Back to the Stone Age II D: Capitalism
It is conventional to refer to the great tycoons of our own and earlier times as capitalists. The term has a complicated history, heavily influenced by Marxist diatribes against the accumulation of wealth and the influence of those who possess it. Today, though capitalism is defended stridently by neoconservatives, the first generation of neocons found the word hard to stomach. Irving Kristol, aping E.M. Forster, could only give it two cheers,
and when my colleagues at The Rockford Institute wanted to use the word in an annual report, Richard Neuhaus was at first rather disturbed.
Like most words of mystical power (faith, democracy, social justice), capitalism comes to us redolent with associations and attitudes. To make any sense of what it means, we have to begin on the simplest level by distinguishing at least three separate notions: 1) capital, 2) the economic system that is typified by owners of capital and which is misleadingly known as capitalism, and 3) the ideology of Capitalism.
Capital is simply a fancy word used to describe the stock a man has to sell and the necessary means for setting up and maintaining his enterprise. Let us imagine a truck gardener, who takes his vegetables to a farmer's market. His capital consists of such things as the vegetables he has to sell, the pickup truck he uses to take them to market, his tractor and other farm implements, the 10 acres he farms, etc. The time comes when he wishes to expand his business by buying another ten acres, but he does not have the cash, either for the land or for the additional seed and implements. The widow next door gives him $100,000 in return for a fourth of the business and a fourth of the profits. She is now part-owner, though she does no work.
The new field and expanding operations, however, require two illegal Mexicans to work. Where previously the farmer had done everything himself, he now has employees. In other societies he might have bought the employees, who would be known as slaves. The situation of the two is not so different. Slaves in many societies had a good deal of free time and independence, while the Mexicans have no more income and a good deal more insecurity.
In any event, capital is universal in all but the most primitive societies, and some form of "capitalism", that is, ownership of the means of the production and control of laborers, is almost as universal. The Romans were great capitalists in this slightly erroneous sense of the word, though Roman social life and ideology was not Capitalist, that is, Romans liked to think of themselves either as patriotic gentlemen or farmers, much as an 18th century English capitalist liked to become a country gentleman as soon as he could afford it.
Capitalism with a capital C, however, is the system and ideology that grew up with liberalism, and it emphasizes the unrestricted rights of capitalists, whose activities more or less define the society, as, for example, fighting noblemen defined parts of Medieval Europe. Let me quote from my students' book on socialism:
Liberals usually (though not always) support capitalism, but liberalism and capitalism must be distinguished. Capitalism, although it is often confused with liberal theories of the free market, is actually an economic system that emphasizes capital, that is, the money invested into a company that pays wages to its employees. In principle, capitalism is incompatible with socialism, because capitalism presupposes private property and laws protecting property, while socialists traditionally have advocated public ownership of the great economic interests. In reality, however, capitalism and socialism have tended to merge. In countries that have nationalized large businesses, capitalist managers were often hired to run the corporations, while in countries that are officially capitalistic, large corporations cooperate closely with government agencies and often secure important benefits to themselves and to the detriment of smaller rivals. Adam Smith, the first theorist of capitalism, noted that rival businessmen would rather combine to control, by fixing wages and prices, than compete in the marketplace. In the 20th century this has usually meant a close collaboration of business and government, in capitalist as much as in socialist countries.
A conservative, then, may be wildly enthusiastic about free enterprise while—for the very reason that he favors free enterprise--entertaining grave suspicions about capitalism, either as a practice or as a theory.
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Currency itself (money) is symbol/fact. Can't eat it, can't live under its paper roof but we all have agreed (by proxy) to permit its buying power for what we need. I agree (I suspect) with the above. Capitalism makes the paper itself a commodity "as if" a bean or a roof. "As if" it were 'the' fact, an imbalance, rather than symbol/fact. The symbol itself gains too much power, joins with government (buying it), everything then is hollow symbol... 'bull sh#t' and we get not only capitalism but State Capitalism... b.s. - SUPERSIZED.
I.e. the illusion gone obese. Then I get pissTHed: "I", universal.
I don't even know, was I off topic? Sorry, if so.
Dr. Fleming, I remember reading your Credo for Conservatives pieces a few years ago, and I think they read exactly like the Back to the Stone Age pieces.
This one on capitalism is very close to the Credo piece on capitalism - especially on the distinction between capitalism and free enterprise.
By the way, " The Romans were great capitalists in this slightly erroneous sense of the word, though Roman social life and ideology was not Capitalist" reminds me of the French saying: "L'economie de marche mais pas de societe". Or something like that, I think I messed up the saying.
Actually, this is the first recycled section, though I do intend to borrow more. The entire first chapter was written from scratch and most of the second, though it is obviously true that I am in some places repeating myself, like an aging raconteur at a party.
Benjamin Morgan Palmer in a lecture entitled “The Present Crises and Its Issues” given on 27 June 1872 states the following:
"But the spirit of materialism, infused into all the transactions of business and common life, is the Angel of Pestilence dropping the seeds of death from its black wing wherever it sweeps. It is this subtle and dangerous spirit which is at the bottom of that fearful demoralization that has spread like a leprosy over the land. It is rapidly displacing legitimate commerce by the silent invasion of its fixed laws, rendering the individual trader helpless in the grasp of a powerful combination controlling the market by irregular and unnatural methods, and making it to depend upon the interest and caprice of large capitalists. It is corrupting public justice through venal juries, no longer impartially selected, but chosen from the hangers on of courts, whose sole subsistence is the bribe of the wealthy litigant. It is filling the noble profession of the law with mendicant attorneys, prostituting the solemn priesthood of their office by opening the subterfuges of legal chicanery to villany and fraud. It invades even the sanctity of the bench, and overwhelms judicial integrity by the pressure of political and commercial combinations. It is converting public office from a ministry of responsibility and trust to a place of emolument, where the perquisites to be enjoyed outweigh the duties to be performed. And worse than all, it is sapping the truthfulness, the honesty and honor of private life, and silently destroying the moral bonds by which society is held together. Through all its grades, from the highest to the lowest, every man is striving to outstrip his neighbor in the possession and exhibition of wealth; and the most sacred claims of love, and all the sweet charities and refinements of social life are sacrificed upon the altar of universal greed."
