 1: polemical writing style and uh like it's actually very easy
Speaker 1: to read. You know, you have to kind of learn
Speaker 1: a different language when you're reading like the Orthodox Marxists,
Speaker 1: but with Burnham it's it's kind of more you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot less learning curve. No, no learning curve
Speaker 1: for me really, But yeah, I would highly recommend any
Speaker 1: any Burnham content. But I'm just happy to read be
Speaker 1: reading The Managerial Revolution right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after you read, if you can get Lenin down,
Speaker 2: you don't have to get it down perfectly, but just understand,
Speaker 2: you know, have a good grasp of it. Reading Burnham
Speaker 2: is a lot easier.
Speaker 1: He was at he was.
Speaker 2: Head of, he was head of like a Trotsky like
Speaker 2: organization or something like that. I mean, the guy was
Speaker 2: deep in it and then just took a did a
Speaker 2: huge yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the next chapter it's like on the on
Speaker 1: the coming transition to socialism or whatever, he goes into
Speaker 1: the fact that workers as a class are very malleable ideologically.
Speaker 1: There's no guarantee that they're going to fulfill their Marxist
Speaker 1: destiny of you know, uh, seizing power and bringing about
Speaker 1: a communist society. They might seize power, but it it'll
Speaker 1: look like, you know, either Nazi Germany or Russia or
Speaker 1: you know something else.
Speaker 2: Well, even Lenin knew that, and that's why Lenin wasn't
Speaker 2: an internationalist like Trotsky. Yeah. Yeah, it was four and
Speaker 2: Stalin picked up on that that too, and then of
Speaker 2: course later things got things would awry after you know,
Speaker 2: certain people got into power and they were like, oh,
Speaker 2: we gotta we got to expand this a little bit.
Speaker 2: Good luck with that. That's when you were that's when
Speaker 2: you realize the world doesn't want this. And when I
Speaker 2: say the world, I'm talking about the people. People of
Speaker 2: this world do not want this.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was like when what's his name, I can't remember
Speaker 2: the American journalists, he's like the only American who's buried
Speaker 2: in uh, buried in the Kremlin or in the tomb there.
Speaker 2: He John Reid, I think it was when he went
Speaker 2: to Russia pre revolution and he was telling Lenin and
Speaker 2: he's like, the American workers will will stand with with
Speaker 2: the Russian workers, and it's like, no, they won't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's smoking crack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's not smoking crack. It's like you're he's
Speaker 2: literally lining to him, yeah, to get you know, to
Speaker 2: get him to he was trying to get him to
Speaker 2: go forth, to push harder in what he was doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Some of those Americans that went over there were way
Speaker 2: more hardcore than a lot of even Lenin's inner group,
Speaker 2: because you know, Lenon had guys in his inner group
Speaker 2: who were like, is this gonna work? Yeah, back to
Speaker 2: my farm, everything will be fine. Or we could just
Speaker 2: go back. Let's let's get this war over so we
Speaker 2: can go back to Germany and Switzerland. You know they
Speaker 2: were living the good life there for for a decade
Speaker 2: and a half.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, German intelligence agencies were fucking like rock stars,
Speaker 1: fucking making it rain.
Speaker 2: Anyway, got anything to plug?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can find me on uh not the latest
Speaker 1: episode of Timeline Earth due to a scheduling dispute, but
Speaker 1: uh yeah you'll you'll eventually find me on Timeline Earth.
Speaker 1: And uh, I hope to keep keep doing little tidbits
Speaker 1: like this. I'm kind of entering a transition phase in
Speaker 1: my professional life and uh taking a taking a step
Speaker 1: back from content creation, but uh, you know, I'm always
Speaker 1: available for a guest spot, and uh, especially for you.
Speaker 2: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana Show.
Speaker 2: Has this guy ever been on the show before? It
Speaker 2: was just oh Aaron from Timeline Earth. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: many times.
Speaker 1: Hey you don't you're my co host.
Speaker 2: That's so awesome. All right, let's get to it. I
Speaker 2: asked you on today so that we could talk about
Speaker 2: Sam Francis. This is actually the book, the print version
Speaker 2: of Sam Francis's. Basically it's a review of every James
Speaker 2: Burnham book. So every book that James Burnham wrote, he
Speaker 2: has a he does ten to fifteen pages on it
Speaker 2: to explain what it is and what are we looking
Speaker 2: for today? We're gonna do the Machiavellians nice And I
Speaker 2: know you read it, and also you said that you
Speaker 2: that you thought about when you when you started reading
Speaker 2: this review, which was what's it called, Crisis of Modernity?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the Crisis of Adernity Modernity by Augusta del Nocee.
Speaker 1: He's an Italian philosopher born in nineteen ten died in
Speaker 1: seventy six, I think, and he's just another one of
Speaker 1: those people that basically called it well before anybody else
Speaker 1: was calling it. He identified the pretty much the flow
Speaker 1: of history from from liberalism into kind of what we're
Speaker 1: experiencing right now, which is its logical endpoint, and it
Speaker 1: really resonated with me. I've also in preparation for this episode,
Speaker 1: I also read a lot of Heidegger and I also
Speaker 1: went back into, uh, the managerial Revolution, just to get
Speaker 1: me into a Burnham mindset.
Speaker 2: Cool cool, all right, well, let's get this up on
Speaker 2: the screen and start reading. I love it, all right,
Speaker 2: So this is taken from I don't even know what
Speaker 2: this text takes it from, because this this text actually
Speaker 2: I can't find in PDF anywhere. It was never made
Speaker 2: into a PDAF. I mean maybe if someone has it,
Speaker 2: they can send it to me. But I just found
Speaker 2: this on archive and it had this section of the
Speaker 2: Machiavelians in it. So yeah, let's just go and stop
Speaker 2: any time. So this is Sam Francis reviewing the Machiavellians
Speaker 2: by James Burnham. I think machi Villen's written in forty
Speaker 2: one or forty two, a year year after manager or Revolution.
Speaker 2: So all right, the managerial revolution has grown out of
Speaker 2: Burnham's dispute what Trotsky in the nineteen thirties, and was
Speaker 2: an answer to Trotsky Stalinist Russia was not a deformed
Speaker 2: worker estate, but a new kind of society that Marxism
Speaker 2: had not anticipated, managerial society. Yet, despite Burnham's political and
Speaker 2: intellectual break with Marxism significant fragments of Marxist ideology, I've
Speaker 2: remained with him and seriously marred his statement of the
Speaker 2: theory of the managerial revolution. In The Machiavellians Defenders of Freedom,
Speaker 2: Burnham eradicated many of his remaining Marxist preconceptions, formulated a
Speaker 2: general theory of human political behavior, and restated the theory
Speaker 2: of the managerial revolution in terms of this theoretical framework.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's definitely a uh, not so hidden critique of Marxism.
Speaker 1: You can definitely tell you he's one hundred percent away
Speaker 1: from Marxism right now, even though that's kind of where
Speaker 1: he started.
Speaker 2: It's good to have you on here if we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about Marxism, because I think we've we've probably
Speaker 2: done a bunch of episodes on Marxism together, haven't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a few books, few few readings.
Speaker 2: All right. In his first book, which had begun with
Speaker 2: a long epigraph from Machiavelli's letter, Burnham had revealed a
Speaker 2: scathing contempt for what he called ideology. Although he recognized
Speaker 2: the social need for ideologies as set as sets of
Speaker 2: beliefs that hold societies together, he had dismissed them as
Speaker 2: unscientific beliefs that were uncontrolled by facts. Manager of Revolution,
Speaker 2: page twenty eighty five. This discrepancy between logic and reality,
Speaker 2: between the verbalized form and the concrete meeting meaning is
Speaker 2: one that is a persistent theme in all of Burnham's writings,
Speaker 2: and one that he explicitly developed in the Machiavellians. Burnham
Speaker 2: found in Machiavelli and in the four political theorists of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, whom he described as Machiavellians, the foundations
Speaker 2: of a realistic method of social and political analysis. Contrasting
Speaker 2: the theological and metaphysical political philosophy of Dante Allegaris in
Speaker 2: Demonarchia with the historically and empirically grounded approach of Machiavelli.
Speaker 2: Burnham developed a fundamental distace between the formal and the
Speaker 2: real meaning of a statement. The formal meaning of a
Speaker 2: statement is the meaning which is explicitly stated, but which
Speaker 2: serves to express in an indirect and disguised manner what
Speaker 2: may be called the real meaning.
Speaker 1: Some it's an interesting metaphysical development. I love it.
Speaker 2: This is quoting, but.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, keep going.
Speaker 2: Quoting By real meaning, I refer to meaning not in
Speaker 2: terms of the fictional world of religion, metaphysics, miracles, and pseudohistory,
Speaker 2: but in terms of the actual world of space, time
Speaker 2: and events.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, metaphysics is like the lens in which
Speaker 1: we view reality and truth. So I don't know, Like,
Speaker 1: just the managerial Revolution is something I really got into
Speaker 1: of Burnham's and uh I was about seventy five percent
Speaker 1: satisfied with it, and not just because it's a little outdated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's what most people think. Most people
Speaker 2: say that it's a great book, but a lot of
Speaker 2: people complain, well, he didn't get his predictions correct and everything.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, I mean, yeah, you're in the middle
Speaker 2: a war had just started. It's kind of hard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The real meaning, then, is the empirically discoverable and verifiable meaning,
Speaker 2: the only meaning that has value for expressing the truth.
Speaker 2: In Machiavelli, Burnham argued there is no distinction between the
Speaker 2: formal and real meanings because Machiavelli explicitly stated his goals
Speaker 2: and meaning, did not attempt to disguise them, and took
Speaker 2: pains to verify them empirically and to make them clear.
Speaker 2: Whether this is an accurate presentation of Machiavelli or not
Speaker 2: is not particularly important to the political theory that Burnham developed.
Speaker 2: His purpose was not to write a learned treatise on
Speaker 2: Renaissance history and philosophy, but to allow rate on empirically
Speaker 2: sound method of analyzing human political affairs. The tradition of
Speaker 2: political thought by Burnham labeled machiavellian did indeed derive many
Speaker 2: of its ideas from the sixteenth century Florentine But whether
Speaker 2: this was an accurate derivation and whether Machiavelli himself would
Speaker 2: have endorsed Machiavellianism are separate and secondary questions.
