MASS v PLURAL

THE SOCIETAL IDEALS OF THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT

We’re taking a brief break from the lengthy “Lessons of Pluralism” series for this post. But don’t worry, it will resume soon. This is another of those nomenclature posts, where my objective is to set out and explain some terms I’ll be using in the future. So that it isn’t necessary to go through the explanation in that future context – inserting a counterproductive digression – and having the option to simply link back to this post for those who want the fuller exposition.

For a while now I’ve been wanting a catchier characterization of the kinds of societies associated with temporalist and spatialist values and dispositions. Obviously, I had the terms time and space biased, drawing directly from Innis. But those are equally as obviously somewhat esoteric terms: handy for those who have read my earlier writing (or Innis himself), but no doubt mysterious for those who haven’t. Also, when speaking in a contemporary inflection, while associating the political referents of left and right to space and time bias had the benefit of drawing the genuinely intellectually curious into a deeper exploration of my phenotype wars arguments, such references equally had the potential to obscure understanding and actually of obstructing both understanding and curiosity.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not apologizing for using a specialized, even esoteric lexicon. Such shorthand is often essential for combining clarity and brevity, facilitating the penetration of new intellectual territory with the minimum of time wasted on exposition and repetition. And if that contributes to a kind of intellectual cabalism, well, frankly, something like that is probably the normative condition for the advance of knowledge.¹

Still, for all that, if someone does think the ideas are important enough, it seems wise to attempt to reduce the obstacles to entry at least a little. If it proves possible to generate a nomenclature which is a little more accessible, and evocative of more semiotic familiarity. Something like that. So, I think, perhaps as shorthand synonyms (though frankly they’re probably more metonyms), for time and space biased society, respectively, I’ll propose the terms pluralist and mass society.

I find these terms especially convenient and valuable when discussing the manifestations of spatialism and temporalism in the contemporary, post-French Revolution context, in clarifying the meaning of left and right. As long-time readers will also know, and discussed at length in my recent book, A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars, I’ve determined that the colloquial vernacular around those political identity terms is a manifestation of the left’s victory in the French Revolution – finally achieved by the end of WWI. And as the old truism goes: the victors write the history. Increasingly, over the course of the 20th century, the original right of the French Revolution (the original source of those political identity terms) has been written out of the Overton Window, to mix metaphors.

Instead, today, what is (from the perspective of the French Revolution) an in-house dispute on the left – should there be more emphasis upon the power of the centralist sovereign or upon the “freedom” (euphemism for deracination) of the individual – is passed off as a bitter age-old battle of the left vs the right. The actual, original, historical right, which disrupts this symbiotic circuit of centralist sovereign-deracinated individual, is written out of the history, framed out of the Overton Window. I feel the notion of mass society captures this dynamic quite well.

Though much less popular or commonly heard today than it was back in the mid-20th century, when it grew out of sociology and sociopsychology, associated with the likes of Erich Fromm and David Riesman, the term mass society nicely captures the dynamic of the left, as defined by the allegiances observed in the National Assembly during the French Revolution. We saw this dynamic in action in my examination of the historical scholarship on the peasant revolts during the French Revolution – also covered in my recent book. The revolutionaries both sought to suppress communal associations – such as trade guilds and Church parishes – through strong state intervention, and to ensure a radically individualized labor market.

A strong centralist sovereignty, atomistic individualism, and free markets were never at odds with each other, despite what the current charade of left-right disputation (again, really, just an in-house dispute on the left) would have us believe. On the contrary, a centralist sovereign was essential to destroy (and keep suppressed) the genuinely pluralist institutions which had previously stood between the isolated individual and the centralist sovereign. Other thinkers covered on this Substack, and in my recent book, such as Polanyi, Nisbet, and of course most recently Grossi, have reiterated this point with a wide range of historical evidence.

