Welcome, my dear gentlemen. To-day Ic am going to be analysing the production content and the claß character which imbues and interacts with high culture.
First, Ic call a cwote from an economic textbook Ic have been in my relaxatory time reading.
'The source of capital in a private property economy is saving by individuals. It was Smith's view that labour could not accumulate capital because the level of wages permitted only the satisfaction of immediate consumption desires. The landowning claß [aristocracy/gentilhommcracy] have incomes sufficient to accumulate capital, but they spend them on unproductive labour to satisfy their immense desires for high living [high culture]. It is the members of the rising industrialist claß, striving to accumulate capital to increase their wealth by saving and investment, who are the benefactors of society'
This wonderful little summation of the answer to my life's dire cwestion comes from the History of Economic Theory: Scope, Method, and Content by Master Landreth, from Chapter II: Adam Smith, page forty-three.
So what is it that this paßage demonstrates with such magnificent force of clarity (with some aid from my brackets)? It demonstrates why Ic no longer include Thomas Jefferson among the centrist founders of the United States, but like Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine as a true revolutionary: the rejection of property for the pursuit of happineß, or high culture as we would say now as the most revolutionary act, as well as the denial of bourgeois totalist legality, that when croßed, the folc not simply have the right to revolt, but the duty to, in watering the tree of liberty with the remains of legalistic government.
Culture in its purest form, in its higher state, is anathema to capital, or the will of capital. Holding an orchestral play could never begin to rival the profit that a factory by comparison makes. Likewise, a restaurant usually cannot compete against a fast-food place, and this fact Ic have seen locally with mine own eyes. Indeed, the contradiction goes further: capitalist markets specialise in spreading the contamination called maß-'culture', with in mind the creation of fast, cheap, unfulfilling, one size fits all consumerism. Each individual piece of aristocratic high culture is finely, personally tailored to be not merely materially satisfying, but spiritually so.
The burghers, the capitalists, or industrialists what have you, are ideologically incapable of accepting the alternative of high culture to exist alongside their maß consumer anti-culture. Ic suspect that this is why politic has dwindled to no more than a dog race. If they cannot afford fineße, then let them eat circuses! And where has this nihilistic cwest for currency and capital gotten the planet? Near the edge of climate apocalypse. If the ruling claß, or at least the claß with the most economic power, sees value in nothing except value as a monetary measure, then that is a truly frightening prospect.
Another great separation which occurs between the aristocrat and the capitalist is the nature of their employment of labour. The noble edelmann does not rely on inhumane factory and such production, instead 'employing' two kinds of labour, contracting the independent productivity of the peasantry, and more accurately hiring servants, which are not productive labourers in the traditional sense, but are agents of cultural development. Peasants, by owning and operating their own means of production, and utilising the commodities produced from it, maintain their humanity. The servants do not even enter the labour proceß proper, existing within a semi-familial contract with their aristocrat and his household. So too does the servant maintain his humanity (and perhaps finds it enhanced by belonging in the family structure, and by being a culturual actor). The capitalist is completely uninterested in having any real relation with the workers outside that of employer. The capitalist does not hire humans as such, but organic, sentient machines also called 'humans' (though not treated anything near like the former humans) to run his machines, and then employs machines called foremen or managers to order the 'human' machines in such a manner that increases the productivity of the latter, literal machines. It is a case of being a pet, or being a piece, a pawn, a means.
If, hypothetically speaking, a serious aristocratic party were to emerge, then Ic should think it the obligation of every gentleman and environmentalist to duly consider voting for and participating in this new party. The aristocracy, Ic trust, has learned its leßon from being overthrown by the burghers, and shall thus serve a reign agreeable to most folc, much more agreeable than the regime at present.
Well, the cultural cwestions will not all be solely solved by to-day, of that Ic am sure. Until a solution for the entire cheß board has beeen found, it is up to every individual gentleman to help preserve culture in his own way.
Ic am, and shall yet ever be, your most
faithful of gentilhomme-philosophers.
An Extended Addendum
Ye cenna, the cwestion which led to my political and philosophical awakening was none other than the cultural cwestion (or rather in large part). Whilst this 'discipline' has since generated many smaller encompaßing cwestions, the most significant one, the crucial one, still remains 'the bourgeois or the gentilhomme?'. Inextricably liked to the economic cwestion with its social reverberations, Ic have dedicated much time and reading to this little discipline. Ic have been considered foolish for engaging with this subject as often as Ic have, or at all. But the greatest of motivated political wills derives from a sense of sacred duty, and from a sense that the doesan is a noble doesan. Ic could never abandon three-hundred years of high European culture to extinction, nay!
The cultural cwestion opens an entirely new dimension to the discourse of history and politic, and can really shape a particular influence on how one examines the proceß of political history. Ic can name Roußeau and Jefferson immediately, for in the case of the latter, what at first appears to be no more than a matter of wording choice all of a sudden reveals a representation of a major shift in political thinking (aristocratic 'happineß' [high culture] over burgher accumulation of property and capital). Ic have been planning such a project of interpreted reading for a while, but now that the reading club of which Ic am an Executive Committee member is so busy, Ic doubt there to be enough time this or the coming months to embark on the planned reading.
The recent wave of anti-Enlightenment thought was, although truncated to the colder corners of discourse, still very interesting to observe from a cultural standpoint. Though to my shame Ic was not able to read much of the material that was coming out. Ic will say however that the candle of this revived strand of thought seemed to peter out very cwickly. Of course, when the mainstream media and the most powerful governments in the world are founded on the ideological premises one is critieking, Ic suppose that this is practically inevitable. Ic have yet unsubstantiated notion that some of the new theorists who were a part of this philosophical trend realised that wealth was not to be made this way, and transitioned into craß-politic anti-socialist pamphleteers and the like. A tragedy, truly: the anti-Enlightenment material, perhaps not anymore original, raised some interesting points of discußion not much heard in the modern conglomeration media and academia.
Ic have many endeavours in the planning stage regarding the discipline of culture. Once Ic at long last get some more time and bookshelves to hoist my many boxed books, the reading stages of the plans should be able to accelerate from their present slow pace, to hopefully getting underway.
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