Speaker 1: I've heard that critique before. Would Machiavelli have agreed with Burnham?
Speaker 1: And uh? I don't know enough about Machiavelli the actual
Speaker 1: person to say whether or not he would, But I
Speaker 1: do know that you know he he did see the
Speaker 1: usefulness and in veiling your agenda.
Speaker 2: The four thinkers whom Burnham discussed in detail in The
Speaker 2: Machiavellians were George Sorel, Robert Michel's, Gezano Mosca, and Vilfredo Pereto.
Speaker 2: To at least some extent, all four saw them sells
Speaker 2: as the errors of Machiavelli. Like him, they were all
Speaker 2: concerned with the problems of political power, not with how
Speaker 2: to justify power. Nor with the external forms and appearances
Speaker 2: of power, but with how men actually use, pursue, attain,
Speaker 2: and lose power. Like Machiavelli, all four were profoundly conscious
Speaker 2: of the radical discrepancies between the formal disguises of power
Speaker 2: in rhetoric, ideology, and institutions and the terrible realities of
Speaker 2: power in the actual history of men. It's something that
Speaker 2: I can't stress enough is that people can talk about
Speaker 2: their ideology, their political ideology all they want, but when
Speaker 2: it comes down to ruling. And there's a great quote
Speaker 2: from Francis in the book in the review of Suicide
Speaker 2: of the West, where he says, ideology never makes It
Speaker 2: never exists in reality because it's formed in a vacuum
Speaker 2: outside of reality. So basically, once it's introduced to reality,
Speaker 2: it just gets punched in the you know, it gets
Speaker 2: punched in the mouth and everything goes out the window.
Speaker 1: No, it's a it's a transcendent end goal to point
Speaker 1: to channel revolutionary or reformist energy into UH, into a
Speaker 1: transcendent goal. That's all. That's all ideology is. It's UH.
Speaker 1: Like like you said, it doesn't exist in reality, is
Speaker 1: purely metaphysical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another thing that he that Francis says in
Speaker 2: the review of Pseudo Suicide of the West is that
Speaker 2: basically ideology is there for the masses. They need to
Speaker 2: concentrate on something while the Machiavelians are actually ruling. Yes,
Speaker 2: so he gives them something to feel good about. It
Speaker 2: gives them an identity. You know, something that I've been
Speaker 2: talking about on the timeline a lot today is how
Speaker 2: people make their political h their political ideology, their identity.
Speaker 2: So he gives them something to feel good about. But
Speaker 2: then they wonder their whole lives. How come what? You know,
Speaker 2: this guy was talking about my ideology when he was
Speaker 2: run when he was running for office, and then he
Speaker 2: gets into office and my ideology doesn't materialize. Why.
Speaker 1: Well, A really useful tidbit that I got from Burnham
Speaker 1: from the Managerial Revolution is that, uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: order for an ideology to become dominant, people at the
Speaker 1: masses have to be willing to die for it. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of how you know that capitalism or liberalism
Speaker 1: or even socialism slash Marxism will not be the dominant
Speaker 1: ideology any at any point in time, because it's been
Speaker 1: a while since people were willing to die for it
Speaker 1: or willing to kill for it, even at least not
Speaker 1: in mass, not any not in any great extent. But
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's kind of the lens that I
Speaker 1: view acceleration trying to predict accelerationism from, is what are
Speaker 1: some things that are pop that are popping up now
Speaker 1: that maybe might be inspirational enough to for people to
Speaker 1: kill or die for. Well, well, but sure, the Machiavelians
Speaker 1: are are definitely willing to die for it, or at
Speaker 1: least try to send people to die for. But yeah, nowadays.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about israeliself. You know what we've seen since
Speaker 2: October seventh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, willing to kill for it absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think they're willing to die for it.
Speaker 2: I think they're definitely willing to drop bombs for it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it seems like the Huthis are willing to die
Speaker 2: for what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, I mean any any sect of islam Is
Speaker 1: you can usually find some flowers in there to pluck.
Speaker 2: Thirdly, like Machiavelli, they believe that through the observation and
Speaker 2: study of the history of power relationships, a set of
Speaker 2: generalists about power and men's usage of it could be formulated.
Speaker 2: In other words, that historically grounded science of power, not
Speaker 2: a philosophy or ethical theory, was possible. That's why whenever
Speaker 2: you have these libertarians I was dealing with today on
Speaker 2: the timeline, who are like, oh, so so you believe
Speaker 2: in an imaginary line and you don't want people to
Speaker 2: cross it. Why do you love violence? Because I do?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like and then I realized when they
Speaker 2: were when people are making that asking that question, why
Speaker 2: do you have a problem with this? It's very feminine.
Speaker 2: It's it's long. It's like literally long housing. It's like
Speaker 2: they've they've been completely long, long housed, and it's created
Speaker 2: their ideology and they're.
Speaker 1: Questioning, Well, since the twenties, we've kind of since we
Speaker 1: started getting into psychoanalysis like Freud and all that. You know,
Speaker 1: have you noticed that everything is positive as a psychoanalytical diagnosis?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Why are you It's it's always it's never
Speaker 2: about are you doing this for?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Did you do this to acquire land? Did you go
Speaker 2: to war to acquire land? Did you go to war
Speaker 2: to do this? It's always what's wrong with you? Why
Speaker 2: would they do this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Even like in the UH, even like the etymology
Speaker 1: of words like transphobe that sounds like a mental illness
Speaker 1: that you know, eighty years ago would have got you
Speaker 1: put in put into an asylum. And that's where we're
Speaker 1: still looking at that today. That's still the norm today
Speaker 1: is everything is psychoanalytical, everything is scientific, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you talk about good and evil to
Speaker 1: a leftist or a really committed liberal, it's not that
Speaker 1: they don't believe in it, it's just that that exists
Speaker 1: outside of their metaphysics. And because they don't believe that
Speaker 1: this is something I learned from denote or this isn't
Speaker 1: believe it, believe it or not, this isn't an original
Speaker 1: thought I had, But they don't. They don't have in
Speaker 1: their metaphysics anything that exists outside of science or psychoanalysis.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about good and evil or uh,
Speaker 1: you know, these these things that we always have understood,
Speaker 1: we we white people have always understood as universal metaphysics
Speaker 1: that you and I can engage in a conversation and
Speaker 1: be reasonably assured that you know, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: abide within a certain framework. That's completely out the window
Speaker 1: with them, because they just it doesn't compute. They're like,
Speaker 1: why are you talking about that? Why are you asking
Speaker 1: that question?
Speaker 2: It's it's like you by asking the question, you have
Speaker 2: a mental illness. You're There's just nothing you can say,
Speaker 2: isn't it isn't problematic?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it either list it's a confusion or a disgust response,
Speaker 1: which you know we kind of get from them too. So,
Speaker 1: all things being equal.
Speaker 2: I was noticing, you know, Stone Toss got doxed yep,
Speaker 2: and when I saw there are people openly celebrating it
Speaker 2: on Twitter, and I'm like, this is the most feminine
Speaker 2: thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yas queen. Yeah, a ninety nine post thread.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I saw that. Could you imagine taking it?
Speaker 1: I can't wait till he does a comic about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: Behind these common beliefs was a body of common assumptions
Speaker 2: about the nature of political man and human history. The
Speaker 2: Machiavelians saw political life as constantly in flux, so the
Speaker 2: process of change is repetitive and roughly cyclical, quoting the
Speaker 2: recurring pattern of change expresses the more or less permanent
Speaker 2: core of human nature as it functions politically. The instability
Speaker 2: of all governments and political forms follows in part from
Speaker 2: the timeless human appetite for power. Really need to make
Speaker 2: my after teal, I really need to read Disquisition on
Speaker 2: Government by John C. Calhoun because he talks so much
Speaker 2: about stuff like this.
Speaker 1: HM.
Speaker 2: Because of the recurrent patterns of change, history moves in
Speaker 2: cycles and is not a uni linear progression. The repetitive
Speaker 2: cycles make possible a science of human political behavior. What
Speaker 2: men have done before, they will do again in the
Speaker 2: future and within the limits. It is therefore possible to
Speaker 2: predict their behavior through analogies drawn from history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, unless you believe in like that we
Speaker 1: exist in post history.
Speaker 2: Machiavelli and his followers saw men in general as evil quote,
Speaker 2: all men are bad and ever ready to display their
Speaker 2: vicious nature whenever they may find occasion for it. The
Speaker 2: Machiavelians depicted human beings as in satiable in their desire
Speaker 2: for power, wealth and pre eminence, but also as irrational, prejudice, ignorant,
Speaker 2: and easily deceived by others as well as by themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Mosca specifically criticized and rejected the optimistic progressivism as of Rousseau.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of who is it Spangler or optimism
Speaker 2: is cowardice.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Peretto devoted much of the six volume six volumes, Six volumes.
Speaker 2: Parretto devoted much of the six volumes of the Mind
Speaker 2: in Society to exposing human irrationality and appetitive motivations.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie to you. I've tried to read
Speaker 1: original works by Pareto and I could not.
Speaker 2: He's really tough to read.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I have the I have a couple books, a couple
Speaker 2: of smaller books on the elites, and man, it's it's
Speaker 2: a slogsome times.
Speaker 1: No, you just it's like he introduces a bunch of
Speaker 1: mathematical concepts and I can't. I can't do it. I
Speaker 1: can't follow that. I'm not that smart. Sorry.
Speaker 2: Sorell explicated the role of myths and falsehoods in providing
Speaker 2: a unifying force for political action, especially violent action. Michelle's
Speaker 2: throughout his work on political parties, showed how minorities continually
Speaker 2: monopolized power by deceiving and coercing the mass membership. Yep,
Speaker 2: A lot to be said about that right there. The
Speaker 2: emphasis on human evil and irrationality is central to the
Speaker 2: Machiavelian argument Burnham and the Machiavelians saw politics and to
Speaker 2: a large extent, of human condition in terms of the
Speaker 2: savage and incessant struggle for power at all levels of society,
Speaker 2: regardless of how this struggle might be disguised by language,
Speaker 2: symbolism and institutional forms.