The Rev. Palmer knew Capitalism with a capital C.
Dr. Fleming, I know you are not building a complete description of Capitalism but are laying out a few terms to clarify a context for a Paleo foundation. I also wonder what is next in this really informative series. Until then, I can imagine a few questions that might be helpful (or entirely not appropriate) -- at least they were helpful concepts for me to learn about at different times:
If Socialism and Capitalism are fundamentally opposed to each other in principle yet often nestle closely together in practical terms, are there any examples of cultures that have thrived with completely separate business and government interests?
Capitalism is drawn against a context of Socialism, but how does it fit with "free markets"?
Has a real "free market" ever existed for longer than a summer?
I keep hearing people use the expression "creative destruction" to defend the damage generated by Capitalism as a good thing in the long run, however other people say that was originally and more accurately the tactical pathway described by Marx to explain how Capitalism will eventually push through any practical distinctions and become full-on Socialism. Is this philosophy or economics?
Ultimately, how do Paleos judge government involvement in business and vice versa? Philosophically? Practically? Both?
What is this thing called Subsidiarity, and why is it so darned hard to come up with a better word for it?
All excellent questions. The next topic I am taking up is the relationship of the free market to other values. This would be the place for discussing Schumpeter's creative destruction. His analysis was certainly true, but he seemed to me a bit too sanguine about the whole thing. Liberalism and capitalism together undermine all values higher than themselves by pandering to the basest human instincts, which in earlier ages were regarded as the sins of greed, lust, etc. That is a section that should precede the discussion of capitalism. The relations between capitalists and government really do require discussion. There can be no large-scale capitalism without government support. If I fail to tackle some of these questions in the coming weeks, please remind me. I'll be tied up with our annual board meeting and John Randolph Club until Sunday.
"I'll be tied up with our annual board meeting and John Randolph Club until Sunday." A dirty job, but I can't think of anyone better equipped to do it. Thanks for all that you do, Dr. Fleming.
In reply to mr. peters: I agree. I'd just like to add one of the original Greek philosophers that we know about posited what he called the Logos or reality which includes everything. Things like words, flesh and blood, as well as the divine underpinning of reality including therefore of the world. But that the divine underpinning in reality isn't the lion's share of the daily round. That in this world of opposites, hot/cold, shallow/deep, materialism/stoicism et al., the divine makes the world possible as its spiritual counter-point and has its unknowable influence here in the hierarchy of being. But while in the world in the daily round it is a question of approximate balance as it is in mother Nature as we are within Her. So if any religion say is imbalanced in its words and beliefs for example either toward the material (materialism) or toward the spiritual (giving rise to a meaningless stoicism) it is, perhaps unwittingly generating imbalance in the opposite direction. So although personally speaking I both agree with and subscribe to most of what the metaphysical construct of Christ offers us and others. I do tend to suspect wherein it may have a flaw or two those imbalances as if they weren't such or flaws lend themselves to imbalances in opposite directions for instance in this case the advent of Capitalism. In other words imbalances in one direction whether wittingly or not tend to generate in this world of opposites, imbalances in the other. This is subsequently a vast knowable terrain or ground in the world which in my experience at least having been raised and schooled as a Christian is almost flown over so to speak as if it weren't very important, or as important as it inevitably is. And I suspect can be accounted for in terms of whatever the flaws in the metaphysical construct of Christ might be. This is not to suggest that trangressions against us out of hand aren't what they are. But rather in our own imbalances we make ourselves more susceptible and unnecessarily vulnerable to them. Just as we may therefore, be severed from our appropriate connection with the divine as counter-point within ourselves as a result of our own imbalances. This is not of course unique to Christianity but to any religion or belief system wherein its metaphysical construct(s) is flawed and especially if unrecognized.
Mr. Yurick,
I, too, agree with you. The imbalances of which you speak engender false dichotomies in which we Christians have become entangled, even and quite often among ourselves.
that capitalist society where all men (except for the few powerful controllers of wealth) are securely nourished "on a wage, or, lacking this, a subsidy in idleness." (The New Deal was partly a bribe to desperate people to prevent revolution and partly concessions to the GOP to keep the servile state in their control)
Again, some thoughtful types( even within conservative circles ) saw this train coming years ago but could do little to stop it.
Consider this comment from Samuel Francis in an old back issue of Chronicles: "The economic trend in the United States today, aided by the political trend of the federal government, is toward the concentration of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands".
Even recenty there was a thoughtful essay ( is there anything else) in Chronicles about this developing concentration of wealth although the libertarian solution seems more like pouring accelerant on a gasoline fire rather than a remedy. The best essay in English on all this is probably "The Restoration of Property." (No kiddies, it was written before Ayne Rand puffed and pouted or Frank Sinatra boasted, "I Did IT MY Way" for heavens sake!) Maybe states rights will be to the future GOP what the New Deal was for the Old GOP, a compromise in Capitalism --- 2 parts confiscatory and 1 part conciliatory. Or as they are beginning to say today, "raise taxes at the top, drop the old christian "social issues" and help find some new or at best old pagan opiate for the poor.
how do Paleos judge government involvement in business and vice versa?
