Tag: aristocracy

Oh the Gambling Man Gets Rich

I recently saw The Queen of Versailles, a documentary that chronicles the lifestyle of a billionaire Florida entrepreneur and his family. At the screening that I went to, one of the film’s producers—I believe it was Danielle Renfrew—happened to be in attendance and was willing to take questions from the audience after the show. When asked how she and her collaborators decided to use the Siegel family as the subject of a film, she answered saying that they had wanted to investigate lifestyles of the rich because they were so different from the typical middle class way of living. She said that they chose the Siegels in large part because they couldn’t get anyone else to talk to them. Old money families tend to be more privative and defensive about their privilege. She attributed the Siegels’ relative openness to the fact that neither David nor Jacqueline Siegel began their lives rich. Because David made his fortune in business, he believed himself to be deserving of everything he had; and because Jackie still regards people of the middle class as her peers and cares what they think of her, she feels compelled to court the attention of the public and chase fame. This idea of the rich secluding themselves from the general society and feeling a certain amount of compunction in regard to their unearned wealth is a special manifestation of bourgeois society. The films of Jamie Johnson are excellent documents of this sense of guilt and alienation that many rich people harbor. In a previous age, they might have seen themselves as divinely appointed to privilege as a hereditary right. But living as they do in the bourgeois age, an age that honors thrift, productivity, merit, and self-reliance, their lives are contradictory to the values of the time. They see themselves as very much apart from everyone else, out-of-touch, somewhat irrelevant to the way the world functions.

But the subjects of The Queen of Versailles are rich people of a different variety, and I wonder if that variety might offer some indication of what the post-industrial aristocracy will look like. Unlike Jaime Johnson’s ancestors, who accumulated their fortune through invention and production, David Siegel became rich through real estate speculation and manipulating consumer markets. He is a magnate of the rentier economy. He produces no new capital, adds no extra wealth to the system. He just takes money that has already been made by someone and gives them garbage product in return.
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What was really interesting to me is that David Siegel comes off in The Queen of Versailles as a man of perfectly moderate intelligence. He seems to possess no exceptional talent for administration or analysis. He seems to be a poor leader who bullies people and promotes people who are loyal to him over people who are good at they jobs. And yet he runs an enormously successful business and is one of the richest men in the country. How is it that the system should reward such an individual? My belief is that Siegel’s mediocre intelligence and substandard business sense might have actually been what made him a billionaire. Most businesses are started to supply an existing market demand. One can expect to sell exactly as much product as what the market is asking for. Siegel plunged into the time-share market far deeper than what demand would have supported initially. He then implemented a number of coercive marketing methods to manufacture demand and stimulate the market beyond what it could bear. He made as much money as he took crazy risks that no one was willing to make, and then ended up cashing in big because no one else had followed him into investments that miraculously turned lucrative. Alongside sleazy sales policies, Siegel got rich by making bad decisions that a smarter person would not have made. His stupidity was appears to have been an asset. It’s unclear whether Siegel’s investments were motivated by brashness or simple ineptitude, but either way, his prosperity was a mistake of fortune. More and more, as our economy abandons industry and commodity and transitions into a rentier model, this is probably going to become the most common way we see someone get rich in postindustrial society. More people will fail than every before and for the few who do succeed, their triumph will seem like a malfunction in the system. This is likely the final stage of capitalism, when people are just pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping for the best, and then probably dumping the consequences of their bad investments off on to someone else. As Woody Guthrie said during the Great Depression, “The gamblin’ man is rich and the working man is poor.”