Speaker 1: And see this is where I think Burna kind of
Speaker 1: retained a little bit of his Marxism, or at least
Speaker 1: his Hygelianism. Is you know, when you're talking about what
Speaker 1: does that say, regardless of all of this struggle might
Speaker 1: be disguised by language, symbolism and institutional forms. I don't
Speaker 1: think that Burnham took too much, didn't give enough account
Speaker 1: for things that exist outside the dialectic, when, especially in
Speaker 1: his critique of socialism, it was still very scientific, and
Speaker 1: it was still very focused on you know, material and
Speaker 1: economic uh economic dialectic struggles just not not resolving in
Speaker 1: a way that Marxist prescribed it would, you know, with
Speaker 1: dialectical materialism. But another thing I learned from Denotie is
Speaker 1: that they really didn't give any attention to the more
Speaker 1: abstract things like you know what what he just mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, language symbolism, institutional forms, aulture, religion, and just
Speaker 1: things that exist outside of you know, empirical science.
Speaker 2: There's other ideologies that we may be, another ideology we
Speaker 2: may be familiar with who fails to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: I assume, yeah, yeah, I mean it's there's I hate
Speaker 1: to say, I hate using this word, but it's nuanced,
Speaker 1: which doesn't really say anything.
Speaker 2: Driven by insatiable app insatiable appetites and irrational beliefs, men
Speaker 2: seek to dominate each other or to escape domination by others.
Speaker 2: This struggle invariably results in a minority coming to power,
Speaker 2: monopolizing as much as possible political, economic, military, technical, and
Speaker 2: honorific resources, and excluding and oppressing the majority. Thus is
Speaker 2: formed an elite peretto ruling class mosca or oligarchy Michelle's
Speaker 2: that rules the majority and exploits it for its own
Speaker 2: benefit through force and odd The rule of elites and
Speaker 2: human societies is inevitable, and therefore oligarchy is the only
Speaker 2: possible distribution of power. What what Michelle's called the iron
Speaker 2: law of oligarchy.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you had asked me if I agree
Speaker 1: with that five ten years or yeah, ten years ago,
Speaker 1: now I would have would have called you a statist.
Speaker 2: Now you just you become a realist and then in
Speaker 2: the eyes of some that means that you're immoral.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is this is scientific. It is
Speaker 1: it is. It is an observable fact that power is
Speaker 1: always concentrated and select few individuals, and they're not very
Speaker 1: nice people.
Speaker 2: We know science, they're not They're not libertarians. We know
Speaker 2: science is racist. So yeah, there is no end to
Speaker 2: oligarchical rule. Although one elite may lose its power in
Speaker 2: power indeed always is its power, sooner or later another
Speaker 2: minority takes its place through what Pereto calls the circulation
Speaker 2: of elites, and the record of this unending rise and
Speaker 2: fall of ruling minorities in human is human history.
Speaker 1: So one thing I wanted to pick your brain on
Speaker 1: having listened to your episode with uh Catgirl Kulak today,
Speaker 1: is I wanted I wanted to ask you what do
Speaker 1: you what do you suspect will be the circulation of elites?
Speaker 1: If if, or when his his predictions of a full
Speaker 1: on collapse by twenty thirty, what what does that circulation
Speaker 1: of elites look like?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it It may break down regionally.
Speaker 2: You may have new elites stepping up, or you know,
Speaker 2: most of the time, it's it's existing release elites. You
Speaker 2: just they just you know, it's like people have said,
Speaker 2: because we've been talking about the PayPal mafia and how
Speaker 2: you know, we see them as trying to make a
Speaker 2: move right now and push the elites out and take over.
Speaker 2: And you know, someone made the comment, well, they're already
Speaker 2: a part of the elites, you know, t Loans, Palins here,
Speaker 2: all these countries. But I think Aaron McIntyre made a
Speaker 2: really good point today. He said the elites always come
Speaker 2: from within. I mean Caesar wasn't. Caesar wasn't an outsider.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Pin o Ch. You know when you have when you
Speaker 2: have radical change. You know p o Ch was not
Speaker 2: I mean he didn't come in from another country. He
Speaker 2: was in the military. He was somebody that everyone knew.
Speaker 2: The circulation of elites always happens from the inside. So
Speaker 2: if you're thinking that your neighbor, you know, is going
Speaker 2: to be an elite, unless you write, you know, do
Speaker 2: like Kappa the teachers, and you do it locally and
Speaker 2: you you know, find a natural elite and you raise
Speaker 2: them up to you know, take over and help to
Speaker 2: change a locale. Then you'll know that this person is
Speaker 2: coming in from outside. But I mean at the national level,
Speaker 2: at a government level, at a oligarchical level, it's always
Speaker 2: going to be from the existing elites. They're just going
Speaker 2: to move in and they're just going to switch them out,
Speaker 2: and you're just going to hope that it's going to
Speaker 2: be they're going to be more in your favor than
Speaker 2: the previous elites. But if everything does fall apart at
Speaker 2: twenty thirty, I mean, all I see is people will
Speaker 2: be begging for anybody. And I think that the person,
Speaker 2: you know, whoever has set themselves up with the most
Speaker 2: with a rhetoric of we're Americans, we should be proud
Speaker 2: of our heritage. We can take our heritage back. We
Speaker 2: don't have to put up with it, we don't have
Speaker 2: to put up with us. I think that is that's
Speaker 2: the person who is more going to be to circulate
Speaker 2: in and out, and who's somebody who they may potentially
Speaker 2: look to in order to try to get them out
Speaker 2: of that situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the reason why this would be so unprecedented,
Speaker 1: if I mean, one of the reasons why the main
Speaker 1: reason I think about is when I think of a collapse,
Speaker 1: I think and I think of a power vacuum, and
Speaker 1: who fills that power vacuum. It's whoever has the most
Speaker 1: hard power and whoever has the most energy behind them.
Speaker 1: And right now, well, you know if theoretically a few
Speaker 1: years before collapse, there's a lot of energy stored right
Speaker 1: now and it's just waiting to burst. So if his
Speaker 1: prediction is correct, man, that's going to be crazy, because
Speaker 1: I think people right now are just you know, the
Speaker 1: only thing stopping them right now is you know, they
Speaker 1: have a job, they get to you know, they have
Speaker 1: a family. They may not have access to a whole
Speaker 1: lot of hard power. But man, like, wouldn't that be
Speaker 1: just uh, his historically unprecedented collapse.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Charles Haywood believes that with the way
Speaker 2: the regime is attacking Elon Musk, He said at the
Speaker 2: end of a recent podcast he did that he thought
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk may turn to basically creating his own
Speaker 2: private security force, which would be his own his own
Speaker 2: private army.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then again, like this is a fine, this
Speaker 1: would be uh. The the match point would be a
Speaker 1: financial collapse, which implies that the dollar doesn't really have
Speaker 1: any value anymore. So now it just becomes like you know,
Speaker 1: depending on how hard it is a barter system, who
Speaker 1: has the most assets to barter, who has the most
Speaker 1: who has the most trade.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing is the people who are going
Speaker 2: to rule, the people who would roull after a after
Speaker 2: a collapse, or the people who've already been planning for
Speaker 2: the collapse.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And I would assume that there are people already in
Speaker 2: in elite positions who have already have an idea of
Speaker 2: what a new currency would look like and things like that.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I think that's.
Speaker 1: Where it goes well for us. No, No, not at
Speaker 1: all for my suburban asks.
Speaker 2: All right, these conclusions are bleak, and the Machiavelians saw
Speaker 2: little ground for hope of democratic emancipation. Modern democracy they
Speaker 2: interpreted as a special kind of disguised oligarchy based on
Speaker 2: commercial and industrial power, and not fundamentally different from early
Speaker 2: kinds of elitism. Mosca and Pareto in particular, saw socialism
Speaker 2: as no more than an illusion that threatened to subordinate
Speaker 2: all of society to an elite based on the power
Speaker 2: of the state. To Michelle's, oligarchy was an inherent part
Speaker 2: of social and political organization, a doctrine that was most
Speaker 2: common to most of the Machiavelians, in which Burnham emphasized
Speaker 2: was the concept of what Moscaw called the political formula,
Speaker 2: Pereto called derivations, and surrel called myths. According to these writers,
Speaker 2: elites do not hold power simply through force and intimidation.
Speaker 2: They formulate doctrines that rationalize or justify their control in logical, moral, theological,
Speaker 2: or philosophical terms. These doctrines, political formulas, derivations, or myths,
Speaker 2: or as Burnham called them in the Managerial Revolution, ideologies
Speaker 2: act as social and politically integrative forces, and are often
Speaker 2: quite sophisticated and complex in their structures. Most members of
Speaker 2: a society of a society, elites as well as non elites,
Speaker 2: believe them and to at least some extent, take them seriously. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: I think less and less, don't you agree? Don't you
Speaker 2: think people? I would say elites more so than any
Speaker 2: But I think more and more people even just walking
Speaker 2: around basically or just at the at the end of
Speaker 2: their rope, where they're just when it comes to ideologies
Speaker 2: and they're just like, I'm just got to take care
Speaker 2: of myself.
Speaker 1: I think what separates maybe our our side from the
Speaker 1: normies and from the other side, is that, Uh, we
Speaker 1: don't view ideology as an ends. We view it as
Speaker 1: a means. And uh that's that. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: got nothing else on that, but yeah, that's pretty much
Speaker 1: that's it. It's a mean, it's a means to it.
Speaker 1: It's a means to an end, you know, pointing, pointing
Speaker 1: the masses in a direction, propaganda, you know, channeling energy
Speaker 1: towards a certain outcome. That's that's all. Going towards a
Speaker 1: means to a desirable end that we would like or
Speaker 1: we hope happens, or we hope to get somebody in
Speaker 1: there that can make it happen, you know, if they
Speaker 1: happened to if it happens to be of a particular ideology, like,
Speaker 1: it's really of no consequence to us. Now, call it
Speaker 1: Christian nationalism, call it fucking white nationalism, ethne whatever, like,
Speaker 1: as long as most of our desired ends are going
Speaker 1: to be fulfilled, Like we know that, we don't have
Speaker 1: the luxury to pick and.