The term “mass society,” it seems to me, nicely captures that dynamic, of an unarticulated aggregation of deracinated individuals; all, as a consequence of their social isolation, members of what Riesman called The Lonely Crowd, subject to the collectivizing power of the centralist sovereign: a sovereign that maintains that mass society relationship through the relentless vilification, and even criminalization, of any pluralist institutions which would presume to take any de facto, much less de jure, sovereignty upon itself.

In keeping with Piccone’s artificial negativity thesis (see my recent book, or here), during the 20th century, some ostensibly pluralist institutions were allowed, even on occasion encouraged, such as labor unions. This though was only insofar as they were thoroughly Gomperist, integrated into the legal monism of the centralist sovereign. Unions or laborist practices (such as wildcat strikes) that threatened the sovereignty of that legal monist regime were brutally suppressed by both private and public militia.

By the late 20th century, as the ruling managerial class turned to globalist geo-arbitrage strategies, even the domesticated Gomperist unions became increasingly outré. At least, in the private sector. In the managerial class bastion of the “civil service,” unions have if anything blossomed into a fantastic wealth pump, in which different factions of the managerial class pretend to bargain against each other, playing Monopoly with taxpayers’ money. So, today, even those timid obstructions to mass society have been largely removed from the scene.

Parenthetically, it’s worth mentioning as well, that this pluralist and mass dichotomy is useful for making other kinds of distinctions between left/spatialist and right/temporalist ideals beyond simply generalized society. A similar point can, for instance, be made in the distinction between mass democracy and pluralist democracy. Mass democracy would refer again to the unarticulated aggregation of voters attending periodic elections to legitimize their “representatives” as cogs within the machinery of centralist sovereignty. Pluralist democracy would be captured in something like the direct governance of the Swiss cantons or the guilds of the medieval towns, as discussed by Mack Walker in his book on German hometowns (see here).

Key to such a distinction is both the scale and quality of the democratic experience; it has long been observed that democracy only works at small, humanized scale. Beyond that it increasingly relies upon a professional bureaucracy and so succumbs to all the dangers foreseen by Weber (and Robert Michels) of passing down that path, with the growth of spatialist bureaucratic and instrumental rationality. Again, all that is discussed at length in my recent book, A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars. So as much as mass society, mass democracy provides a valuable juxtaposition to pluralist institutions and practices. Likewise, foreshadowing a point I’ll make in a future post, it is productive to distinguish between mass and pluralist federalism. But we’ll cover that when we get to it.

It is true that this mid-20th century interest in mass society was explained as an effort to understand the popularity of “totalitarian” regimes such as seen in the German Third Reich and the Soviet Union. But as I flesh out in my earlier book, The Managerial Class on Trial, National Socialism and Soviet communism were just different – culturally and historically specific – strategies of the 20th century managerial revolution. As such, they’re simply diverse manifestations of contemporary spatialism. So, even accepting the premises of the initial mid-20th century sociology on this point, mass society seems like an elegant turn of phrase to succinctly capture the left symbiosis.

And, as should be clear by now, especially in light of my extensive series on the lessons of legal pluralism, the right in the National Assembly, during the French Revolution, standing in defense of the crown, the aristocracy, the church, the guilds, and in fact the medieval constitution of a corporate society, were the defenders of legal and institutional pluralism. That’s why I’ll juxtapose to the left/spatialist ideal of a mass society, the temporalist and (original, real?) right’s ideal of a pluralist society.

Hopefully, this will make sense in light of work done here up until the present, and may make it a little smoother sailing semantically and rhetorically in the work yet to come. Next post, we return to our series on the Lessons of Legal Pluralism, close to concluding our discussion of Grossi’s impressive history of European law. So, if you want to be up on the latest in this dissection of the legal pluralist tradition, and haven’t yet, please…

And if you know of others who’d be interested in the kinds of things we discuss here, please…

Meanwhile: Be seeing you!

1. An interesting take on such a claim is Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2014).