The Demise of the Productive Classes

In a previous post, I described the European aristocracy’s fading relevance during the 19th century. I characterized this decline as a cultural shift, perpetuated by changing attitudes toward social roles and class following the Age of Enlightenment. I do not disavow this claim, but I must concede that really the more influential factors were economic. The development of industrial production in European cities caused an absolute explosion of capital which propelled the productive classes into a place of sudden prominence. With their fortunes still tied to the land and to agricultural output the aristocracy largely missed out on the industrial boom. Thus their wealth and power were eventually eclipsed by that of a new enterprising class which was more interested in generating new capital rather than protecting old. This was the bourgeois revolution, an age when society ceased to be ordered around obedience to traditional authority and transitioned instead into an organized system in which individuals conformed to capital markets to discover and exploit opportunities for new production. It should sound familiar because it is our own age. It is the dawn of modernity, industrial development and the rise of market capitalism. As for the old order, it was swept aside in the tumult and allowed to burn itself out in quite resignation.

The lesson to be learned is that class systems change, often very rapidly; sometimes in violent revolution, sometimes as a symptom of changing economic conditions. Ostensibly, our modern class system has progressed has not progressed much beyond what it was following the overthrow of the Ancien Régime. Our society is still ordered around property ownership, market exchange and obedience to law. According to Marx this is “the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,” invented for the growth of capital and freely expressed productivity. And like all systems it follows the same pattern of ascent and decline. Marx predicted that the bourgeois order would be toppled by the proletariat and that the working classes would rise up to supplant the owning classes, in the same way that the owning classes wrested control away from the noble class. It would seem history has not played out that way, not exactly. In fact, one could argue it is the working classes which have been marginalized over the course of modern history and have gradually been rendered irrelevant. The cause of this unexpected turn of events is 1: automation of work processes and 2: globalization of capital. Productivity within the world’s post-industrial economies is derived from mechanized labor; this has been the primary reason productivity has continued increasing in the industrialized world even though population growth has more or less stalled out. Outside of the post-industrial economies, traditional industry and human labor remain relevant and continue to escalate, but the effect this has on core capitalist economies is such that industrial labor vanishes. Slavoj Zizek explains our current economic milieu quite nicely in this article from The New Left Review:

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How else should we conceive the connexion between the two mega-powers, the United States and China, for example? They relate to each other more and more as Capital and Labour. The US is turning into a country of managerial planning, banking, servicing etc., while its ‘disappearing working class’ (except for migrant Chicanos and others who mainly toil in the service economy) is reappearing in China, where a large proportion of American goods, from toys to electronic hardware, are manufactured in ideal conditions for capitalist exploitation: no strikes, little safety, tied labour, miserable wages. Far from being merely antagonistic, the relationship of China and US is actually also symbiotic. The irony of history is that China is coming to deserve the title of a ‘working class state’: it is turning into the state of the working class for American capital. (“Why We All Love to Hate Heider“)

Of course, there are still masses of people in the core economies that require employment and ever greater quantities of capital floating around those economies that require spending. Consequently we see the formation of vast service sectors which emerge out of the market to cater to that thin layer of citizenry who still has money to toss at it. But where does the wealth of the rich originate? Certainly not from the generation of capital. This is wealth derived from a rentier economy. There was a time when people became rich by extracting raw resource from the earth and refining them into manufactured products. The main driving force of the old industrial economy was creation of capital goods (goods used to create more goods). Industry supported industry and the primary aim of industry was to expand productive capacity. Now industry functions to support a sprawling consumer economy which seems to just feed on itself in a recursive fashion: people go to work to buy goods which other people go to work to make so that they themselves can buy goods that still some more people went to work to make and so on and so on. I think we can interpret this state of events as indication that we live in an age of obvious decline. The question then becomes where will we go once this decline has damaged our social fabric so thoroughly that the forces which keep everything together dissolve and change becomes inevitable? So far we’ve witnessed an increasingly exaggerated stratification of wealth—completely to be expected, I think—and lately it seems that mass unemployment will be another manifestation of the transition. But these are not final outcomes; they are transformational occurrences. I think there is something else in store for us. I haven’t a clue what.