Speaker 2: Choose most members of a society's elites as well as
Speaker 2: non elites, I believe them. Nevertheless, despite their sophistication and
Speaker 2: large number of adherents. These ideologies are not to be
Speaker 2: regarded as scientific in purpose or content. Their purpose is
Speaker 2: not to express or explain reality in a way that
Speaker 2: can be proved or disproved, but to provide a rationalization
Speaker 2: for the existence and power of the dominant minority. The
Speaker 2: fact that ideologies are not scientific, and that those who
Speaker 2: believe in them do so for non rational reasons means
Speaker 2: that it is useless to criticize ideologies in terms of
Speaker 2: verifiable facts or logic. All you have to do is
Speaker 2: just make fun of them.
Speaker 1: Mock them, yes, dehumanize other eyes, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, I do it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ideology is impervious to such criticism because belief in it
Speaker 2: is dependent on non rational factors such as self interest
Speaker 2: or emotion. The fact that an elite itself usually believes
Speaker 2: in most or all of its own ideology also means
Speaker 2: that no elite can be entirely scientific in its own
Speaker 2: thinking and behavior. Any elite must always, to some extent,
Speaker 2: be the victim of its own myths. Burnham argued that
Speaker 2: the Machiabelians the Machiavelian science of power could provide a
Speaker 2: non ideological framework for an elite, but he was highly
Speaker 2: skeptical that any elite could for long make successful use
Speaker 2: of this science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good on his part, because I mean, when you
Speaker 1: think of any great man that ever arose, it's exactly
Speaker 1: what it said. They talk the talk as far as
Speaker 1: ideolology goes. They may have even believed some of it.
Speaker 1: But uh, you'll take any great man and none of
Speaker 1: them were pure, purely ideological in practice.
Speaker 2: Well, well, think about this, and I know people are
Speaker 2: probably sick of me bringing him up, but Bouck Kelly.
Speaker 2: I only know two things about bout Kelly. I know
Speaker 2: that he hates crime and crack down on it. And
Speaker 2: he likes bitcoin. Yeah, that's the only I mean.
Speaker 1: I know that he ideology, which is no great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he doesn't. I don't know that he has
Speaker 2: an ideology. He first ran for president in a far
Speaker 2: left party, he got kicked out of that had to go,
Speaker 2: I mean, bounced all around, you know it. All all
Speaker 2: I can judge him on is what he's done. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean he's kissed the wall. Yes, his
Speaker 2: his wife has some sephardic in her. Yes, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: know that that's that That means that you're just waiting
Speaker 2: for the other shoe to drop. He's going to disappoint
Speaker 2: you because he did that. All I can judge him
Speaker 2: on is what he's done so far, and everything he's
Speaker 2: done so far looks pretty damn good to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't. We don't have the luxury of having
Speaker 1: the expectation of even a somewhat pure great man that
Speaker 1: comes and you know, sweeps, sweeps whatever this is away.
Speaker 1: We know, like, like take Musk for example, he's probably
Speaker 1: the most likely candidate to fight the fight the current
Speaker 1: regime and maybe went out. He's on the right track.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, he's definitely not ideological. He wants
Speaker 1: to get to Mars, that's about it, and anything that
Speaker 1: stands in between him and that goal needs to be
Speaker 1: swept away. That's that's not an ideology either.
Speaker 2: No, No, that's he has a goal. That's it's all right.
Speaker 2: Burnham and the Machiavelians tended to interpret all of social
Speaker 2: and political reality in terms of the doctrine of the elite.
Speaker 2: For them, the nature of the elite is largely determinative
Speaker 2: of other social, economic, political, and cultural institutions. Institutions that
Speaker 2: are not consistent with the perceived interests of an elite
Speaker 2: are abolished or discouraged, while those that are are or
Speaker 2: would be consistent with its perceived interests are created or promoted.
Speaker 2: Quoting from the quoting from the book. From the point
Speaker 2: of view of the theory of the ruling class, a
Speaker 2: society is the society of its ruling class. A nation's
Speaker 2: strengths or weaknesses, its cultures, its powers of endurance, its prosperity,
Speaker 2: its decadence depend in the first instance, upon the nature
Speaker 2: of its ruling elite. More particularly, the way in which
Speaker 2: to study a nation, to understand it, to predict what
Speaker 2: will happen to it, requires, first of all, and primarily,
Speaker 2: an analysis of the ruling class. Political history and political
Speaker 2: science are thus predominantly the history and science of ruling classes,
Speaker 2: their origin, development, composition, structure, and changes. The important that
Speaker 2: the Machiavelians attached to the elite or ruling class resembles
Speaker 2: and to a degree parallels Marx's emphasis on economic forces
Speaker 2: in interpreting history. Yet the Machiavelian theory of elite is
Speaker 2: a broader doctrine than that of Marx, and allows for
Speaker 2: consideration of non economic and non material forces in understanding
Speaker 2: men in history, far more than Marx.
Speaker 1: Did, yeah, which is very difficult when you factor in
Speaker 1: all of the other you know, non non scientific factors
Speaker 1: that go into going to studying the history of a
Speaker 1: of a nation, a culture of people. You know, it
Speaker 1: gets so far beyond dialectics. It's insane. It's hard. That's why,
Speaker 1: that's why predicting things is so fucking hard. There's too
Speaker 1: many goddamn factors.
Speaker 2: Nevertheless, because Burnham and the Machiavelians saw politics in terms
Speaker 2: of a struggle for power, and the struggle for power
Speaker 2: was central to the nature of an elite and to
Speaker 2: all other social relationships, it would not be inaccurate to
Speaker 2: describe Machiavelianism as a kind of political determinism paralleling the
Speaker 2: economic determinism of Marx.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, do you think there was
Speaker 1: really a struggle for power? You know, I think I
Speaker 1: think it's roundly agreed circuit. Somewhere around twenty twelve is
Speaker 1: when we kind of had this turning point into what
Speaker 1: we have now, which is just like gay trans Soviet Russia.
Speaker 1: But before that, I mean, we told there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about how great the nineties was and
Speaker 1: how you know, how basically unified we were, how basically
Speaker 1: free and prosperous we were, and how happy we were.
Speaker 1: I think there's something to that. The culture was definitely
Speaker 1: different the ruling class. Do you think the ruling class
Speaker 1: was different then? And then we had maybe not even
Speaker 1: a struggle that got us to where we are now,
Speaker 1: and that kind of defined the nature of why they're
Speaker 1: so incompetent because they didn't have to struggle for it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think Thomas makes a really good point about
Speaker 2: the early nineties, is the nineties, especially the first half
Speaker 2: of the nineties, is that it was it was kind
Speaker 2: of anarchy. There was and you know, I know that
Speaker 2: the anarchists watching, they want me to make an argument
Speaker 2: that anarchy's good because it means without rulers. That's what
Speaker 2: it means, without rulers.
Speaker 1: Shut the fuck up, you know, we mean the normal Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we mean the definition that everybody agrees upon. Oh
Speaker 2: but that's democracy. Yeah, go fuck your mother. I mean
Speaker 2: people getting the amount of crime people get. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a reason why basically Juliani had to unleash an
Speaker 2: army onto the streets to stop crime in New York.
Speaker 2: It had reached And here's the thing. The people who
Speaker 2: talk about the nineties being this great. They're usually leftists,
Speaker 2: they're usually people from the left side. Well, why was
Speaker 2: the nineties great? Because they could get away with doing
Speaker 2: all the degenerate shit that they wanted to. They weren't
Speaker 2: judged for it. It was fine. I mean, I knew
Speaker 2: people who, yeah.
Speaker 1: It was live and let live, but also live and
Speaker 1: let live to like to be, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: kind of more on the right than you are allowed
Speaker 1: to be now.
Speaker 2: Well, and not even that, because you think about the
Speaker 2: pat Con movement where they would go they were going
Speaker 2: after right wing militia groups, and you know they don't
Speaker 2: even talk about that, like half of those militia groups
Speaker 2: that they took down that black.
Speaker 1: Still you still couldn't be that far to that it's
Speaker 1: still illegal to be that far to the right. But
Speaker 1: you know, you could call your friend a fag, or
Speaker 1: you could like, you know, you could say the N
Speaker 1: word and nobody would like, nobody would freak out about
Speaker 1: it amongst your peer group. Now, not so much, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, but it was, it was. It was heaven for
Speaker 2: one like James Lindsay. He got away with doing all
Speaker 2: the degenerate shit he wanted to, and far right wingers
Speaker 2: were being cracked down upon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep. And the other question I have is do
Speaker 1: you think that would be the defining factor of say
Speaker 1: the eighties Reagan years into the nineties, was the switch
Speaker 1: between tough on crime and then you know, prison and
Speaker 1: mandatory minimum sentencing, prison reform, mandatory minimum sentencing, this transfer
Speaker 1: over to a softer approach, a more I don't know,
Speaker 1: socially informed approach.
Speaker 2: It's hard for me to say that. You know, in
Speaker 2: the eighties, I was not That wasn't something that I
Speaker 2: would have been able to really pay attention to. I
Speaker 2: have to think about history, and you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be able to give a personal a personal
Speaker 2: opinion on that. But I mean, really the problem in
Speaker 2: the eighties was I mean, it was just the crime
Speaker 2: was insane and it was just so matter of fact.
Speaker 2: It's just you accepted the fact that there was all
Speaker 2: this crime going on, and it's not like now where
Speaker 2: you know, you have social media. Everybody's like, look, you
Speaker 2: got these Soros DA's and they can go out and
Speaker 2: commit crime all they want. If you try and stop them,
Speaker 2: you go to jail. You know, you have people who
Speaker 2: put up flyers who get two years in jail, someone
Speaker 2: rapes a twelve year old, they get, you know, fifteen
Speaker 2: months probation. You can talk more about that now it's
Speaker 2: you can learn more about it because of social media,
Speaker 2: but back then it was, you know, harder. You'd really
Speaker 2: just have to go back into books and study the
Speaker 2: history on that. But I can't really, I can't really
Speaker 2: answer that question properly. But you know, being an adult
Speaker 2: in the nineties and living through the nineties, Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I knew people who were you know, odeed, killed themselves,
Speaker 2: got hung up on got hung up on on oxy
Speaker 2: really early. I knew people got hung up on meth
Speaker 2: real early on in the in the whole game. You know,
Speaker 2: I knew people in I mean from when I was
Speaker 2: a kid. I knew people like my dad worked with
Speaker 2: the guy whose wife was the first recorded crack victim
Speaker 2: in New York City.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah huh.