I don't have the answer to this question. What I do know is that there is a long historical precedent for central-government regulation of enterprises that take place on a national or international scales, namely through the chartered incorporation that give rise to legal personhood for a business entity. As Dr. Fleming says, "There can be no large-scale capitalism without government support."
And if I may prefigure future discussion, I opine that indeed, when a business enterprise becomes so large as to engulf large sections of the economy, the fallout for success or failure touches more than just the investors themselves. The banks that were going belly-up in 2008 were, as they argued themselves, "Too Big to Fail," and there should have been regulation in place to either 1. prevent them from growing so big, or 2. prevent them, once they had grown so big, from seeking out the kind of high-yield or risky investments that brought them to the brink of failure.
Two errors should be avoided here. The first is the error of the socialist, who supposes that "regulation" entails that not only the aforementioned enterprises but also the individual geniuses behind them can be legitimately milked to feed his social-engineering chimera. In so doing he rewards idleness and punishes innovation.
The second is the error of the fake-liberal industrial Capitalist, who takes advantage of his company's incorporative status to make connections on the inside that maximize his profitability, while at the same time rejecting calls for greater accountability as an assault on "free enterprise." (If corporate interests can legitimately influence government policy, there is logically no reason why the reverse should not also be true. And you can bet that said Capitalist will be the first to argue that his company is "Too Big to Fail" when his cards have run out - on that point he may well be right, but it is amusing to watch him change his tune.)
I suppose this ugly intriguing is why decent conservatives will always have a soft spot for the small-scale and the local, and there is more than a little something to be said for that. Then again, people have always intrigued and connived for personal interests. What is regrettable is that this intriguing and connivance takes place today in the midst and in the name of political ideology...
people have always intrigued and connived for personal interests. What is regrettable is that this intriguing and connivance takes place today in the midst and in the name of political ideology...
Nicholas,
No, wild animals tend to look after their personal interests and we are no doubt animals of sorts, but the dignity in being human is a "little" different than simply looking after another visiting relative from the family of great Apes. And heck, even the Canada goose at least tries to mate for life, and the poor foolish salmon attempts to return home at least once in his life. And speaking of raising youngens, how many wild animals do you ever see asking their neighbors to take the very life of their offspring ? Listen, when you reach this level of culture, it really is all about the economy stupid and every man for himself. Rand was not right about much but she was correct about the anti-christian business having a future and some lucrative potential. Common goods are nothing these days but smoke and perfume like the incense that the superstitious folk of old once thought symbolised prayers of human beings rising towards heaven to a God dressed up like a bell-hop, who had only one son but lived in a mansion etc. and etc....you get the idea.
No, wild animals tend to look after their personal interests and we are no doubt animals of sorts, but the dignity in being human is a "little" different than simply looking after another visiting relative from the family of great Apes.
I am not, to be sure, holding "intriguing" and selfish conniving as a thing to be admired or as a hallmark of civilized men. I am simply noting that it happens, that as you concede, there are times when men show their animal side, even in the grandest of times. There are types who like to romanticize past periods as though they were somehow free or largely free of filthy court scandals or governmental corruption. That is a mistake. So, admittedly, is supposing that it is not in some ways more ubiquitous (and even more insidious) today than in times past. Two key mistakes are to be avoided, however, in economic policy as elsewhere in life and morality: 1. neglecting to fight against evil, and 2. striving to DESTROY evil.
Speaking of nature, I'm off to hunt foxes.
Mr. Nicholas,
"Speaking of nature, I'm off to hunt foxes."
One supposes that when you refer to "foxes," you are referring to those of the genus Vulpes. Down here in our climes, climes in which no few antiquated traditions, for good or for bad, still thrive, we still use "fox" for the plural. In my boyhood, we hunted the Southern gray fox by finding a ridge which fingered into some big bottom or delta and thereupon built a fire, and spread out food and libation accompanied by the spinning of a number of colorful yarns which often constituted a tapestry of tales not unlike Boccaccio's "Decameron," Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" or Grace King's "Balcony Stories," though there were never any girls in our band of brothers. While we tended to those things, the dogs tended to the fox, with their barking and howling, with the cadence and tempo thereof dictated by the flow of the terrain, over the ridge or into the draw, and by the proximity of the hounds to the fox. We knew the voices of our hounds like the connoisseurs of opera know the voices of the greatest singers. We usually hoped that the dogs did not tree the fox, for Southern gray fox can climb trees. If the dogs treed, we were obliged to trek the two to three miles by lantern light and shot the fox for the dogs to then, as their tradition required, rend into bloody threads which were the materialization of the yarns we had been spinning, or so one could see it. We usually wanted the fox to make the slip so that we could continue by the fire and with all that properly attended it. On occasion, particularly when the fox had made the slip, some of the dogs would fail to return before we left the ridge for the feathers of our beds. There by the warm coals of the fire I would place my hunting jacket. In the morning, after breakfast, I would return, usually to find one or more dogs piled upon their master's coat awaiting his sure return. (As a Christian, I have been on a long fox hunt and am coming to that part of the hunt at which it is time for me to consider, exhausted and cold, hungry and tired, returning to the Master's coat and awaiting His return.)