Basis for Aristocratic Entitlement

It is counterintuitive to consider, but the entrenchment of feudalism during the 9th and 10th centuries AD as the dominant and enduring social order in Europe might have actually signaled the conclusion of knighthood’s practical relevance in society. After the fall of Rome, the device of nobility was introduced by the Germanic tribal leaders as a means of stabilizing military allegiance, and later, under the Carolingians, a system for delegating governmental power. Title was awarded to those who kept the peace and assisted with the leadership of the empire. Once the Frankish throne had dissolved, there was no longer any central authority to validate noble title and to employ individuals to military and administrative office. Nonetheless, the noblemen retained their titles as emblems of prestige. Just as the 5th century Frankish chieftains derived legitimacy and license to rule from their foederati pacts with Rome long after the empire’s collapse, the medieval lords continued using their titles to assert their proprietary rights over the land. But beyond justification for one’s privilege, noble title ceased to fulfill any practical purpose. Title became strictly ceremonial. It ceased to be a position within the apparatus of power—due to the fact that that apparatus had gone defunct—and persisted instead as a social role, a pattern of behaviors and relationships that denoted power, and by denoting power also substantiated it. Auerbach, in his chapter on the courtly romance, explains the growing irrelevance of nobility and how this contrasted paradoxically with its enduring centrality in the European social life:

“The ethics of feudalism, the ideal conception of the perfect knight, thus attained a very considerable and very long-lived influence. Concepts associated with it—courage, honor, loyalty, mutual respect, refined manners, service to women—continued to cast their spell on the contemporaries of completely changed cultural periods. Social strata of later urban and bourgeois provenance adopted this ideal, although it is not only class-conditioned and exclusive but also completely devoid of reality. As soon as it transcends the sphere of mere conventions of intercourse and has to do with the practical business of the world, it proves inadequate and needs to be supplemented, often in a manner most unpleasantly in contrast to it. But precisely because it is so removed from reality, it could—as and ideal—adapt itself to any and every situation, at least as long as there were ruling classes at all.” (Mimesis, 137)
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Auerbach implies here that nobility remains a potent force in Europe precisely because it became divorced from its operative meaning and was re-established as a signifier of importance and proper conduct. So, though a count may no longer carry out a ministerial roles in the county of a kingdom, he is still viewed as a figure of authority in his particular precinct and is treated deferentially. A marquis may no longer govern the eastern march, but it is agreed by all that he and his progeny should be allowed to sit in court and that he is entitled to favors from the king. The code of chivalrous conduct was adopted by the European aristocracy to moderate power and aggression between military adversaries, but it also provides a protocol of behavior and ethics that distinguishes the noble classes from the common folk. In modern life we rely on laws to secure our rights to property and liberty; but rule of law was faint and only intermittent in medieval Europe. State power was not uniformly obeyed under the Ancien Régime. Only rule of god was respected, which was made manifest by hereditary history and fortune.

Code of Chivalry

Had the empire of Charlemagne endured; had the rules of succession been codified and dynastic power established, it might have resulted in a rebirth of civilization. Europe might have escaped its dark age and the Fall of Rome would have been viewed by history simply as a transition from Paganism to Christianity rather than the termination of an era. Europe responded to the collapse of the Frankish throne in 843 much the same way it did to the withdrawal of Roman rule 400 years earlier. Rule became localized. Lords exercised sovereignty over their individual fiefs and fought private wars with one another for additional territory. The church once again attempted to maintain order among the nobility—with mixed results—through adjudication and moral proselytizing. Knights, who had previously been regulated through their alliances to their lords and subordination to the throne, now acted independently and fought mostly to suit their own interests. They went around extorting the peasantry and robbing towns. Without a royal standard to march under the warrior class in Europe was directionless. It was around this time that knights began to adopt the chivalric code. Chivalry was devised as a remedy to the noble caste’s degeneration into a class of thieves and cutthroats. The chivalrous knight swore loyalty to all nobles of greater rank than he, not just his own lord. He vowed to protect the weak and to uphold the peace. He dedicate himself to living a virtuous life above all other pursuits. The tradition of martial discipline promulgated by an organized military system was no longer available to knights and other soldiers of this time. Instead, they submitted themselves to a strict program of self-discipline. With this cultural shift, knights were supposedly made docile. They became gentlemen.