Speaker 2: And they were white.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it is.
Speaker 1: It is pretty great, all right.
Speaker 2: It should also be understood that Burnam and his mentors
Speaker 2: were not arguing for elitism in the sense of aristocracy.
Speaker 2: They were not arguing that elites should rule the majority
Speaker 2: because their members are better, more virtuous, stronger, more intelligent
Speaker 2: or wiser than most men. They were arguing for the
Speaker 2: sociological inevitability of minority domination, for the impossibility of majority rule,
Speaker 2: and democracy in any literal or meaningful sense. I mean
Speaker 2: democracy now. To me, when people ask me what democracy means, now,
Speaker 2: I just tell them either whatever the region is pushing, sodomy, transgenderism.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's basically what democracy is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's it's great to see, you know, the
Speaker 1: the inherent contradictions between democracy and liberalism kind of play
Speaker 1: itself out on the left, especially with this uh, Palestine
Speaker 1: Israel thing going on. It's you could if you view
Speaker 1: it through that lens, democracy versus liberalism. It's it's just
Speaker 1: amazing to see, and it's only going to get better.
Speaker 2: The fact of oligarchy, they argued, was founded on an
Speaker 2: empirical and comparative study of history, on the biological and
Speaker 2: psychological realities of human beings and on the nature of
Speaker 2: human society societies. It was a fact that could be
Speaker 2: neither ignored nor altered, and moral approbation or criticism of
Speaker 2: the fact of oligarchy is irrelevant to its truth. Yet,
Speaker 2: elites are not permanent, and the laws that govern the
Speaker 2: change and the company position and the rise and fall
Speaker 2: of elites were an important theme for Burnham and for
Speaker 2: Mosca and Pereto, to whom he devoted most attention. Mosca
Speaker 2: had recognized in all elites and aristocratic tendency by which
Speaker 2: they tend to restrict or encourage entrance to or exit
Speaker 2: from their ranks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's another battleground. Is everybody wants to be
Speaker 1: everybody wants. Everybody's chasing status. That's why you have people
Speaker 1: going into two hundred thousand dollars in debt to go
Speaker 1: to Harvard. That's so that they can have that degree
Speaker 1: and enter the ranks of the elite, or at least
Speaker 1: the near group of the elite. And it's it's going
Speaker 1: to be really funny if we have a collapse.
Speaker 2: When the restrictive aristocratic tendency is predominant, society is stable
Speaker 2: and may begin to stagnate. When the democratic tendency is predominant,
Speaker 2: society is in flux, with many innovations, social and political crises,
Speaker 2: cultural ferment and perhaps disorder, chaos and revolution.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaking of the transition between the nineties to the early.
Speaker 2: Aughts, Parretto himself went further and developed a psychology of
Speaker 2: elites that is at the root of his theory of
Speaker 2: the circulation of elites. Parreto distinguished between derivations of ideologies
Speaker 2: and residues, which are constant universal psychological instincts or impulses.
Speaker 2: Among the six classes of residues that Parreto recognized, the
Speaker 2: two most important were those of class one, the instinct
Speaker 2: for combinations. In class two, group preference, group persistence.
Speaker 1: And then there's four more. And that's why I couldn't
Speaker 1: read Parreto.
Speaker 2: If you read AA's book on the one I read
Speaker 2: on the Populist Delusion, he does a really good job
Speaker 2: of summing it all up very fast, in a very
Speaker 2: short in very short chapters. These were excellent. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a great book. I'm retarding these residues. Pereto specifically
Speaker 2: correlated with Machiavelli's distinction between the fox and the lion
Speaker 2: among rulers. Just as a ruler who's a fox relies
Speaker 2: on cunning, deceit, and verbal and intellectual skills, elites whose
Speaker 2: members are driven by class one residues tend to synthesize
Speaker 2: arbitrary elements of their experience. Class one residues include behavioral
Speaker 2: patterns such as those of magic, philosophical system making, and
Speaker 2: financial manipulation. Elites that contain primarily verbalists, intellectuals, and administrators
Speaker 2: will exhibit a high proportion of Class one residues and
Speaker 2: will try to preserve their own power and resolve problems
Speaker 2: through verbal, administrative, and manipulative behavior rather than through the
Speaker 2: use of force. They thus correspond to Machiavelli's foxes. Quoting
Speaker 2: from the book Machiavellians, they live by their wits. They
Speaker 2: put their reliance on fraud, deceit, and shrewdness. They do
Speaker 2: not have strong attachment to family, church, nation, and traditions.
Speaker 2: They live in the present, taking little thought of the future,
Speaker 2: and are always ready for change, novelty, and adventure. They
Speaker 2: are not adept as a rule in the use of force.
Speaker 2: They are inventive and chance taking. Well, yep, we'll talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about that for in a second.
Speaker 1: I remember an episode from way back where I forget
Speaker 1: if it was you or your guest, implied that we
Speaker 1: are our elites are entirely comprised of foxes. There are
Speaker 1: no lions, and maybe it was Trump, maybe it's a lawn,
Speaker 1: But they're definitely, they're they're the lions right now, the
Speaker 1: only two. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you do have the people in power
Speaker 2: now who are using force. I mean, yeah, true, so Biden,
Speaker 2: it's so pretty soft. Yeah well, I mean you're throwing
Speaker 2: people in jail, and that's you're destroying people's lives, in
Speaker 2: their livelihood and everything. A lot of people would rather
Speaker 2: be dead than have that happened to them. But the
Speaker 2: you know, you have to wonder what stage in civilization,
Speaker 2: what stage in what stage in elite theory you are
Speaker 2: when the foxes start to use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I guess, you know, exiting the
Speaker 1: animal analogy. It's when they're sufficiently threatened or when they're
Speaker 1: sufficiently fragile.
Speaker 2: I think it's a fragility more than anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The residues of class two group persistence correspond to the
Speaker 2: lions of Machiavelli. For those who exhibit a high proportion
Speaker 2: of class two residues quoting are able and ready to
Speaker 2: use force, relying on it rather than brains to solve
Speaker 2: their problems. They are conservative, patriarch loyalty tradition, and solidly
Speaker 2: tend super individual groups like family or church or nation.
Speaker 2: Where are these people.
Speaker 1: I know who's going to cut the Gordian knot please.
Speaker 2: I don't know who these people are.
Speaker 1: I've heard about them from Class two.
Speaker 2: Revenues or psychic forces that tend to sustain and perpetuate
Speaker 2: existing combinations. They are sociologically conservative, while those of Class
Speaker 2: one are sociologically innovative. That's an interesting word. A healthy elite,
Speaker 2: according to Pereto, will have an equilibrium in the distribution
Speaker 2: of these psychic types within it, but under certain conditions
Speaker 2: an imbalance will result. That's what we're seeing now. That's
Speaker 2: what that's that's what it is now because the ones
Speaker 2: who would be the ones who would commit violence would
Speaker 2: be the lions, and they have no lions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all foxes, yep the wall and seeing what see.
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, if too many Class two residues accrew in
Speaker 2: the elite, it will rely excessively on force and will
Speaker 2: fail to innovate and adapt to changing circumstances and challenges.
Speaker 2: If too many Class one types come to predominate, as
Speaker 2: Peretto believes was happening in the late nineteenth century, the
Speaker 2: elite and its society will become soft, unstable, corrupt, and disorderly.
Speaker 2: Although the society may produce a very high level of
Speaker 2: cultural expression. Oh now, saying that. Worst of all, however,
Speaker 2: the society will be unwilling and unable to use force
Speaker 2: to protect itself from either internal external challenges.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I don't think we're anywhere like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yeah, this, that's not here. While the foxes
Speaker 2: of class one predominate in the elite, the lions of
Speaker 2: class two are concentrated in the non elite and may
Speaker 2: use force against the foxes in rebellion and other forms
Speaker 2: of violence. External enemies may also commit aggression against the
Speaker 2: societies ruled by foxes, and in any case, because of
Speaker 2: the lack of qualities of group persistence, a society led
Speaker 2: by class one types will have few psychic resources for
Speaker 2: mustering endurance and sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Yeah that, there's no energy to direct in any type
Speaker 1: of revolutionary social change.
Speaker 2: Elites that are imbalanced by too many class one or
Speaker 2: class two residues are unstable and are likely to be
Speaker 2: overthrown or replaced. They tend to create the conditions that
Speaker 2: lead to their fall from power. The rise and fall
Speaker 2: of elites and changes in their composition Pereto called the
Speaker 2: circulation of elites. Normally, a healthy elite will be in
Speaker 2: continual but slow circulation, admitting new members and expelling or
Speaker 2: ostracizing old and decament elements. When the circulation occurs too rapidly,
Speaker 2: or when one elite is suddenly and entirely replaced by another,
Speaker 2: the result is revolution the theory of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that. Yeah. I mean, before this, I'd
Speaker 1: never heard it placed that way. I've I've heard a
Speaker 1: lot of explanations for what constitutes and what causes revolutionary
Speaker 1: social change. But I mean, I guess you can. You
Speaker 1: can explain it in many different ways and still come
Speaker 1: out with the same, no right answer.
Speaker 2: I think what we may be seeing now, and this
Speaker 2: isn't an original idea. I don't remember who maybe heard
Speaker 2: it from Orrin, is you have an overproduction of elites
Speaker 2: because and I would say it's because the money supply
Speaker 2: has been increased and expanded so far that you have
Speaker 2: so many people that have acquired insane amounts of wealth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they basically become elites, but they are not the
Speaker 2: kind of They're not impressive at all. There. You know,
Speaker 2: if you have too much of something, if you have
Speaker 2: if you produce too much of something, and it happens
Speaker 2: too fast. You know a lot of times you're just
Speaker 2: going to have defects all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if everybody's an elite, then nobody's an elite, and
Speaker 1: you go from there.