In our climes, the days of such hunts are passed and in the past, for the commons is gone. Only the fox can roam across the ridges and through the bottoms. For boys and dogs, the expanses are off limits. Trespass has replaced the commons. The biggest tracts of land are owned by big corporations which (The word "who" should likely be used since one of the first judicial fiats under the unconstitutional 14th amendment was to pronounce corporations to be "persons," with judicial fiat now holding in unholy irony that the unborn do not have the protection of being persons but are merely byproducts, usually unintended, of a female's whim.) discovered that there was money to be had in leasing the land which many of them have held since their Carpetbag days. That discovery was aided and abetted by the State of Louisiana though a constitutional change which essentially outlawed the commons.
Mr. Nicholas, you carry a heavy responsibility for having awakened this muse. Good hunting!
Mr. Peters,
These are stories that need to be told often and to anyone who will listen because they have the sunbstance of life --real life -- in them. Thank you.
PS. For boys and dogs, the expanses are off limits. Trespass has replaced the commons. The biggest tracts of land are owned by big corporations
Yes, it is too bad but once we moved into that state of mind in which it was more desirable to have our neighbors property rather than a neighbor, it was only a matter of time. I was reading a book the other night about the old carpert bagging judge from up North who was assigned to Fort Smith Arkansas and Indian territory as a Federal magistrate, know as Isaac Parker, the hanging judge. The banks and railroad crowd loved him for cleaning up the Indian territory of bank robbers and whiskey runners but hated him when he tried to prevent them from stealing other people's land or selling Bush and Budwieser beer to the Indians. They haven't changed much they are still yankees at heart. I noticed this morning while waiting for coffee that our dear GOP leaders have already turned against Mitt Romney who they wanted so bad to lead us just before he lost.----after taking their advice and too much of their money !!
The muse cannot die, corporations are not persons. Chimeras dissolve. The fox a pleasant part of this by design imperfectly perfect world crazy like the fox.
"There are types who like to romanticize past periods as though they were somehow free or largely free of filthy court scandals or governmental corruption. That is a mistake."
Nick,
Why is it a mistake to remember better times ? I have never understood this assertion. I do remember an old lawyer who said to me as a young man that he often wanted to check the coffin during some eulogies to make sure he was at the right funeral. We Catholics do not eulogise much (or once upon a time did not) as our ritual is pretty much the same for peasant or Pope, saints and sinners. Yet, I find nothing wrong or unrealistic in the fact that love often tends to remember the best of times and characters. Ubi amor ibi occulos. It provides a clearer vision than the hateful cynic, clinging to his money bag, his unique accomplishments and his own age all by himself.
The modernist is always leveling things to his or her level. The entire modern biography could be summed up with one observation " That old man was not as good as everyone thought."
Mr. Reavis,
It is indeed not a mistake to remember the better times, for it is the good which our Lord shall preserve; the bad shall be burned away in His judging fires. My life has regrettably provided Him with plenty to burn; yet, there are the good things, which, like the talents,came from Him in the first place. It is the modest increase in those which I shall lay at His feet in all humility, hoping to hear "well done, good and faithful servant..." It is that eternal hope that brings us to remember the better things in our own lives and in the lives of kith and kin, in the lives of strangers and even in the lives of our enemies.
The comment about capitalism and base human instincts did bring a thought to my mind.
Mr. Piatak of Chronicles has often (nicely) remarked that movements against capitalism, especially communism, have failed because they tried to change human nature. When it is almost impossible to change human nature, revolutionaries kill people who fail to change and suppress their instincts according to their utopian preferences.
But then, in this discussion, it is mentioned that capitalism draws on base human instincts, and base human instincts are vices that should be suppressed. By encouraging the worst of human vices, capitalism becomes something that should be pushed back and tempered. Or else, base human instincts will override man.
And then, we go back right to where we were - movements to control or change human nature fail because they can't ever easily change human nature. So I feel that this whole thing is a circle that perpetually goes round and round about itself. It's akin to discussions on abstinence - where abstinence is good, because it suppresses the bad side of human nature, but abstinence is bad, because it is not possible to suppress human nature. Any neutral party to such debates would feel like they are being spun around on a large wheel here.
In reply to Mr. Sanjay: There is a lot of good in human nature, so it's not all bad that it can't be changed.
Where she/he (human nature) is concerned wisdom learns all its rules so well it doesn't 'seem' like there are any.
That can be distasteful to most the face-to-face look at human nature, our actual human condition, and the subsequent [experience] of doing so and seeing. In this regard there's some freedom as 'denial' has always been a useful human tool. When facts become overbearing we can select the fantasy for a while of myth taken literally, the better perhaps more divine (whether we've merited it or not) picture, though not literally of this world; or if more humbly taken as divine counter-point. It's what prayer is about, the right order given where we actually are [here] in the acsending hierarchy of being.
It is circular which is a good since we can relax we're not going anywhere...
Though with each of our cycles on the wheel individually and collectively, it goes ahead or forward in becoming slightly better, (or worse).
So that instead of merely being static or circular it's more like a curlicue in its sometimes almost indiscernible inching forward (oops, or backward).
I hear you though, this might not be the site for you unless you're into measuring continental drift. And subsequently are along for the slow ride.
It does though encourage prayer which is why I, in my better moments (given my own human nature) have learned to like it. I've also found it (when not mind blowing) to be more peaceful: oh look, the more things change the more they fundamentally remain the same. Ok.
It requires some patience. So I've found if the electrons go into hyper-vibe at the prospect...PRAYER, and then usually I'm ok, the right order again having obtained. ... Although sadly and happily I do not subscribe to a few of the ideological components and/or mores of either Christianity or Judaism, which through experience/prayer I have been led to personally believe may be in need of update or tuningUp, if so. It's imperfect either way and sometimes the esoteric places acquired within don't necessarily jibe with the exoteric surround. C'est la vie. Otherwise there's really no getting around, watching the river flow.
