Economics, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Politics, Social Philosophy

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal…” (Matthew 6:19)

I. Introduction

Book VIII of Plato’s Republic presents a genealogy of political constitutions, outlining the process by which the ideal city, namely, aristocracy or kingship, degenerates first into timocracy, then into oligarchy, and finally into democracy and tyranny. Corresponding to each of these is a man of similar character, whose way of life reflects the practices of his constitution: the timocratic man seeks honor and reputation, the oligarchic man pursues wealth and property, the democratic man indulges in licentious “freedom” (the ability to do as one wants), and the tyrannical man exploits others for his own advantage.

In what follows, I shall use Plato’s account of the devolution of political constitutions to assess the historical developments which gave rise to the modern West. The dissolution of feudalism, the rise of the nation-state, and the advent of capitalism (what Italian philosopher Julius Evola has called the process of “involution” from aristocratic to bourgeois states1) parallels the transition from aristocracy/kingship to oligarchy and democracy described by Plato in Book VIII of the Republic.

Unlike Plato, however, I shall not treat oligarchy and democracy as two separate (or independent) constitutions; rather, I argue that, in light of European history, the emancipatory and egalitarian tendencies of democracy are best understood as being part and parcel of oligarchy, the modern expression of which is capitalism and the market society.

II. Caste, Feudalism, & the Natural Order

In Book IV of the Republic, Plato identifies the defining characteristic of a well-governed polity: “[E]very child, woman, slave, freeman, craftsman, ruler, and ruled each does his own and doesn’t meddle with what is other people’s.”2 This, he says, is just, for the “power that consists in everyone’s doing his own work rivals wisdom, moderation, and courage in its contribution to the virtue of the city.”3

Every man, belonging to one of three social classes (namely that of the rulers, the warriors, or the producers), specializes in that craft (tekhné, in Greek) or activity to which he is best suited by nature. The ruler, the best and most virtuous among men (who, in this case, is the aristocrat or the king), concerns himself with the well-being of the state and of its citizens, seeing to it that order, concord, and harmony are maintained both within and between them; the warrior, who is spirited and warlike, concerns himself with military affairs, laboring for the defense of the state from invaders and foreign enemies; and the producer, who is slavish and ruled by his appetites, specializes in any of the crafts requiring manual labor (e.g., farming, cobbling, building, etc.), performing his duties in service of basic human needs.4

In all this, we see reflected a basic principle concerning human nature, which, for us moderns, who inhabit a world dominated by a now almost religious egalitarianism, it has become all the more important to emphasize: Every man is born with a set of inner capacities bestowed upon him by nature; these capacities direct and determine the course of his life, including the particular function he is to perform in society. This, in fact, is the original meaning of ‘caste’, namely, the social rank or position one occupies by virtue of one’s nature. In the words of René Guénon,

caste … is nothing else than individual nature, with the whole array of special aptitudes that this carries with it and which predispose each man to the fulfillment of one or another particular function.5

For Plato, then, the governing principle of any well-ordered constitution is that each man perform the duties and responsibilities unique to his caste (and his caste only);

when someone who is by nature a craftsman or some other kind of money-maker, is puffed up by wealth, or by having a majority of votes, or by his own strength, or by some other such thing, and attempts to enter the class of soldiers, or one of the unworthy soldiers tries to enter that of the judges and guardians, … these exchanges and this sort of meddling bring the [entire constitution] to ruin.6

Prior to the advent of market capitalism (and the incursion of financial interests into Europe, especially Italy), the feudal system embodied the kind of “caste ethic” outlined by Plato in his discussion of a well-ordered constitution. Unlike the modern (capitalist) ideal of “class mobility” (perhaps best expressed in the notion of the “American Dream”), which encourages the “individual” to “pull himself up by the bootstraps”, to use a common expression, and enter a higher stratum of society, the basic principle which governed work in the Middle Ages was that each man remain within the boundaries of his class and seek profit only insofar as this is necessary for the satisfaction of his particular needs.