Speaker 2: The theory of elites, as developed by Moscow and Pareto
Speaker 2: and endorsement expounded by Burnham, was by no means an
Speaker 2: argument for the monopolization of power and privilege by an
Speaker 2: established few. Indeed, Mosca and Pareto were emphatic that healthy
Speaker 2: elites should alter in composition slowly and regularly, and that
Speaker 2: they should not become homogeneous or monolithic. Mosca, in particular,
Speaker 2: as well done these points and developed a method that
Speaker 2: went beyond the descriptive analysis of Machiavelianism to a normative
Speaker 2: mode of analysis by which elites and the societies they
Speaker 2: ruled could be evaluated. Although the rule of elites unelected
Speaker 2: and unrepresentative is inevitable, Mosca argued that the internal structure
Speaker 2: of elites is an important means of distinguishing them. All societies,
Speaker 2: according to Mosca, are composed of contending social forces, groups
Speaker 2: that have interests and values associated with particular kinds of activities. Agriculture, industry, education, religion,
Speaker 2: the army, et cetera. Within these social forces, there are
Speaker 2: hierarchies and differentiations of power, wealth, merit, or geographical locations.
Speaker 2: The most significant social forces become part of the elite
Speaker 2: and pursue their particular interests and values within it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess to a degree. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's particularly applicable now, but yeah, well, yeah, there are
Speaker 1: the hierarchies have been flattened so much because, like you said,
Speaker 1: we're over manufacturing. I mean, other than like you know,
Speaker 1: the top levels of the state or the deep state
Speaker 1: or whatever, or or the illuminati, like you know, the
Speaker 1: everything below that is pretty much there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of difference other than what industry they're in or
Speaker 1: geographic location. That there's not really a whole lot of
Speaker 1: difference in what defines them.
Speaker 2: When, according to Mosca, there is a multiplicity of independent
Speaker 2: social forces within the elite or ruling class such that
Speaker 2: no one force has sufficient power to exclude or exploit
Speaker 2: the others, then a de facto condition of juridical defense obtains.
Speaker 2: Mosca's concept of juridical defense is approximate to what is
Speaker 2: more generally known as the rule of law. Because of
Speaker 2: the mutually balancing and restraining action of the social forces
Speaker 2: in the ruling class, no single force or faction can
Speaker 2: accumulate or exercise arbitrary irregular power. Each social force and
Speaker 2: the groups and individuals composing or attached to it, protects
Speaker 2: itself from exploitation by the checking power it holds against
Speaker 2: the others. Even though this system of socio political checks
Speaker 2: may not be formally reorganized in recognized in law, it
Speaker 2: can still exist and be a substantive restraint on tyrannical power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is kind of a parallel rule book for
Speaker 1: when you hit a certain amount of asset value.
Speaker 2: Mosca's concept of juridical defense owed much to both Machiavelli
Speaker 2: and Montesque, as well as to the exponents of the
Speaker 2: classical theory of the mixed constitution. Unlike Montsque, however, Mosca
Speaker 2: did not limit his idea of checks and balances to
Speaker 2: the formal and legalistic component of the government, but extended
Speaker 2: it to the substantial, concrete or real component social forces
Speaker 2: within a ruling class.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing I see, and I don't know
Speaker 1: to the degree that it affects, you know, really rich
Speaker 1: people that we would probably call elite. But the what
Speaker 1: is it the mixed constitution idea where you have you
Speaker 1: have the rule of law, but there's also other rules
Speaker 1: that everybody kind of agrees to follow. That has been
Speaker 1: just withering away on the vine on purpose. Everything is
Speaker 1: legalistic now, everything is everything has to be codified into
Speaker 1: an employee handbook or an HR department or something like that.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a function of just managerialism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, managerialism is so I mean, there's nothing more managerial
Speaker 2: than law fair.
Speaker 1: We were talking about how how pernicious law fair is
Speaker 1: and just how how it's so common now for people
Speaker 1: to weaponize bad faith interpretations of you know, contracts of laws,
Speaker 1: of agreements, even informal ones, and that was kind of
Speaker 1: never the case before. And I suspect it has something
Speaker 1: to do with demographic changes, and you know, the ripple
Speaker 1: effect of them affecting you know, cultures that were or
Speaker 1: otherwise you know, not exhibiting that behavior. But even amongst
Speaker 1: our social class, you know, it's it's it's still it's
Speaker 1: so pernicious now, where even five ten years ago, I
Speaker 1: at least in my experience, everybody kind of agreed functionally
Speaker 1: agreed on, you know what, like what makes for an
Speaker 1: agreement or a contract or you know, an address of grievance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, once you start getting into you start importing all
Speaker 2: sorts of different cultures, you just you're not You're not
Speaker 2: going to have any unanimity.
Speaker 1: And and I think it's also a function of just
Speaker 1: the true economic state that we're in that despite what
Speaker 1: the graphs say, I don't have the luxury of you know,
Speaker 1: risking five thousand dollars deposit with a shittily written contract
Speaker 1: that I may or may not get back if you
Speaker 1: don't show up, Because now I have to worry about that.
Speaker 2: This departure from the formal to the real was part
Speaker 2: of the Machiavelian tradition, and Moscaw thus welded it to
Speaker 2: the classical tradition of mixed constitution. In Burnham's words, juridical
Speaker 2: defense can be secure only where there are at work
Speaker 2: various in opposing tendencies and forces, and where these mutually
Speaker 2: check and restrain each other. The product of juridical defense
Speaker 2: is liberty. The specific forms of juridical defense include the
Speaker 2: familiar democratic rights, security of private property, security against arbitrary arrest,
Speaker 2: freedom of religion, discussion, and assembly. Moreover, the multiplicity of
Speaker 2: social forces participating and sharing power in the ruling class
Speaker 2: leads to a high level of civilization and an efflorescence
Speaker 2: of cultural life.
Speaker 1: Yes, because in order that, in order for that to flourish,
Speaker 1: there has to be something outside the state. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the commonly accepted definition of liberty, which is
Speaker 1: kind of anything outside of the public anything in like,
Speaker 1: any informal actions you take is an act of liberty.
Speaker 1: And uh like there's you know, it may not it
Speaker 1: may not be formalized into law, but it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: uh a cultural change where that particular type of liberty,
Speaker 1: the important type of liberty that we like is uh
Speaker 1: just going away now in a in an informal manner.
Speaker 2: By way of contrast, the monopolization of power by one
Speaker 2: social force leads to its unchecked power and to a
Speaker 2: low level of civilization as other social forces with other resources, values,
Speaker 2: and skills are excluded and exploited. Using the concept of
Speaker 2: juridical defense and its antithesis, Moscow was able to evaluate
Speaker 2: different kinds of polities depending on the internal structure and
Speaker 2: composition of their elites. The worst kind of government would
Speaker 2: be the uniform regimes in which the unrestrained power of
Speaker 2: a single social force prevents all others from obtaining power
Speaker 2: and distributing to the public culture. The best kind of
Speaker 2: government to both Mosca and Pereto was the representative, middle
Speaker 2: class aristocratic parliamentary governments of the mid to late nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: This type, however, was threatened by the rise of mass democracy,
Speaker 2: new classes of wealth and power, and socialism yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: These forces, to both Mosca and Pereto, threaten to upset
Speaker 2: the delicate balance that underlies the juridical defense and to
Speaker 2: impose a monolithic regime on modern society. It should be
Speaker 2: noted that this normative measure of governments is fundamentally modern,
Speaker 2: and as such it follows Machiavelli and Monuscue. The best
Speaker 2: regime to Moscow and Pereto is not that in which
Speaker 2: the virtue of the citizen is most developed, but that
Speaker 2: in which the security and liberty of the citizen and
Speaker 2: the commonwealth are best parton. Although Mosca and the Machiavelians
Speaker 2: were influenced by Aristotle, Cicero, and the pre modern tradition
Speaker 2: of political thought their primary concern was not, as with
Speaker 2: the earlier school, the ethical realization of man and society.
Speaker 2: The special contribution of the Machiavelian tradition, however, is the
Speaker 2: establishment of a criterion of normative judgment of regimes based
Speaker 2: on empirical rather than on transcendental grounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think deyl Notche would disagree with that slightly.
Speaker 2: Burnham accepted this Machiavelian formulation and its fundamental to his
Speaker 2: entire career as a political thinker. His primary concern, like Machiavelli's,
Speaker 2: was to establish a verifiable methodology for the analysis of
Speaker 2: social and political affairs, but he was also concerned to
Speaker 2: discover a realistic means of evaluating judging political institutions and behavior.
Speaker 1: Oh nothing, this is just explaining kind of the etymology
Speaker 1: of how we came to regard regimes.
Speaker 2: He found both in the Machiavelians, and it was the
Speaker 2: limitation of power that remained for him the primary political ideal,
Speaker 2: quoting the Machiavelians are the only ones who have told
Speaker 2: us the full truth about power. The primary object in
Speaker 2: practice of all rulers is to serve their own interests,
Speaker 2: to maintain their own power, and privilege. No theory, no promises,
Speaker 2: no morality, no amount of goodwill, no religion will restrain power.
Speaker 2: Neither priests nor soldiers, neither labor leaders nor businessmen, neither
Speaker 2: bureaucrats nor feudal lords will differ from each other in
Speaker 2: the basic use which they will seek to make of power.
Speaker 2: Only power restrains power. When all opposition is destroyed, there
Speaker 2: is no longer any limit to what power may do.
Speaker 2: A despotism, any kind of despotism, can be evalent only
Speaker 2: by accident.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see. I think, uh, I think this assumes
Speaker 1: that uh, you know, it assumes a base uh human nature,
Speaker 1: even amongst the elites that I don't know if is
Speaker 1: applicable today, especially, you know, given given the uh just
Speaker 1: a radical departure and competence from his time to ours,
Speaker 1: and then also kind of the growth of uh you
Speaker 1: know ai ai assistance.
