I comment on this post quite a while after you wrote it.
The power of idealism is obvious, is it not. There are people possessed by ideas that devote their entire life and energy to them : utopian, activists, eccentrics, some entrepreneurs. Some of them succeed and are celebrated as visionaries who brought their ideas to bear.
It takes a lot of knowledge and a second level of analysis, at an evolutionary level to reach a better understanding. How come that some eccentric academics created whole new fields, that some activists succeeded in imposing changes to social practices, that some entrepreneurs brought sweeping economic changes ? Whereas most others were laughed at then forgotten. Because the endeavours of some were cogent with the ruling ideology and they were either actively favoured or their opponents actively disfavoured by members of the ruling class. Such a step is far from obvious to most thinkers.
Before the age of the press, radio, television, and internet, an idealist had to gather a following, establish a school, and send well-trained students elsewhere to see his ideas triumph. Preaching to the rulers was not enough. Change was slow and organic because it required gradual convincing. Your analysis would not work then. However since the advent of the era of the masses, the success of an idea relies on it being broadcast hence the enormous power of those who control access to the media, all of them drawn from the managerial class. Your analysis is spot on.
Back to Reno's work in his own line of thought. Are the strong gods returning ? I see a mediatic exaggeration of the populist jolts to justify an increase in the "legitimate" repressive arsenal of the state. I see an enduring weakness of the organisations that cater to the interest of the lower classes. I see a sterilisation of their vote through channeling to parties excluded from parliamentary alliances or through channeling to representatives that disregard them. I see the demoralisation continue unabated. So what is useful in this book ?
I enjoy seeing you use the acute accent in my pseudonym.
It is funny that you bring up this post, as I was just in the process of trying to decide if it had a place in the forthcoming book. I'm still undecided.
So, to be clear, my objection to "idealism" is at the epistemological level. That one is committed to, or guided by, an ideal is fine. I just believe that those ideals are, and must be, explained in materialist (ultimately, of course, biological) terms. But I made that case as well as I'm able in the post.
On populism, I'm not sure I entirely disagree with you. I certainly agree the media has been vilifying populism for purposes of legitimizing oppressive state power. No argument there. There's a concerted effort underway to attempt to create in the public mind an equivalency between populism and fascism or Nazism. Which is funny, as it would be difficult to come up with two political movements more conceptually opposed to each other. As usual, I emphasize that I'm talking about historical North American populism. I appreciate that there's a different valence to the term in Europe. I also agree that -- in contrast to its historical legacy -- contemporary populism has been too focused on either electoral politics or street protests.
Where it sounds like we might disagree is that I may have more hope for populism than you do. But then, as I've always emphasized. Sure, contemporary populism remains a faint shadow of its historical movement. If it were to recover this more institutional, communitarian pluralist vein of its tradition, it would be a more formidable challenge to managerial class rule. Though of course it would be even more viciously attacked. I don't know if you read my review of Parvini's book. I'll include the URL, as it might clarify my position.
As always, thanks for your contribution to the comments. And comments to old articles is actually fun, as it prompts me to review what I've written in the past, to evaluate whether my thinking has changed.
In English the acute accent plays a role in pronunciation and I prefer the ending in "e" than in "i".
I concur that material conditions do hold an outsize influence on humans compared to most other factors. Nevertheless I believe you place to much emphasis on the biological conditioning at the expense of other material factors : (1) geography determines humans in a way that goes much further than biological adaptation ; (2) frequent activities in gainful work and leisure and especially the parts of the body involved and their solicitation are both determined by the abilities and do modify the body ; (3) language and the categories of thinking it provides ; (4) the human environment.
One last point: an important characteristic of man's brain is its great plasticity which induces the mirror phenomena of long-lasting ability to learn and forget. This crucial aspect is something that I have hardly seen utilised in any serious discussion except when facing a barrage of progressive propaganda enjoining the refractory to adapt.
Oh, so we're both named after the same Archangel. Well, nice to meet you Michel.
I'm a bit tired today, so may not be in top expositional form. But I'd object that your point (1) is impossible. There can be no environmental influence, geographic or otherwise, that is not by necessity mediated by biology. Though I appreciate that by "biology" you may be referring simply to heritability. If that's correct, then sure, I think that what we used to call epigenetics, as well as ontogenetic development, in many instances can be at least -- if not occasionally more -- determining than heritability. However, to take any information from the environment, for ontogeny or behavioral calibration, requires evolved (do you mind if I use as shorthand) genetically built perceptual-cognitive processing mechanisms. They have to be themselves heritable. If we didn't get them from our parents, we would be unable to collect the necessary information from the environment. And of course insofar as those mechanisms improve fitness they'll operate as replicators.