Mr. Peters,
Thank you for the wonderful metaphor of Our Lord's arms as an old coat to curl up in. You talk about fox waking up a muse for you; dogs and old coats can do the same for me.
For a Chicagoan, here where keeping warm is not a matter of style but of life or death, a good old overcoat can become almost as beloved as a faithful dog. I still look lovingly at my mother's and father's old coats hanging in closets in rooms they no longer walk in, and think of times I helped them into them, and times I didn't, but should have. I still grieve, on a bitterly cold day, for the loss of an enormous, down to the ankles black greatcoat, really just a double-thick horse blanket with arms, that came down to me from a family member. It made you look like a Russian immigrant just off the boat, and was roomy enough to hide a Tommy gun, or an anti-tank weapon. Either that, or my dad's old Air Force surplus parka, which I can't wear any more because it's falling apart, would do nicely for my death bed.
All I'll say about dogs for now is, if Our Lord and Master loves me a fraction as much as I've loved some dogs, I've got it made in the shade.
Mr. Jacobi,
I note that "dog" spelled in reverse is "god." One could understand that to be mere coincidence; or one could conclude that our Lord has a sense of humor. I do find it interesting that these two unlikely species - dog and man - have come to need one another and that in loyalty and affection.
We used to run hounds: for deer, for fox and for racoons. Hounds have such a strong drive to be on the hunt, on the chase, that they usually have to be chained and penned when not on the hunt, lest they stay out and get lost, stolen or killed. My father, however, took a different approach and used that approach to teach me a lesson. He said that if a hound can learn the lesson of postponing the exhilarating gratification which the hound experiences on the hunt, something he was created or bred for, then he could live free of the chain and the pen and enjoy the wonderful acreage which was available to an animal which lived at our place. It is a good lesson for all creatures in the created order. I do not think that Capitalism with a capital C wants us to live free, free indeed, by postponing the gratification which comes with money and consuming; Capitalism would enslave us, just as its socialist counterpart, to instant gratification.
Thank you, Dr. Peters, for your excellent recounting.
Where I live, hunting is done on private property loaned out to hunting associations. Fox hunting or coursing, as it is more properly called (we actually didn't get a fox yesterday, just boars) is done not by humans but by dogs commanded/followed by their handlers and by a core elite mounted on horses blowing trumpets as the chase unfolds in the lushly colored autumn fields and forests, limited in size by American standards but comfortingly never so far from a farm or a château that one cannot find repose in the grandest civilization has to offer at the end of a day out in nature.
The closing of the commons and the bureaucratization of the hunt, regardless of their "necessity," are inevitably felt as a blow against the American spirit of the frontier and rugged freedom. Over here, before the fall of the Old Regime it was only the Noble estate that had the right to hunt, a situation the remnants of which are still strongly felt to this day. Opening the commons for such a geographically compact country nearly destroyed its hunting grounds in the 19th century.
Much of what delineates the U.S. from Europe has to do with the availability of land, and the peculiarity of an already-civilized people finding huge and in the beginning seemingly limitless swaths of land before needing to grow their customs and institutions. With its population thickening, America may naturally be expected to rethink her approach to familial and social hierarchies if she is to continue pushing forward. The process of re-Europeanization (in the cultural sense) can, of course, be expected to be slow, reluctant and in many ways painful. It will be impossible if the U.S. is demographically absorbed, as seems to be happening, into a civilization quite organically alien to herself and to her generative civilization in the Old World.
Mr. Moses, thanks for your description and insight, I found them fascinating. So much so if you extrapolated the above into a book I'd be interested in reading it. Mr. Peters as well although in candor he doesn't have the advantage of a foot on site as well in the Old world.
Mr. Yurick,
I probably do not fully understand your statement supra: "Mr. Peters as well although in candor he doesn't have the advantage of a foot on site as well in the Old world." However, I did live in the Old world for fourteen years, among the natives as it were in Austria, Germany and France, with the longest time in Germany. I may not by that standard "know" the Old world, but I do know quite a lot about it. I have written a series of sketches and memorettes about my time there. The context of the discussions on this website have not conjured them up, save for the Beowulf discussions some years back.
Mr. Peters,
More wisdom from your father; on a tangent, are you sure you have to pretty up his, uh, earthy language as I believe you put it? Seems a pity that such time honored relics as the way farmers used to talk can't be preserved. My mother had a way of filling in the blanks in some of her quotes of her father (born 1864) regarding certain stubborn animals, mostly four-legged, but sometimes two-legged.
I have a vignette about how a dog once came up and helped me in a bad moment for some later time.
Mr. Nicholas,
I fully understand about the commons in Europe as it relates to hunting as opposed to what was once here; however, that is only one manifestation of the commons. I lived in Germany for over twelve years; there, the commons still made itself manifest in that the commoner could walk across and even camp on property belonging to others; in addition, if one behaved according to custom, tradition and habit, one could forage for nuts, berries, mushrooms, wood, fruit and vegetables. One could "glean" apples and potatoes after the formal harvest. Every fall, my children and I would take our red wagon and gather potatoes, apples and late plumbs along with "Stone Mushrooms," returning to prepare a feast. That is no longer possible here in Louisiana, and I assume in most other states.
If Dr. Fleming ever decides to have a convivium down here in Louisiana, preferably in the fall, one of the venues will be a circle of freshly hewn oak logs around a roaring fire with a pot of venison stew and the libations expected by a Rockford crowd. There the earthy sayings, proverbs and pronouncements of my father will have there proper place and audience, as the owls hoot, coyotes howl and the panther screams in the antithetical chorus. It will be somewhere in Black Bayou Bottom just north of Black Lake.