In this period, one searches in vain for an “individualist” ethic celebrating the drive towards a higher status, for to neglect the duties proper to one’s “place” in society was considered not only unnatural, but also unjust. As Julius Evola has pointed out,

the fundamental criterion of [medieval] economy [was] that exterior goods … be subject to a certain measure, that the pursuit of wealth … be excused and licit only as it served to guarantee a subsistence corresponding to one’s state. … [T]he concept of progress in those times was applied to an essentially interior plane; it did not indicate leaving one’s station to seek lucre and to multiply the quantity of one’s work to reach an exterior economic and social position which did not belong to one.7

III. Oligarchy & the Rise of the Bourgeoisie

The collapse of the feudal order, the beginning of “meddling and exchange,”8 was anticipated by the rise of the bourgeoisie, the ascent to power of the merchant class which effected a complete restructuring of Europe in conformity with their interests. This, along with the so-called Protestant “Reformation” (which, in hindsight, was more of a revolution than anything else), marked the birth of the nation-state, which naturally became the political instrument of the bourgeois class.

Seeking to capitalize on previously unexploited sources of wealth, the managers of this new commercial state instituted the national market, establishing a network of economic relations within the boundaries of a given territory. On the commercialization of Europe (and its transformation into a conglomerate of national markets), Alain de Benoist writes:

The logic of the market … imposed itself gradually, beginning at the end of the Middle Ages, when long-distance and local trade started to be unified within national markets under the impetus of the emerging national-states, eager to monetize and hence tax formerly untaxable forms of noncommercial intra-community trade. … Particularly in France, but also in Spain, the market was by no means constructed in spite of the nation-state, but rather thanks to it. The state and the market are born together and progress at the same pace, the former constituting the latter at the same time as it institutes itself.9

What, then, were the “fruits” of this economization? What did Europe achieve by selling herself to merchants, that class which is willing to do anything for the slightest profit, even bargain with the Devil himself? The main (and most terrible) consequence of all this we see in the ascendancy of capital, the placing of wealth at the center of human relations and its establishment as the measure of social distinction.

In the feudal system, what determined one’s “place” in society were the inborn capacities of one’s nature, the essential characteristics that made one who one was. Much like in Plato’s ideal constitution, each class “did its own work”, with the knowledge that, if one were, say, a ruler, then one were so by nature, because of the various innate qualities (such as prudence, strength, and benevolence) that made one fit to rule (indeed, the institution of hereditary monarchy was a later development, with kings typically being chosen by the nobility on the basis of their ability to govern10).

The new commercial order, instituted and maintained by the bourgeoisie, systematically overturned this principle of social organization, as the accumulation of wealth and capital became the means by which one could ascend to a “higher” class.11 No longer was class a function of individual nature, no longer was anyone bound to a particular set of duties and responsibilities dictated by one’s caste; so long as one could generate enough wealth, one was free to enter almost any occupation, even, in some cases, that of public administration.12

Having crowned her merchants and seated them on a throne, Europe thus turned herself into an oligarchy, “[that] constitution in which the rich rule, [while] the poor man has no share in ruling.”13 The partisans of capital, eager for more profit, “proceed[ed] [ever] further into money-making,” “stretch[ing] the laws relating to this” and “mak[ing] the majority of the others like themselves.”14

Whence comes the adherent of what, since Max Weber, has been called the “Protestant (or Puritan) work ethic”, the oligarchic man “who, [being] a thrifty worker, … satisfies only his necessary appetites, makes no other expenditures, and … [earns] a profit from everything and hoards it—the sort the majority admires.”15 This man, in his incessant “quest for gain,” “subverts every just hierarchy of values and of interests, concentrates himself on exteriorities, … and economic factors in general form the predominant motive of his soul”16; because he is no longer governed by the principle that each man do his own work, he is, to use Plato’s example, “[a] farmer, [a] money-maker, and [a] soldier simultaneously,” “meddling in other people’s affairs” and forcing his way into positions of rule solely on account of his wealth.17

But we have all heard the words of the Gospel:

All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.18

The oligarch, having enslaved himself and the whole constitution to wealth, perishes by it, when the poor, alienated and disadvantaged, “kill some of their opponents and expel others, … giving the rest an equal share in ruling … and for the most part assigning people to positions of rule by lot.”19 This, according to Plato, is how democracy comes about, where “the city is full of freedom and freedom of speech, and everyone in it [has] the license to do what he wants[,] … arrang[ing] his own life in whatever manner pleases him.”20

IV. Democracy, Freedom, & the Market Society

Liberté, égalité, fraternité. How loud, how terrible, is the echo of these words, which have resounded throughout Europe since the summer of ‘89! Yet the modern West, though intoxicated by democratic “freedom”, has not (yet?) seen the victory of the poor, the proletarian revolution which Marx so desperately worked to inaugurate.21 What, then, is the cause of this drunkenness, this spirit of emancipation which animates the present age? Who are the “bad cupbearers” that have made us “drink … of the unmixed wine of freedom,” which “in the end breeds anarchy even among the animals?”22

As we have seen, the destruction of the feudal order and its replacement by the nation-state entailed a widespread economization, a process of commercialization which eventually culminated in the birth of capitalism. The growing dominance of capital and of economic interests more generally necessitated a fundamental change in the structure of political society, which is perhaps best seen in the (modern) distinction between the state and so-called “civil society” (or, put another way, the separation of the “private” from the “public” sphere).23

This bifurcation served to establish “the market” as an independent realm of economic activity, a “site of veridiction,” as Foucault has called it, around which the state could organize to maximize national wealth.24 Political society thus became a market society, a mere extension of the network of production and exchange. Citing Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1944), de Benoist writes:

As a consequence of the market’s advent, ‘society … is managed as an auxiliary of the market. Instead of the economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in economic relations.’ This is the very meaning of the bourgeois revolution.25

The logic of the market, once established as the central paradigm of social organization, reconceptualizes all human relations in terms of production and consumption. On this model, man is reduced to an economic agent, a “maximizer of utility”, who, in pursuit of his own selfish interests, contributes towards the achievement of social equilibrium, here defined as the efficient allocation of scarce resources.26

For Marshall, this harmony of competing interests was brought about by a complex network of partial equilibria; for Walras, it was the work of a hypothetical auctioneer, an omniscient price-setter who achieved general equilibrium via the tâtonnement process. Regardless of the specific mechanism, however, the market is posited as the field of social interaction, the site on which self-interested agents pursue their own ends and engage in utility maximization.

In such a society, where the economic has been totalized to all social realms, the purpose of the state (and of law more particularly) is to facilitate the realization of “private” economic interests, to mediate the process whereby “individuals” maximize their subjective utility. The state is turned into a mere referee, a judge tasked with enforcing the “rules of the game” necessary for each individual to carry out his own arrangements. Hence, as de Benoist has pointed out,

[t]he market … represents not just the satisfaction of an economic ideal of optimality, but the satisfaction of everything to which individuals, considered as generic subjects of freedom, aspire. Ultimately, the market is identified with justice itself, which leads Hayek to define it as a ‘game that increases the chances of all the players,’ stipulating that, under these conditions, losers would be ill-advised to complain, for they have only themselves to blame.27

Alas, freedom is understood as the freedom to consume, liberty as the liberty to exercise one’s will in a vast sphere of competing interests. The market, along with its ethic of utility maximization, is made into the site of freedom, the vehicle of emancipation for the autonomous individual who asserts his choice and identity through consumption. “By ensuring the best return on exchanges,” writes de Benoist, “the market in effect guarantees the independence of each agent. … Defined by Hayek as ‘catallaxy,’ the market constitutes a spontaneous and abstract order, the formal instrumental support for the exercise of private freedom.”28

And whither does it lead (no, whither has it led), this morality of the market? Is not the maxim, “Live and let live, do as you will”, its natural offspring, the ground of the modern drive towards ceaseless liberation and the boundless expansion of “rights”?29 Where are the limits to this “freedom”, this liberty of the will, which knows no master, which, having removed all constraints, all boundaries that kept it in check, now seeks liberation from even itself, a hopeless endeavor which can only end in its own enslavement? Indeed,

[e]xtreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.30

The modern West, in her pursuit of an indefinite emancipation, has plunged herself into a tyranny of negative “freedom”, a barren wasteland of competing wills in which the “I”, the ego, is the measure of all Truth, where Beauty and even Goodness itself have become a matter of choice, the objects of a subjectively willed predilection.31 If the West, who has thus become lost in a sea of inauthentic “freedom”, wishes to find herself again, to restore what made her whole, then let her return to virtue, which, like Judas, who betrayed his Lord for thirty pieces of silver, she has forsaken for the false riches of merchants.