But clearly we're not going to agree or convince each other on these matters. Certainly not in the comments section.
And, yes, of course phenotypic plasticity is a big part of the story. However, my experience is that when people first get wind of this notion they tend to blow it all out of proportion, imagining it as a kind of superpower. First, most plasticity operates unconsciously, adapting to cues from the environment. Second, in any species or conspecific, there are clear reaction norm boundaries to plasticity. Except, of course, insofar as Darwinian selection eventually moves those boundaries. But that of course is not what we mean by plasticity.
"The discourse of openness though isn’t a sincerely held ideal; it is just an ideological support to a hegemonic strategy." I was going to comment simply about how useful your right-wing marxism is towards explaining things like this in a complete and satisfying way that are otherwise incomprehensible. In the process of thinking this through though, I just realized another reason why I hate the managerial class so much. It is because I'm a phenotypic liberal. I'm very high in openness, and their insincere wielding of this ideal is deeply offensive to me. It tars and feathers a predisposition that can fuel noble and good behaviors into a tool of totalitarian oppression. Perhaps something I've felt before, but this single sentence of yours brings it into clear focus. Also of note, I've been trying to find a way to express something that I now realize can be described as the naturalist fallacy. The most common criticism I see of biological realism is that it is reductionist. I think this critique commits the naturalist fallacy by assuming there are value judgements baked into what is simply scientific observation of biological reality.
Given the materialist analysis, it seems to me that the claim that the managerial class rules is mistaken. The managerial class is clearly subordinate to and dare not cross the banksters. The "horrors of the 20th century" were brought about by bankers, specifically Ashkenazi Jewish bankers, serving their own materialist and national/tribal interest by suborning treason amongst Western politicians in order to foment chaos and destruction amongst the European peoples.
The "post-war consensus" is merely a convenient lie meant to provide cover for a continued Jewish war against European Christendom.
Sure, most of the academic class are merely foot soldiers who, conveniently, have been indoctrinated into and serve the prevailing ideology and they know, viscerally, that it is in their personal interest, but most lack the intellect and self-awareness to have considered the origins of that ideology or its validity.
Few of those academics promoting technocracy have any education in philosophy or the history of ideas - they are merely following a course, unquestioningly, laid out for those in the UMC who wish to continue to prosper whilst lording it over those of a 'lower station' in society.
After all, the prevailing technocratic ideology is merely an appeal to ego, and, as such, is eagerly adopted by the vapid, grasping materialist UMC spawn that make up the majority of the credentialed managerial class
As for lack of diversity in ideas, I'm reminded of that great philosopher John Rawls, whose seminal book is probably already justly forgotten - one need only read the introduction to find that 'justice' requires, surprise, progressive technocratic rule over the masses - equality of everything but power being the siren song of the 20th century academic totalitarian.
Hey. Thanks for your comment. I'm never quite convinced by the whole Jewish argument thing, but that's not what this substack is about, so I won't go through my thinking there. I believe I may have addressed the topic in my book, Darwinian Liberalism, but honestly I can't remember for sure.
As to the bankster thing. There was a time when banksters were bourgeoisie capitalists, with their own financial skin in the game. As I'm sure you know, that's not really a thing anymore. The bankster sphere now is managing other people's (usually institutional) money from a platform created through a marriage of economists, data scientists, mathematicians, computer programmers and MBAs. So, yes, banksters themselves are managerial class through and through. I believe I addressed this topic to some extent in my post "Too Bad Nothing Ever Happens." (Don't seem able to hyperlink, here.)
Thanks again for your comment. Participation is always appreciated.
Thanks, Michael. A quibble. I think that there is a distinction between those who own the banks, including the Federal Reserve, and who have licence to create public money out of nothing, and those who work within the financial system designed to use that privately-created money to plunder the wealth of the planet.
No disagreement there: I completely acknowledge the distinction between control and ownership. The point (well, on this topic) of my book was that control matters much more than ownership. In the large, managerial class dominated, publicly traded organizations pure ownership has largely been reduced to a form of pensionership, as I emphasized briefly in my second to last post: Funny thing happened...