Speaker 2: In the managerial revolution, Burnham had developed a model for
Speaker 2: explanation of current world events, the depression, the rise of totalitarianism,
Speaker 2: revolutionary changes in social and economic structure, political behavior, and
Speaker 2: intellectual and cultural fermentation. The chief problem with his presentation
Speaker 2: of the theory of the manager or revolution was its
Speaker 2: over reliance on Marxist economic determinism and analogies drawn from
Speaker 2: the Marxist interpretation of history. The Machiavelians, however, were not
Speaker 2: economic determinists, and their interpretation of history was far more
Speaker 2: flexible than that of Marx. Burnham therefore undertook to restate
Speaker 2: the theory of the managerial revolution in terms of the
Speaker 2: Machiavelian analytical framework. According to the Machiavelian model, an elite
Speaker 2: or ruling class suffers a crisis of power under certain circumstances.
Speaker 2: Burnham retained in the Machiavelians the essentially economic definition of
Speaker 2: the old elite as a capitalist, bourgeois or entrepreneurial class
Speaker 2: that owned and operated the means of production. However, the
Speaker 2: economic forces and relationships were not the central factors in
Speaker 2: bringing about the crisis of the old elite and the
Speaker 2: rise of a new one. The rise of new social forces,
Speaker 2: especially technological developments over which the capitalist or entrepreneurial elite
Speaker 2: has no control, has made its institutions and ideologies obsolete
Speaker 2: and less useful for preserving its power. The old elite
Speaker 2: has also undergone a psychological, intellectual, and moral denigration, degeneration.
Speaker 2: It shows little faith in its own ideology and institutions,
Speaker 2: and it exhibits Mosca's aristocratic tendency and a crystallization of
Speaker 2: its membership, interests, and activities instead of a dynamic, innovative expansion. Finally,
Speaker 2: the entrepreneurial elite is tending to abandon political and professional
Speaker 2: pursuits in favor of cultural and leisure activities. It is
Speaker 2: drawn to humanitarian and irrationalist ideologies that undermine its own rule,
Speaker 2: and it shows an increasing reluctance and inability to use
Speaker 2: force effectively. The Class one or fox like residues of
Speaker 2: Paretto are accumulating too heavily in the entrepreneurial elite. In
Speaker 2: opposition to these signs of decadence is the aggressive, efficient, dynamic,
Speaker 2: and sometimes fanatical character of the rising managerial class. It's
Speaker 2: self a new social force, quoting from the machiavelians, the
Speaker 2: production executives and organizers of the industrial process, officials trained
Speaker 2: in the manipulation of the great labor organizations, and the administrators,
Speaker 2: bureau chiefs and commissaurs developed in the executive branch of
Speaker 2: the unlimited modern state machines, and that the and that
Speaker 2: the managers may function the economic and political structure must
Speaker 2: be modified as it is now being modified, so as
Speaker 2: to rest no longer on private ownership and small scale
Speaker 2: nationalist sovereignty, but primarily upon state control of the economy
Speaker 2: and continental or vast regional world political organization.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I don't know about all that, but
Speaker 1: I think we were talking about this yesterday. The line
Speaker 1: between ownership and control is continually being blurred. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the one of the ways you know that
Speaker 1: we live in a managerial state. It is, you know,
Speaker 1: the the owner of my business has very little control
Speaker 1: over it other than the hiring and firing of me,
Speaker 1: and like, I pretty much make command decisions every day
Speaker 1: in his stead, and he gives me the like his
Speaker 1: only function is to provide capital and give me the
Speaker 1: thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's not a
Speaker 1: capitalist definition of ownership at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Viveka has been talking about this when it comes
Speaker 2: to the president. He said that anybody who gets elected
Speaker 2: should be in charge. So the person who gets elected,
Speaker 2: I mean, and let's face it, he uses the term
Speaker 2: managerial all the time. He talks about, you know how
Speaker 2: we're a managerial state. He's read Burnham. He knows all
Speaker 2: of this, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just how how when when you have such
Speaker 1: a complex technologically complex and and personnel, Uh, I guess
Speaker 1: he humanly complex and to he like, you know, the
Speaker 1: the executive branch. How how how does the president exercise ownership?
Speaker 2: Well, he has to be able to basically be able
Speaker 2: to hire and fire whoever he wants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, yeah, that's part of it. Absolutely. I think
Speaker 1: that's the best you can do. You know, going back
Speaker 1: to Charles Haywood's episode on on Elon Musk, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: will walk walk around a plant and make it no
Speaker 1: less than a hundred command decisions during that visit, And
Speaker 1: like that's how he actually exercises ownership to whatever degree,
Speaker 1: you know, the physical limitations of time give him and
Speaker 1: so like he's kind of a different beast too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, he needs the person needs to be in charge,
Speaker 2: needs to FDR is the perfect example of it. FDR
Speaker 2: was a king, He was a dictator. All the power rested,
Speaker 2: all the power in the government rested in him. Nobody
Speaker 2: did anything any thing without his say. So, this vast
Speaker 2: reorganization will require the use of force, military machines, and
Speaker 2: soldiers far more than did the old capitalist society. Hence,
Speaker 2: the ruling class of managers will include more allions or
Speaker 2: Class two residues than did the entrepreneurial elite. The political
Speaker 2: formula of the managers will be democratists and will appeal
Speaker 2: to the emotions and material once of the masses, but
Speaker 2: the political reality will be autoautocracy, what Burnham calls bonapartism
Speaker 2: represented by the Nazi, Stalinist and New Deal political style
Speaker 2: and ideologies will prevail over the constitutionalist, decentralized parliamentary governments
Speaker 2: of the capitalist era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's you know that the ignorance of managerialism as
Speaker 1: the defining feature of our time right now is really
Speaker 1: the biggest obstacle towards getting the normies to at least
Speaker 1: a little bit closer to being able to effectively analyze reality.
Speaker 2: Ideology stands in the way of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it doesn't have to, because most normies aren't
Speaker 1: ideologically either. They just don't know this. We need to.
Speaker 1: We need to wake them up, bro, And like, not
Speaker 1: not because you know, we we hope to seize power anything,
Speaker 1: but just because it's it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 2: Well. AA makes makes a point in this book that
Speaker 2: if you wake up. Then if the normies get get
Speaker 2: waken woken up too much, and too many of them
Speaker 2: get woken up, then you suffer the you suffer revolution. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we're not talking We're talking about France, not not American.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The tendency of bonapartism and of the managerial class is totalitarian.
Speaker 2: The managers want, need, and find valuable a state that
Speaker 2: is unitary and all powerful. Intermediary and non political institutions
Speaker 2: and groups are denounced and undermined if they do not
Speaker 2: support the rising managerial powers. Not only does the managerial
Speaker 2: class need an extended and oipotent state for its own
Speaker 2: internal and international policies and goals, but also the crisis
Speaker 2: of the Depression and the Second World War gives it
Speaker 2: the opportunity to create one. Hence managerial propaganda. It denounces
Speaker 2: the entrepreneurial class and its supportive institutions churches, non politicized
Speaker 2: labor unions, small businessmen, schools, the opposition press, local political institutions,
Speaker 2: the Congress itself, and seeks to portray them as reactionary,
Speaker 2: parochial and responsible for the present crisis and its misery.
Speaker 2: Only by destroying and moving beyond these obsolescent forces. Can
Speaker 2: the crisis be resolved? Burnham was not happy. Do we
Speaker 2: stop there? I mean, you just describe reality. Bro Burnham
Speaker 2: was not happy about the totaltarian vector of managerial society
Speaker 2: private capitalist ownership of the economy. He wrote, quote meant
Speaker 2: a dispersion of economic power and a partial separation between
Speaker 2: economic and other social forces in a manner that prevented
Speaker 2: the concentration of an overwhelming single social force. Today, the
Speaker 2: advance of the managerial revolution is everywhere, concentrating economic power
Speaker 2: in the state apparatus, where it tends to unite with
Speaker 2: control over the other great social forces, the army, education, labor, law,
Speaker 2: the political bureaucracy, art and science. Even this development too,
Speaker 2: society especially now, Yeah, this development too, tends to destroy
Speaker 2: the basis for those social oppositions that keep freedom alive
Speaker 2: the entrepreneur. The entrepreneurs are therefore correct to argue that
Speaker 2: the New Deal and other managerial policies were a threat
Speaker 2: to freedom. But the entrepreneurial former formulas of market capitalism,
Speaker 2: a limited state, and national sovereignty had lost their credibility
Speaker 2: In any case, the debate between the conservative see, that's
Speaker 2: something that people just don't realize people who are for
Speaker 2: market capitalism, a limited state, and national sovereignty understand that
Speaker 2: they don't. They're not willing to accept that it's lost
Speaker 2: their credibility, and they they think.
Speaker 1: That they don't understand where we are right now in history.
Speaker 1: They don't know where they're at. We're past that, where
Speaker 1: you're now, and like those days are over, they're not
Speaker 1: coming back, yea, and.
Speaker 2: To constantly you know it, well, no, this is the
Speaker 2: way things are done, this is the way things should be.
Speaker 2: That this is what guarantees the most individual freedom. Bro,
Speaker 2: We're beyond it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Freedom.
Speaker 1: My favorite question for them to do?
Speaker 2: What freedom to do? What I had I wouldn't even
Speaker 2: say who it was, but I had a libertarian in
Speaker 2: my d MS today who's just freaking out. He's like,
Speaker 2: why are there so many libertarians who argue for like
Speaker 2: that the most heinous stuff and stuff that's illegal and
Speaker 2: not only illegal, but would be considered immoral by the
Speaker 2: majority of the West at least, is okay?
Speaker 1: Well, they they took a legal theory and turned it
Speaker 1: into an ideology. Like somebody said that in one of
Speaker 1: the threads. I was like, yeah, pretty much, Dave.
Speaker 2: Dave had a thread today said that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was Dave. Yeah, you took a legal
Speaker 1: theory like a dry what's supposed to be a dry
Speaker 1: not fun legal theory, and turn it into your entire identity,
Speaker 1: like good job. You are just a piece of human
Speaker 1: trash that will never yet and you will until until you.