I'm curious. As a Texan, I am interested in feral hog hunting which is a sport down here that is exploding in popularity and I suppose hunting the Eurasian boar is similar if not a tad bit more dangerous. That being said, what exactly is the appeal of hunting the fox? I ask this not as someone who is condemning fox hunters but as someone who wants to understand. Is the chase exhilarating? Is it the thought of acquiring a trophy in the form of a pelt? I mean, I get the appeal of boar and feral hog hunting which is mainly the sport of messing around with a potential dangerous animal(it is something that I definitely will try), but I just don't get fox hunting... Is it like coyote hunting?(another popular pastime here)
I recall from my youth a classmate who managed to take a tree-climing fox on a hunt. He and his quarry were pictured in our local paper.
Mr. Sanjay - With God, all things are possible, including overcoming our base human nature. In fact, it is only with God's help that we can do so. That is what prayer and fasting is for.
Mr. Svar,
To keep us on topic "Capitalism" with a capital C, feral pigs could once be marketed to packing companies which then brought their meat to you in the form of hams, bacon, pork chops, etc. However, the big companies prevailed on the federal government to "protect" the "consumer" from these "dirty swine," so that now there is no market for them, only for people with fiat money to throw away to shoot them. They have become a such a nuance that most folks who are plagued with them simply shoot them and let them rot. A mere fifty years ago, that was not so. My family "owned" about five hundred woods hogs which free ranged over three Louisiana parishes. We marked them in the spring and caught them in the fall and took them to market, with catching and marking done with horses, flair pens and Catahoula Leopards or their cousins the Yellow Mouthed Cur which you have in Texas or used to. Thanks to federal collusion with corporations that market is gone, and we are stuck with the feral pigs.
The fox was in our climes a rascal whose penchant was for chickens, geese and ducks and their eggs. One wily fox could, at least prior to WWII, could hurl an upland subsistence farmer and his family against the K-Line. He was, therefore, on the one hand vermin to be exterminated; on the other hand, perhaps embedded in lore, he was a worthy opponent, not unlike the bootlegger who was hunted by the sheriff by day and visited by the sheriff by night for a kiss of Miss Mason. There is a reason that Rommel was called the Desert Fox. So, the fox hunt is about three sets of comrades, all intertwined: the men, the hounds and the fox. It is the primeval playing out of something deep in our Celtic and Saxon bones: fire, food, libation and story; the music of the hounds and the joy of their voices; and the fox who is both the prey and the conductor of the entire affair, without whom we would be snoring in boredom at home. Modernity does not like the fox hunt for precisely that reason, neither the high hunts of England nor the low hunts among us folk on Black Bayou Bottom. We don't much like Modernity; so the feeling is quite mutual.
It is the primeval playing out of something deep in our Celtic and Saxon bones: fire, food, libation and story; the music of the hounds and the joy of their voices; and the fox who is both the prey and the conductor of the entire affair, without whom we would be snoring in boredom at home. Modernity does not like the fox hunt for precisely that reason, neither the high hunts of England nor the low hunts among us folk on Black Bayou Bottom. We don't much like Modernity; so the feeling is quite mutual.
I think it is broader than Celtic or Saxon, as the Latins I live among seem to like the hunt just fine. (Further south, one finds Latins who also seem to enjoy bullfighting.)
Speaking of modernity and technocracy and the death of the commons, wild boar can actually be sold at market over here, but not before one sends a sample to a lab to test for trichinella spiralis.
@Mr. Yurick: on the intellectual plane I'm not sure I'm "advantaged" at all with respect to Dr. Peters (actually, I am sure I am not). My mind is just in a different place and my intrinsic temperament doubtless a bit different as well, so I come at things from a different angle, albeit an angle that if his last few posts are any indication the good Doctor seems more than capable of relating to.
This is an idea I can get behind. I would gladly make my travel plans and make an advanced cash deposit now (this is a thread on Capitalism, after all, - can't forget about the cash).
Mr. Peters,
Your fine posts about hunting recalled to mind the greatest of all hunting scenes in The Aeneid. Of course the friendships between men and women are not the same and it is a great loss of our times to have misunderstood this difference. James Cooper certainly knew about it and in his leather sticking stories and illustrated this truth through the character Natty Bumpo, Old Hawkeye, and his friend Chingachgook. Wow, what a flood of memories to remember when most living men could still ride, shoot and speak the truth.
Prateek Sanjay on capitalism and base human instincts.
Prateek,
There is no cookie cutter diagram, no straight lined maps, no scientific method, to follow "Capitalism." Revelation helps. Anyone who places their hope in Capitalism has misplaced their hope. Socialist thought they could perfect it, anarchists thought they could free it by enforcing it, at a certain point it is a circular argument because it is truly a false god.
Mr. Peters, thanks for the update. I missed yours on Beowulf, apologies in assuming you hadn't been to the old world i.e., Europe. I should have known better in that nothing you've written would have suggested such. Always appreciate and learn from what you have to write, no lie, just fact, and occasionally some time tested belief, which needless to say is refreshing.
I lived in Germany for over twelve years; there, the commons still made itself manifest in that the commoner could walk across and even camp on property belonging to others; in addition, if one behaved according to custom, tradition and habit, one could forage for nuts, berries, mushrooms, wood, fruit and vegetables. One could "glean" apples and potatoes after the formal harvest. Every fall, my children and I would take our red wagon and gather potatoes, apples and late plumbs along with "Stone Mushrooms," returning to prepare a feast. That is no longer possible here in Louisiana, and I assume in most other states.