Even big time "capitalists," with large ownership portfolios, like Jamie Dimon, are still managerial class stock, root and branch.
I'm currently looking at the broad evolution of the British Empire and wondered if you had some thoughts on how "managerial" this last form of Empire really was. Would its rise include traits of a managerial class formation since it elevated the aristocracy as a pillar of its ascendancy along with a political ideology that encompassed a good deal of utopianism, so i would imagine its not strictly managerial in the sense you have described. But the same "General Will "of the people was part of that ideology to expand its British sovereignty, patriotism and nationalism in favour of a financial global order. I'm just wondering how much of the managerial class featured in this rise during the peak of its power which was probably around the 1730s-1820s.
Well, I’ve certainly never suggested that the managerial class magically appeared out of nowhere in the 19th century. It was toward the end of that century that material conditions, particularly as they related to the mode of production, became ripe for the managerial class to seize power in their own class interest. But some version of the managerial class has probably existed as long as there’s been writing and some kind of public administrative function. For instance, the important priestly class of the early Mesopotamian empires probably need to be thought of as expressions of a managerial class. It’s just that, usually, like the peasants or prols, the managerial class has worked on behalf of someone else’s regime. Though, I’d also concede at other times they may well have been the ruling class. (My right-wing Marxism assumes a cleansing of Hegelian “progressive” influences.) So, what you suggest seems perfectly plausible to me. Though I don’t know enough about the details of the regime and era to have a strong opinion or well-worked out understanding of the managerial class’s precise role then and there. If you ever plan to make public your own research in this matter, though, please let me know when and where; I’d be curious to hear more about what you’ve discovered. (Not intending to be presumptuous, but if you were interested in publishing something here, on the topic, as a guest author, I’d be happy to discuss that.)
The research on this topic is somewhat piecemeal, but at some point when time and energy allows I'll report back on my digging if it gains some momentum, thank you.
In "Ideological Origins of the British Empire" (2004) David Armitage writes:
"It was the product above all of a group of colonial administrators, merchants and politicians, for whom an appeal to a common interest with Britain was a necessary strategy to encourage equal treatment for their compatriots, whether under the terms of the Navigation Acts or within the constitutional framework of the United Kingdom. Their concept of the British Empire, projected from the provinces back to a metropolitan audience, was both the expression of their own interests and the means to develop a coincident appreciation of a common interest among their British audiences. This strategic use of the British Empire as the conceptual realisation of these interests explains the widespread use among these provincials of the language of the common good, frequently cast … in the idiom of neo-Roman republicanism".
That seems to be the managerial class in action again and pretty much the kind of dynamic occurring today. This common interest, common purpose and pseudo-community crops up again and again as a psychological/linguistic tool to sway the masses and seems to have reached its zenith with communism.... And behind the neo-Roman republicanism there's this neo-Platonic influence from the occult fraternities, the principles of which seem equally important as an political, ideological inspiration.
Another interesting point to underscore as the decline of the Dutch Empire intersected the rise of the British one, is the propaganda campaign that was mounted to fire up the people/king sovereignty ruse. There was a host of Machiavellian/ schizoidal characters about at the time riding on the Deism of the Age of Reason such as Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke who wrote a treatise called the "The Idea of a Patriot King" (1738). It seems like a vehicle to promote the King as a kind of new nationalistic Maritime Zeus which the people could get behind and set their imaginations afloat. It basically reads like a manifesto for the East India Company. In this case it was the Houses of Parliament that was in danger of imminent corruption by warring political parties, according to Bolingbroke. Always need a pretext to fire up the engine of war and conquest....
As it turned out, British identity of the "Rule Britannia" and "never will be slaves" slogan was manufactured from a political ideology that subsumed a very diverse set of peoples (at home and in the colonies already established) into a nationalistic corporation which was purely about a kind of mercantile libertarianism on steroids, in turn, fed by the banking cartels. I guess not much has changed.
Anyhow, love the blog and the book. Hope you write more.
And certainly some intriguing observations there. I would be interested to see where it takes you when you've more time to dig. It would be awfully interesting to do an expansive class history, which avoided (refuted?) the simplistic Hegelian progressivism which taints so much of class analysis.
Dear Evolved Psyché,
I comment on this post quite a while after you wrote it.
The power of idealism is obvious, is it not. There are people possessed by ideas that devote their entire life and energy to them : utopian, activists, eccentrics, some entrepreneurs. Some of them succeed and are celebrated as visionaries who brought their ideas to bear.