Well, the condition holds a range of causes related to tadalafil tabs respitecaresa.org daily life and activities as well. It works on the issues by repairing the blood flow towards the male organ. discount viagra buying here Normally ergonomic assessment is for employee’s chair,desk, mouse, viagra prescription etc. Women get a better chance to enjoy pleasurable orgasms with enlarged phallus as more friction is produced levitra generic cheap on the wall of the vagina. It is an interesting trait of the European aristocracy: the entire edifice of manners, of refinement, of respectability, all of the behavioral attributes that we come to identify with “good breeding” developed out of a need to suppress antagonism between the powerful, so that they would not tear society to pieces fighting one another. And the greater their power grew the more exaggerated became their expressions of composure and self-control; while all the time, lurking beneath that veneer of restraint was the same anarchic potential, never fully resolved from the dark ages.


Class Antagonisms in Early Modern Italian Theater

A few years ago I saw an 18th century Italian play put on by the University of Colorado Theater Department. It was very dull; acting was mediocre; stage direction and production desire were pretty uninspired. Costumes were good. I would have forgotten about it completely were it not for the fascinating constructions of Enlightenment Age class antagonism. The play was a throw-away piece by Carlo Goldoni, a Venetian playwright who lived for most of the 1700s and who took special interest in portraying the newly emerging middle class. This revival that I saw was a lethargic comedy of manners about the daughter of a modest merchant who is courted simultaneously by a rich but tactless bourgeois dolt and a duplicitous count who was divested of his estate and has taken to hustling the country gentry for his bread. The two suitors are interesting character types. I imagine both would have been recognizable to people of that time. The bourgeois cittadino is coarse and simple. He is incapable of conversing on subjects besides those he is acquainted with through business. He does not ride. He does not hunt. He knows nothing about books, music or art. He finds no pleasure in good food. He is a comic figure because he is so dull and rigid. He knows enough to make money but he is too little cultured to know how to spend it. I feel like such a creature must have seemed very puzzling to the old ruling classes. Auerbach talks about how the noble aristocracy of the early modern period saw the new bourgeoisie as intellectually deficient and absurd in their values. Men of middle classes earned their fortunes by cultivating specialized talents that were utilitarian. Gentlemen of the aristocracy avoided all productive work as an entitlement of their position. They received rigorous education but were free to study in a variety of disciplines. During the 16th and 17th century, learned men were appraised by the breadth of their knowledge and their ability to converse on a number of topics. Middle class men who practiced professions were thought to be as dim as any peasant. They were just prosperous, nothing more. Of course, the economic environment of a developing and modernizing Europe valued things differently, and it rewarded bourgeoisie professionalism quite handsomely. So, in the Goldoni play, it is the bourgeois factory owner who is powerful and free, and the aristocratic count who has devoted his life to refinement and observance of custom is dissipated vulnerable to the whims of fortune. It is impossible for him to reverse his decline. Tradition prohibits it, and he is too pathetic a creature to fend for himself anyway.
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Erich Auerbach and the Reading Public