There is something else to be said about this issue. How many of your neighbors nowadays would actually behave "according to custom, tradition and habit"?
In rural Norway that sort of quaint romping is (or until recently was) still possible; there are cabins out in the woods where one is free to enter on a day's hike and use the pots, pans, utensils and kitchen appliances to cook and clean. Of course it is understood that one will wash the dishes and put everything back once one has finished. That sort of communal trust is definitely nonexistent in France, and I doubt it was even fourteen years ago, when several of my friends moved from rural England to rural Poitou-Charente and one of the perks was the relatively low crime in the latter as opposed to the former. That is of course no longer the case: delinquency is on the rise all over the land, both in the country and in the city, and while it is true that the biggest offenders are still the disaffected scion one saw back in late 2005, figures are up across-the-board demographically.
There are a number of reasons why we have become societies in which people can no longer trust one another. Mass immigration is one, but something more sinister - and more native - is afoot as well. Capitalist consumerism might have something to do with it, but even then it is sometimes hard to tell what is the cause and what is the symptom.
Mr. Reavis, my favorite hunting story is Faulkner's The Bear, which of course is about more than hunting. I try to reread it every year.
My thoughts on this are all a big jumble, so I ask patience with my ramblings. Having grown up and now attempting to raise children in a Capitalist (with a big “C”) world, I am daily awed at how strong the grip of materialism is in our society. Everything (and I mean literally everything) is now tied to money and what it gets you. For example, whereas in days of yore the village might gather to walk a procession to appease God through the intervention of a saint to lift the torments of a plague, today we have thousands throng to numerous walks and marathons so that enough capital will be raised to finally eradicate breast cancer (money, so long as you have enough of it, is omnipotent, so we believe). Whereas Christians used to purge themselves during Advent and Lent to prepare their souls for the celebrations of Christmas and Easter, Black Friday marks the beginning of the Christmas season which everyone is long sick of by the actual day and Easter baskets appear in stores the day after the gaudy Mardi Gras decorations are boxed away.
But it’s not that – it’s everything. Every character is on a lunchbox or toy of some sort. Even ones long dead like Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore, that is, not the new bogeyman that hangs with Johnny Depp). John Wayne ornaments, Mickey Mouse ties, Snow White pillows . . .etc. I can even find Charlie Chapin dolls and Shakespeare action figures. The only way we know how to appreciate something is by owning it. I read an interesting article a while back by a priest arguing that Disney is prostituting virtue to children by tying classic moral stories with modern merchandizing. Heroism isn’t to be emulated – it’s to be purchased.
And yet, to some degree, advertising is so rooted in our modern experience that it has actually become tied to our memories and emotions. It is a part of the Christmas celebration for many families to walk in some old towne decorated with lights and fake snow and hear the carols. It’s hard to escape certain movie moments that are forever etched in the memory. I remember, at a very young age, crawling through some bug infested drainage pipe to recover a friend’s skateboard wearing my absurd little fedora and thinking firmly to myself that this is what Indiana Jones would have done. And I cannot bring myself to not give gifts at Christmas or limit myself to only homemade type things (much to my children’s relief).
I reckon, to some degree, this has always been a part of the world. Folks longed after relics of both saints and secular events (there was nary a strap of furniture left in poor McLean’s house after Lee formally surrendered to Grant) long before today. So my question is where is the line, and what pushes one over that line? At what point does the seeking of physical things to comfort one about non-physical truths and ideas become a liability? How does one walk this tightrope (and teach children to not fall) in this crass age of commercialism? I recognize the temptation to want to go too far the other direction and try to make one’s home into a monastery, but that doesn’t seem to be the right thing either. Is it the insane (and imaginary) wealth of the world we find ourselves in that makes it so toxic?
In closing I would note that good folks from Chesterton through John Ford and Frank Capra knew, perhaps by instinct, that the banker was our enemy. But, at the same time, you need banks and you need bankers. You have to have some form of capital. This may be answered in later parts, in which case I withdraw my questions, but I guess I’m left wondering how it is, exactly, that this beast with the capital “C” was spawned here and now.
I would be grateful to hear some of y’all’s thoughts on this subject, especially given our pending descent into the madness of the post-Thanksgiving buying bonanza.
" Mr. Reavis, my favorite hunting story is Faulkner's The Bear, "
Every man should have a favorite hunting story.
Dr. Peters,
I am grateful for you taking the time to explain the intricacies of the fox hunt; I must try it one day. On the topic of hunting and capitalism, I have noticed the outrageous fees that landowners in Texas will ask hunters to rid them of a nuisance pest. Most of the hunting land in Texas is privately owned and there are only a few WMAs around for those looking to hunt on public land. No sense of commons here either.
Mr. Nicholas,
All of the forces which you cite and more have played a role: immigration, consumerism, ideology and moral entropy.
In Modernity, we have come to think of the "rule of law" as some written constitution or set of statutory laws or regulations which we all adhere to and which, if it is alleged that we have broken them, we have a claim to "due process" or even "substantive due process." Gone is the fundamental understanding that the rule of law is the set of traditions, customs and habits, particular and peculiar, to a certain commonwealth around which the character of the citizens is trained and through which the common good of that particularly commonwealth is defined. As traditions, customs and habits associated with a people and the land on which they have their being die, the attempt, and I assert, the vain attempt, is to "save" the social order through "law and order," i.e. statutory laws with ever more draconian consequences. A simple example is the old habit in our climes of pulling to the right side of the road, off the pavement and stopping, when one meets an oncoming funeral procession. It was written in no code, in no legislated law and no policy of the department of public safety. It was learned with one's mother's milk. Today, that tradition is dead; however, legislators, trying to make the dead tradition walk and thereby creating a zombie, have mandated by law with the appropriate penalty that one stop. One of my students asked me about two weeks ago why we had the silly law. Why should one stop for some unknown person? I told him that the fact that he had asked the question meant that there was no answer that he could remotely understand.