It takes a lot of knowledge and a second level of analysis, at an evolutionary level to reach a better understanding. How come that some eccentric academics created whole new fields, that some activists succeeded in imposing changes to social practices, that some entrepreneurs brought sweeping economic changes ? Whereas most others were laughed at then forgotten. Because the endeavours of some were cogent with the ruling ideology and they were either actively favoured or their opponents actively disfavoured by members of the ruling class. Such a step is far from obvious to most thinkers.
Before the age of the press, radio, television, and internet, an idealist had to gather a following, establish a school, and send well-trained students elsewhere to see his ideas triumph. Preaching to the rulers was not enough. Change was slow and organic because it required gradual convincing. Your analysis would not work then. However since the advent of the era of the masses, the success of an idea relies on it being broadcast hence the enormous power of those who control access to the media, all of them drawn from the managerial class. Your analysis is spot on.
Back to Reno's work in his own line of thought. Are the strong gods returning ? I see a mediatic exaggeration of the populist jolts to justify an increase in the "legitimate" repressive arsenal of the state. I see an enduring weakness of the organisations that cater to the interest of the lower classes. I see a sterilisation of their vote through channeling to parties excluded from parliamentary alliances or through channeling to representatives that disregard them. I see the demoralisation continue unabated. So what is useful in this book ?
With my best regards.
Archangel
I enjoy seeing you use the acute accent in my pseudonym.
It is funny that you bring up this post, as I was just in the process of trying to decide if it had a place in the forthcoming book. I'm still undecided.
So, to be clear, my objection to "idealism" is at the epistemological level. That one is committed to, or guided by, an ideal is fine. I just believe that those ideals are, and must be, explained in materialist (ultimately, of course, biological) terms. But I made that case as well as I'm able in the post.
On populism, I'm not sure I entirely disagree with you. I certainly agree the media has been vilifying populism for purposes of legitimizing oppressive state power. No argument there. There's a concerted effort underway to attempt to create in the public mind an equivalency between populism and fascism or Nazism. Which is funny, as it would be difficult to come up with two political movements more conceptually opposed to each other. As usual, I emphasize that I'm talking about historical North American populism. I appreciate that there's a different valence to the term in Europe. I also agree that -- in contrast to its historical legacy -- contemporary populism has been too focused on either electoral politics or street protests.
Where it sounds like we might disagree is that I may have more hope for populism than you do. But then, as I've always emphasized. Sure, contemporary populism remains a faint shadow of its historical movement. If it were to recover this more institutional, communitarian pluralist vein of its tradition, it would be a more formidable challenge to managerial class rule. Though of course it would be even more viciously attacked. I don't know if you read my review of Parvini's book. I'll include the URL, as it might clarify my position.
As always, thanks for your contribution to the comments. And comments to old articles is actually fun, as it prompts me to review what I've written in the past, to evaluate whether my thinking has changed.
Regards, M.
https://thecirculationofelites.substack.com/p/the-populist-delusion
Dear Evolved Psyché,
In English the acute accent plays a role in pronunciation and I prefer the ending in "e" than in "i".
I concur that material conditions do hold an outsize influence on humans compared to most other factors. Nevertheless I believe you place to much emphasis on the biological conditioning at the expense of other material factors : (1) geography determines humans in a way that goes much further than biological adaptation ; (2) frequent activities in gainful work and leisure and especially the parts of the body involved and their solicitation are both determined by the abilities and do modify the body ; (3) language and the categories of thinking it provides ; (4) the human environment.
One last point: an important characteristic of man's brain is its great plasticity which induces the mirror phenomena of long-lasting ability to learn and forget. This crucial aspect is something that I have hardly seen utilised in any serious discussion except when facing a barrage of progressive propaganda enjoining the refractory to adapt.
Best regards,
Michel Anton
Oh, so we're both named after the same Archangel. Well, nice to meet you Michel.
I'm a bit tired today, so may not be in top expositional form. But I'd object that your point (1) is impossible. There can be no environmental influence, geographic or otherwise, that is not by necessity mediated by biology. Though I appreciate that by "biology" you may be referring simply to heritability. If that's correct, then sure, I think that what we used to call epigenetics, as well as ontogenetic development, in many instances can be at least -- if not occasionally more -- determining than heritability. However, to take any information from the environment, for ontogeny or behavioral calibration, requires evolved (do you mind if I use as shorthand) genetically built perceptual-cognitive processing mechanisms. They have to be themselves heritable. If we didn't get them from our parents, we would be unable to collect the necessary information from the environment. And of course insofar as those mechanisms improve fitness they'll operate as replicators.