The full title of Auerbach’s monumental project is Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. It is an examination how writers went about the work of portraying the world around them in a way that was comprehensible and recognizable to their readers. The analysis covers every major stage and stylistic program of the European literary tradition, beginning with the Homeric epics and the Torah and ending with 20th century modernism. Each chapter represents a new development in aesthetic attitude and approach to creative representation. Auerbach chooses a work that is exemplary of its time and surveys the text’s language and theme. It is intended that the text act as an artifact and that it disclose the identity and attributes of the era of which it was a part. As a work of literary criticism, I’d say Mimesis is unexceptional. Auerbach is able to provide unique interpretation for only a few of the text, those that he is most familiar and has made a career writing about. The rest he just reproduces the standard interpretations that are already widely accepted and which offer little besides a starting point for more penetrating analysis. Many of us remember the major controversy that erupted from having viagra pills from canada prayer in schools and the even better news is, no prescription is required. Erectile dysfunction is said to be a silent killer that murder viagra generika male sexual desires every night. How to buy generic sildenafil online? One can buy the efficient and effective viagra free consultation 100 mg pills (generic sildenafil citrate) online from our medical stores at an unbeatable price; Buying from us has several advantages such as- *Genuine and effective medications*FDA approved*cheap price*Discounts on bulk purchase*secure way of transactions*no prescription required*doorstep delivery Visit our online pharmacy now and place an order for the medicine. it will reach to. But, the question is which one has the viagra generic canada most successful rate of turning impossible into possible. At its worst, Mimesis feels like an undergraduate lecture, albeit an exquisitely composed and unusually erudite undergraduate lecture. I think the work is more interesting and more useful as an historical treatise. Auerbach is able to distill the tastes, attitudes, emotions, manners of speech, and modes of thinking of an entire age into 20 or 30 pages, and he’s perfectly accurate, remarkably effective. His most profound insights have to do not with the texts under consideration but with the people who produced those texts and who read them. Invariably we are talking about an elite class of folk when we are talking about literary audiences. These are individuals who shaped history, who led society from one age to the next. We learn more about the way they thought and how they saw the world by investigating their entertainments and fantasies than we do by studying their achievements and aspirations. There are few better scholars of the European ruling classes than Erich Auerbach. What he has to say about them is endlessly fascinating.

Somber Diminution of European Aristocracy

A few days ago I tweeted a quote from Auerbach’s Mimesis relating to the state of the European aristocracy at the close of the Napoleonic Wars. A new French king was crowned and the old order was put back into place, but the ideals of the revolution continued to circulate throughout European society. The Age of Enlightenment had broken over the continent and rational order was the new program around which civic life was to be organized. Even the aristocracy—above all the aristocracy!—acknowledged the supremacy of reason and welcomed its ascension into the public sphere, but by doing so, they were also implicitly calling into question their own places in the future of Europe. Religion and feudalism, the two great pillars of the medieval society, were now supplanted by the more rigorous, more totalizing forces of modernity. Nobility ceased to serve any practical purpose. It no longer signaled power or even wealth. It became merely a feature of social status, a sign of dignity and moral standing. And so Auerbach writes (I shall quote it fully here since I was not able to do so in twitter’s 140 characters):

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“As these people are conscious that they no longer themselves believe in the thing they represent, and that they are bound to be defeated in public argument, they choose to talk of nothing but the weather, music, and court gossip.” (Mimesis, 456)

In this passage, Auerbach explains why aristocratic life had grown so stale and sedate in the 19th century. In previous ages, men of the aristocracy were daring, inquisitive thinkers. Their educations were wide-ranging and their interests multifarious. The Age of Enlightenment came about in the salons of French marquises, and Italian counts, and the courts of minor German princes. It was the aristocracy that retrieved from antiquity ideas like an organized civil service, the conscript army, and scientific method. They sponsored the translation of classics into vernacular tongues and paid to distribute them in print. But with an employed civil service, there was no need for a court. If the state could levy an army through conscription, there was no need for knights. If scientists could understand natural phenomena through experimentation, liturgical explanations of creation posited by the church became impractical and unreliable by comparison. With the Age of Enlightenment the European aristocracy had essentially dug its own grave. In it’s inevitable culmination, the French Revolution, this was at times very literally the case. But it was not yet the end. The nobles still controlled the land; they still had the support and obedience of the rural peasantry. The European monarchies prevailed against Napoleon and the Revolutionary army. They had preserved themselves for the time being, but they would never be able to reverse the historical inertia generated by the Revolution and the Enlightenment. The aristocracy was discredited and had not the means to argue otherwise. And so, throughout the 19th century and into the industrial age they behaved as delicately as possible so as not to disturb the status quo, and they clung tenaciously to what little they had remaining.