Mr. Svar,
I admire the fox. I have a special place in my heart for the rascal, be he fox or man. Perhaps some day we will occasion to meet. If so, I will tell you the story, true to its every embellishment, of the fox possessed.
In Modernity, we have come to think of the "rule of law" as some written constitution or set of statutory laws or regulations which we all adhere to and which, if it is alleged that we have broken them, we have a claim to "due process" or even "substantive due process." Gone is the fundamental understanding that the rule of law is the set of traditions, customs and habits, particular and peculiar, to a certain commonwealth around which the character of the citizens is trained and through which the common good of that particularly commonwealth is defined.
Dr. Peters, have you read Joseph de Maistre's Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines? I do not believe an English translation is at présent available, but your observation is basically the thesis of the whole paper.
Correction: such a translation IS in fact available. Search for The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions. Highly recommended in French or in English (I cannot; however, vouch for the quality of any English translation).
Mr. Nicholas,
No, I have not read Joseph de Maistre's work; however, I do read French; therefore, I will forthwith request the book in French as my Christmas gift.
Mr. Peters,
You write: "Gone is the fundamental understanding that the rule of law is the set of traditions, customs and habits, particular and peculiar, to a certain commonwealth around which the character of the citizens is trained and through which the common good of that particularly commonwealth is defined. As traditions, customs and habits associated with a people and the land on which they have their being die, the attempt, and I assert, the vain attempt, is to "save" the social order through "law and order," i.e. statutory laws with ever more draconian consequences."
Yes, indeed. Can one magine the derision the following acts and comments of our founders would illicit today if even remotely touched upon in public.
"The Honorable Congress having thought proper to recommend to The United States of America to set apart Wednesday the 22nd. instant to be observed as a day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, that at one time and with one voice the righteous dispensations of Providence may be acknowledged and His Goodness and Mercy toward us and our Arms supplicated and implored; The General directs that this day also shall be religiously observed in the Army, that no work be done thereon and that the Chaplains prepare discourses suitable to the Occasion."
"Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
It's interesting that the fine old Anglo-Saxon customs of liberty from that germanic bloodline of two tribes Anglen and Saxony which 'invaded' and settled the south and east of Britain and southeastern Scotland giving birth to an England and later starting with the Magna Carta when the nobles demanded their civil rights from King John, sought to preserve those customs on the new soil in America, but maybe forgot as Mr. Peters suggests things need remain right-sized, customary and proportioned for the decent commons to thrive, in their abandoning the Articles for the Constitution.
I don't know with certitude if this is superfluous to a ludicrous degree what I'm about to suggest but even in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Is there really such a thing as 'more perfect'? Does not perfect mean perfect, as perhaps the Articles of Confederation may have been a close approximation in keeping things right-sized. And perhaps as one moves into a notion of more perfect to such an extent goes wrong in attempting to step into an illusion really given human reality, and hence into a fantasy which subsequently could not be maintained? I mean hindsight suggests that, but wasn't it too the first bending of the meaning of a word i.e., 'perfect', into the deformation and impossibility of what the imagination alone suggests as 'more' perfect? Does this departure from reality as it were stem from some flaws within the judaic or puritan or our Christian notions that the cosmos need be 'transformed', that might better be adjusted down or made refined so as not to tip so readily, as such an imbalance toward the patently conceptual or exclusively imaginary? I think so because in joining Mr. Peter's sensibility my instinct is that otherwise one isn't crazy like a fox, but perhaps unwittingly crazy as a loon, not that loons are necessarily crazy as my PC alarm bells are going off, but by which I mean loony or foolish. I certainly don't know at this point allowing for the possibility of my being loony or foolish. It's a question basically, that's all. And in the spirit of tracing things back to an original start, that just might have been a false start?
Mr. Yurick,
You touch on much. The colonial republics referred to as the "thirteen colonies" were in fact, with great variation among them, already "republics," not ideally but certainly functionally, as they seceded from the authority of the British crown. Some of them were already territorially too big to be republics,for instance Virginia, that being one reason why Virginia ceded her "northwest territory" and later Kentucky as North Carolina ceded Tennessee. Jefferson even spoke of the necessity as population would grow of breaking the remaining rump of Virginia into semi-autonomous ward republics, not unlike Swiss cantons. He envisioned a replication of republics as Americans settled to the west, seeing these new republics joining up to five confederations on what is today the territory of the United States. Jefferson was not the only one who understood scale, demographic and territorial scale. Yet, the "Drang" to centralization, always present in the political realities of man but dangerously formalized by Hobbes in his Leviathan, would prevail. In 1865, the nascent Hobbesian state, paralleling its counterparts in Germany and Italy,had managed to destroy two unions of constitutionally federated republics: that of the remaining United States of America and that of the Confederate States of America. The last gasp of this republican spirit was under the administrations of Grover Cleveland, perhaps even there not being a "last gasp" but merely the gases of the bloated corpse making their final effusion. What classical nationalists like Pat Buchanan do not understand is that the national state which emerged in 1865 was merely the Hobbesian guise. It now no longer needs its nationalist guise, nor can it tolerate it; for it must expand into the global, flattening and subsuming all other jurisdictions and authorities, anti-subsidiarity and therein, ultimately, anti-Trinity and anti-Christ.