But clearly we're not going to agree or convince each other on these matters. Certainly not in the comments section.
And, yes, of course phenotypic plasticity is a big part of the story. However, my experience is that when people first get wind of this notion they tend to blow it all out of proportion, imagining it as a kind of superpower. First, most plasticity operates unconsciously, adapting to cues from the environment. Second, in any species or conspecific, there are clear reaction norm boundaries to plasticity. Except, of course, insofar as Darwinian selection eventually moves those boundaries. But that of course is not what we mean by plasticity.
Thanks, Michel.
"The discourse of openness though isn’t a sincerely held ideal; it is just an ideological support to a hegemonic strategy." I was going to comment simply about how useful your right-wing marxism is towards explaining things like this in a complete and satisfying way that are otherwise incomprehensible. In the process of thinking this through though, I just realized another reason why I hate the managerial class so much. It is because I'm a phenotypic liberal. I'm very high in openness, and their insincere wielding of this ideal is deeply offensive to me. It tars and feathers a predisposition that can fuel noble and good behaviors into a tool of totalitarian oppression. Perhaps something I've felt before, but this single sentence of yours brings it into clear focus. Also of note, I've been trying to find a way to express something that I now realize can be described as the naturalist fallacy. The most common criticism I see of biological realism is that it is reductionist. I think this critique commits the naturalist fallacy by assuming there are value judgements baked into what is simply scientific observation of biological reality.
"in the case of clever, profound, right-wing Marxism" I lol'd
Given the materialist analysis, it seems to me that the claim that the managerial class rules is mistaken. The managerial class is clearly subordinate to and dare not cross the banksters. The "horrors of the 20th century" were brought about by bankers, specifically Ashkenazi Jewish bankers, serving their own materialist and national/tribal interest by suborning treason amongst Western politicians in order to foment chaos and destruction amongst the European peoples.
The "post-war consensus" is merely a convenient lie meant to provide cover for a continued Jewish war against European Christendom.
Sure, most of the academic class are merely foot soldiers who, conveniently, have been indoctrinated into and serve the prevailing ideology and they know, viscerally, that it is in their personal interest, but most lack the intellect and self-awareness to have considered the origins of that ideology or its validity.
Few of those academics promoting technocracy have any education in philosophy or the history of ideas - they are merely following a course, unquestioningly, laid out for those in the UMC who wish to continue to prosper whilst lording it over those of a 'lower station' in society.
After all, the prevailing technocratic ideology is merely an appeal to ego, and, as such, is eagerly adopted by the vapid, grasping materialist UMC spawn that make up the majority of the credentialed managerial class
As for lack of diversity in ideas, I'm reminded of that great philosopher John Rawls, whose seminal book is probably already justly forgotten - one need only read the introduction to find that 'justice' requires, surprise, progressive technocratic rule over the masses - equality of everything but power being the siren song of the 20th century academic totalitarian.
Hey. Thanks for your comment. I'm never quite convinced by the whole Jewish argument thing, but that's not what this substack is about, so I won't go through my thinking there. I believe I may have addressed the topic in my book, Darwinian Liberalism, but honestly I can't remember for sure.
As to the bankster thing. There was a time when banksters were bourgeoisie capitalists, with their own financial skin in the game. As I'm sure you know, that's not really a thing anymore. The bankster sphere now is managing other people's (usually institutional) money from a platform created through a marriage of economists, data scientists, mathematicians, computer programmers and MBAs. So, yes, banksters themselves are managerial class through and through. I believe I addressed this topic to some extent in my post "Too Bad Nothing Ever Happens." (Don't seem able to hyperlink, here.)
Thanks again for your comment. Participation is always appreciated.
Thanks, Michael. A quibble. I think that there is a distinction between those who own the banks, including the Federal Reserve, and who have licence to create public money out of nothing, and those who work within the financial system designed to use that privately-created money to plunder the wealth of the planet.
No disagreement there: I completely acknowledge the distinction between control and ownership. The point (well, on this topic) of my book was that control matters much more than ownership. In the large, managerial class dominated, publicly traded organizations pure ownership has largely been reduced to a form of pensionership, as I emphasized briefly in my second to last post: Funny thing happened...