Speaker 2: Stop and the inevitable end of your of your theoretical
Speaker 2: whatever is talking about whether possession of childborn is a crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why, like, if if they were, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say they're pieces of trash that will never amount
Speaker 1: to anything, because then I just wouldn't care. But it's
Speaker 1: the the the proactive part of libertarianism is making sure
Speaker 1: that you and more importantly, your children are propagandas to that.
Speaker 1: And they're just you know, they're not as bad as
Speaker 1: leftists because they don't hold any power whatsoever. They're just
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't I wouldn't let them babysit my kids.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the biggest problem with it is is
Speaker 2: that these free market principles, and these these free principles
Speaker 2: are so easily the language of that is so easily
Speaker 2: adopted by people in power, and then.
Speaker 1: It's it's so Jewish it's.
Speaker 2: So easily adopted by people in power who will say, oh,
Speaker 2: look we have free trade, and it's like, well, no,
Speaker 2: but that's not real free trade.
Speaker 1: We're shipping in, Yeah, we're we're shipping in sex toys
Speaker 1: for your toddler.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then and then free trade has never been tried.
Speaker 2: Why are you using that term? And it's like, well,
Speaker 2: because it's so easily everything, everything you come up with
Speaker 2: canon will be used against you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, everything will be manipulated, which, you know, if
Speaker 1: they want to know how, then they should watch this episode.
Speaker 2: In any case, the debate between the conservative spokesman for
Speaker 2: the old line capitalist class and the Marxist and the
Speaker 2: democratics utalitarians who defend the rising managerial class as a
Speaker 2: debate and ideology and myths that express a contest for
Speaker 2: control over the despotic and bonapartist political order, which they
Speaker 2: both anticipate. The apologists for the managers would destroy all
Speaker 2: liberty and juridical defense in pursuit of utapianism, and the
Speaker 2: apologists of traditional capitalism are simply whistling in the wind.
Speaker 2: For quote, it is in any case impossible to return
Speaker 2: to private capitalism.
Speaker 1: See yeah, I mean, one thing I have to hand
Speaker 1: it to, you know, uh, whether conscious or not Malthusians
Speaker 1: is that they're not utopian. I gotta respect him for
Speaker 1: that what everybody else seems to be and maybe quote
Speaker 1: of the episode, Hey, at least they're not utopian.
Speaker 2: Yet. Burnham was not entirely pessimistic about the survival of
Speaker 2: some liberty. He suggested that some social opposition might persist
Speaker 2: or develop, the would or develop that would create a
Speaker 2: balance of forces in the managerial elite, and he also
Speaker 2: hoped that the principles of the Machiavelian science of power
Speaker 2: would inform the new ruling class of its real interests
Speaker 2: and of the utility of liberty. Now, anybody who's like
Speaker 2: out there, anybody who's out there promoting liberty and everything,
Speaker 2: just read that and went that's me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh, it's very much limited to utilitarianism. And
Speaker 1: that's also kind of a product of man. Uh, the
Speaker 1: shift to utilitarian I guess utilitarian metaphysics is is a
Speaker 1: product of the rise of revolutionary Marxism and that energy
Speaker 1: being transferred, the revolutionary energy being transferred into the managerial class.
Speaker 1: They're all it's all utility. How many utils will will
Speaker 1: you generate if I give you a stimmy check? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: a utils? Okay, you're getting a stemmy check. How many
Speaker 1: utils will I generate if I put a bullet in
Speaker 1: your head?
Speaker 2: M He developed alliant defense of liberty and juridical defense
Speaker 2: on the grounds that they actually enhanced the cohesion, strength,
Speaker 2: and flexibility of a society rather than limited the Machiavellians problem.
Speaker 2: Probably Burnham's most widely misunderstood book. George Orwell appears to
Speaker 2: have seen it in a blueprint for the Double Think
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty four. The sociologist David Spitz took a
Speaker 2: similar view of the book and included Burnham as an
Speaker 2: anti democratic ideologue. The very subtitle of Burnham's book, Defenders
Speaker 2: of Freedom, should be sufficient to refute this misinterpretation, and
Speaker 2: it may be that some critics of the book have
Speaker 2: not read far beyond the subtitle.
Speaker 1: That's me, that's me.
Speaker 2: With every book, it is true that Burnham described the
Speaker 2: coming society and the starkest language. Yet this style is
Speaker 2: typical of Machiavelli and his disciples, and is appropriate to
Speaker 2: their claim to realism and disavowal of ideology and sent cements.
Speaker 1: So I've actually never read The Machiavellians. But does Burnham
Speaker 1: adopt a different style than say, The Managerial Revolution, Like,
Speaker 1: is it a noticeably different tone?
Speaker 2: Well, no, he has a very distinct way of writing.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you if you read The Managerial Revolution,
Speaker 2: you read Suicide of the West, I mean it's the
Speaker 2: same you know, it's the same person writing it.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, I thought I thought he switched
Speaker 1: up his tone, which would be insane, That.
Speaker 2: Would be nuts. It is difficult to see how any
Speaker 2: familiarity with the contents and arguments of The Machiavelians could
Speaker 2: overlook Burnham's exposition of the theory of juridical defense, his
Speaker 2: criticism of managerial political tendencies, or his own defensive liberty.
Speaker 2: The fact that many critics have missed these points suggest
Speaker 2: that Burnham's discussion of ideology applies to the authors of
Speaker 2: such criticism. And that's what mister Samuel Francis had to
Speaker 2: say about The Mafia Villans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean it's I like these kind of
Speaker 1: critiques that aren't really critiques, it's just an an exposition
Speaker 1: of it. And I I try to do that myself
Speaker 1: with some original works, and it never works so well
Speaker 1: for me because I'm just not that eloquent.
Speaker 2: Now it's.
Speaker 1: I do podcast reviews in Milwaukee tool reviews.
Speaker 2: It's one of those books that when you read it,
Speaker 2: you're going to have.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's one of those books that if you're a if
Speaker 2: you're a hardcore ideologue, you may not read. You may
Speaker 2: not get it the first time. Yeah, you may have.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things that a couple of years
Speaker 2: down the line, maybe something that was like somebody told
Speaker 2: me at the beginning of twenty nineteen to read Jarvin's
Speaker 2: Why I'm Not a Libertarian? And I read it, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, a couple of good points in here. I
Speaker 2: don't care. Twenty twenty rolls around. Yeah, twenty twenty rolls around.
Speaker 2: Everything happens. We start getting into the summer, yeah, and
Speaker 2: you know, cities are on fire, and you know, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let me read that again. And I'm like, oh, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: And then I read it again like a year ago,
Speaker 2: and I was just like, this is this makes more
Speaker 2: sense than anything than anything I've ever read as far
Speaker 2: as a critique of a critique of libertarianism.
Speaker 1: I did try to I did try to crack the
Speaker 1: managerial Uh not the Machiavellians back in the day when
Speaker 1: Jarvin was talking about it, and I couldn't get through
Speaker 1: it because I just I was in that same phase
Speaker 1: like this. None of this resonates with me. None of
Speaker 1: it's particularly interesting or prescient. And now as we're reading this,
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, I wish I talked more, but
Speaker 1: like I'm too busy agreeing with it.
Speaker 2: Know, it's there's a way. There's a way you want
Speaker 2: politics to be, and there's where what politics is now.
Speaker 2: And if you want politics to be a certain way,
Speaker 2: you're going to have to take You have to take
Speaker 2: power and do it.
Speaker 1: At the at the very least, you have to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that the only form of society you're ever going to
Speaker 1: be in some form of an oligarchy, which is a
Speaker 1: huge hurdle for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's well, there may be a white pill in there.
Speaker 2: If you really understand elite theory, if e LA, if
Speaker 2: you embrace it, if you realize that it's always a
Speaker 2: small group of people in charge, there's a chance that
Speaker 2: you could actually be a part of a group that
Speaker 2: gets those that helps to get those people in charge,
Speaker 2: people who are on your side, who at least you know.
Speaker 2: It's like we've been talking about with the pay Pal mafia.
Speaker 2: It's like, do I think the guys in the pay
Speaker 2: Pal mafia agree with me? Probably not. I mean there's
Speaker 2: probably maybe a couple of them. But are they do
Speaker 2: they hate me? No? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And if you're young enough, especially now where everything is politicized,
Speaker 1: and you're young enough, you can orient your life towards,
Speaker 1: at least your material life towards you know, getting involved
Speaker 1: in industries that no matter who's in charge, like especially
Speaker 1: if it's the elites you think are going to be
Speaker 1: in charge or you like, you can be a beneficiary
Speaker 1: of a of a of a circulation of elites, if
Speaker 1: not from the current ones. That's kind of my whole
Speaker 1: shtick is like, get get into an industry or a
Speaker 1: career that is circulation of elites proof. Like not recession proof,
Speaker 1: because we're done with we're probably done with recessions, but uh,
Speaker 1: circulation of elites proof.
Speaker 2: Oh and there are a lot of those, you know.
Speaker 2: I have people who contact me all the time now
Speaker 2: and say, you know, it's like finally got myself to
Speaker 2: the point where I'm pretty sure that you know, no
Speaker 2: matter what would happen, I'll always be able to turn
Speaker 2: it and come and and I mean that's that's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean yeah, a certain level of self sufficiency
Speaker 1: and uh preparedness. Absolutely I am woefully and you know
Speaker 1: I'm trying to have a kid and all that too.
Speaker 1: And you know that I'm telling you that episode I
Speaker 1: listened to listen to today with a Cat Cat Girl
Speaker 1: Koulak kind of broken mind, just putting me in a
Speaker 1: real bad mood all day.
Speaker 2: You came into the group I recommend it to the listeners.
Speaker 2: You came into the group chat and you were like,
Speaker 2: all right, I'm gonna kill myself now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh man, all right, well let's let's end this. Uh
Speaker 2: where can people find your work when you do work?
Speaker 1: So you can find me at bt W A Underscore
Speaker 1: turns on x formally not as Twitter, and you can
Speaker 1: find me every single Wednesday live on Timeline Earth.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks Daron, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yep, thank you for having me