Even big time "capitalists," with large ownership portfolios, like Jamie Dimon, are still managerial class stock, root and branch.
Thanks.
Hi Michael, thanks for more food for thought.
I'm currently looking at the broad evolution of the British Empire and wondered if you had some thoughts on how "managerial" this last form of Empire really was. Would its rise include traits of a managerial class formation since it elevated the aristocracy as a pillar of its ascendancy along with a political ideology that encompassed a good deal of utopianism, so i would imagine its not strictly managerial in the sense you have described. But the same "General Will "of the people was part of that ideology to expand its British sovereignty, patriotism and nationalism in favour of a financial global order. I'm just wondering how much of the managerial class featured in this rise during the peak of its power which was probably around the 1730s-1820s.
Well, I’ve certainly never suggested that the managerial class magically appeared out of nowhere in the 19th century. It was toward the end of that century that material conditions, particularly as they related to the mode of production, became ripe for the managerial class to seize power in their own class interest. But some version of the managerial class has probably existed as long as there’s been writing and some kind of public administrative function. For instance, the important priestly class of the early Mesopotamian empires probably need to be thought of as expressions of a managerial class. It’s just that, usually, like the peasants or prols, the managerial class has worked on behalf of someone else’s regime. Though, I’d also concede at other times they may well have been the ruling class. (My right-wing Marxism assumes a cleansing of Hegelian “progressive” influences.) So, what you suggest seems perfectly plausible to me. Though I don’t know enough about the details of the regime and era to have a strong opinion or well-worked out understanding of the managerial class’s precise role then and there. If you ever plan to make public your own research in this matter, though, please let me know when and where; I’d be curious to hear more about what you’ve discovered. (Not intending to be presumptuous, but if you were interested in publishing something here, on the topic, as a guest author, I’d be happy to discuss that.)
Thanks for your comment.
The research on this topic is somewhat piecemeal, but at some point when time and energy allows I'll report back on my digging if it gains some momentum, thank you.
In "Ideological Origins of the British Empire" (2004) David Armitage writes:
"It was the product above all of a group of colonial administrators, merchants and politicians, for whom an appeal to a common interest with Britain was a necessary strategy to encourage equal treatment for their compatriots, whether under the terms of the Navigation Acts or within the constitutional framework of the United Kingdom. Their concept of the British Empire, projected from the provinces back to a metropolitan audience, was both the expression of their own interests and the means to develop a coincident appreciation of a common interest among their British audiences. This strategic use of the British Empire as the conceptual realisation of these interests explains the widespread use among these provincials of the language of the common good, frequently cast … in the idiom of neo-Roman republicanism".
That seems to be the managerial class in action again and pretty much the kind of dynamic occurring today. This common interest, common purpose and pseudo-community crops up again and again as a psychological/linguistic tool to sway the masses and seems to have reached its zenith with communism.... And behind the neo-Roman republicanism there's this neo-Platonic influence from the occult fraternities, the principles of which seem equally important as an political, ideological inspiration.
Another interesting point to underscore as the decline of the Dutch Empire intersected the rise of the British one, is the propaganda campaign that was mounted to fire up the people/king sovereignty ruse. There was a host of Machiavellian/ schizoidal characters about at the time riding on the Deism of the Age of Reason such as Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke who wrote a treatise called the "The Idea of a Patriot King" (1738). It seems like a vehicle to promote the King as a kind of new nationalistic Maritime Zeus which the people could get behind and set their imaginations afloat. It basically reads like a manifesto for the East India Company. In this case it was the Houses of Parliament that was in danger of imminent corruption by warring political parties, according to Bolingbroke. Always need a pretext to fire up the engine of war and conquest....
As it turned out, British identity of the "Rule Britannia" and "never will be slaves" slogan was manufactured from a political ideology that subsumed a very diverse set of peoples (at home and in the colonies already established) into a nationalistic corporation which was purely about a kind of mercantile libertarianism on steroids, in turn, fed by the banking cartels. I guess not much has changed.
Anyhow, love the blog and the book. Hope you write more.
Thank you.
And certainly some intriguing observations there. I would be interested to see where it takes you when you've more time to dig. It would be awfully interesting to do an expansive class history, which avoided (refuted?) the simplistic Hegelian progressivism which taints so much of class analysis.