As the Gospel says:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.32

  1. See Evola, Metaphysics of War, esp. pp. 22-4.
  2. Plato, Grube G. M. A., and Reeve C. D. C. Republic. Hackett, 1992, 433d, my emphasis.
  3. Ibid., 433e.
  4. Interestingly, a similar class structure can be found in the Hindu caste system, which consists of the Brahmins (priests and spiritual teachers), the Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), the Vaishyas (merchants, artisans, and craftsmen), and the Sudras (manual laborers).
  5. René Guénon and Arthur Osborne, The Crisis of the Modern World (Varanasi, India: Indica Books, 2021), p. 101, my emphasis.
  6. Plato, Grube G. M. A., and Reeve C. D. C. Republic. Hackett, 1992, 434b, my emphasis.
  7. Julius Evola and John Bruce Leonard, Recognitions: Studies on Men and Problems From the Perspective of the Right (Arktos Media Ltd., 2017), pp. 45-6, my emphasis.
  8. Plato, Grube G. M. A., and Reeve C. D. C. Republic. Hackett, 1992, 434c.
  9. Alain de Benoist, “Critique of Liberal Ideology” (Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 2003), p. 13, my emphasis.
  10. See Hoppe, Economy, Society, and History, p. 108. Hoppe writes: “The [medieval] king was typically a person who came from a particularly noble family, a family that was recognized as [one] of great achievement, …, but was not hereditary in the sense that it was perfectly clear who would become the next king. It was all the other nobles … who determined unanimously which of the members of the family should become king” (my emphasis).
  11. In his The Ancien Régime and the Revolution (1856), Alexis de Tocqueville describes how the industrialization of France (especially Paris) towards the end of the pre-revolutionary period allowed peasants to obtain a higher social position as members of the middle (or bourgeois) class. He writes: “[T]he bourgeoisie left the countryside … and looked out everywhere for a refuge in the towns. … Should a farmer work hard and finally succeed in acquiring a small property, he immediately persuaded his son to drop the plough, sent him to the town[,] and bought him a public position” (127, my emphasis).
  12. The practice of venality was so prevalent in pre-revolutionary France that, as William Doyle notes, “[it] had been the source of many of the privileges that had proliferated since the sixteenth century, and through the sale of ennobling offices it had become the main avenue of entry into the nobility” (2001, 69, my emphasis).
  13. Plato, Grube G. M. A., and Reeve C. D. C. Republic. Hackett, 1992, 550d.
  14. Ibid., 550d-e.
  15. Ibid., 554a.
  16. Julius Evola and John Bruce Leonard, Recognitions: Studies on Men and Problems From the Perspective of the Right (Arktos Media Ltd., 2017), pp. 45-6, my emphasis.
  17. Plato, Grube G. M. A., and Reeve C. D. C. Republic. Hackett, 1992, 551e.
  18. Matthew 26:52, KJV, my emphasis.
  19. Plato, Grube G. M. A., and Reeve C. D. C. Republic. Hackett, 1992, 557a.
  20. Ibid., 557b.
  21. What the West is now witnessing, in fact, is the proletarianization of the bourgeoisie, which has not so much been overthrown as reduced to its basest elements.
  22. Ibid., 562d-e.
  23. See de Benoist, “Critique of Liberal Ideology”, esp. pp. 13-4.
  24. See Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, Ch. II, esp. pp. 31-3. Foucault writes: “In the middle of the eighteenth century[,] … the market appeared as something that obeyed and had to obey ‘natural’, that is to say, spontaneous mechanisms. … When you allow the market to function by itself according to its nature, … it permits the formation of a certain price which will be called, metaphorically, the true price… In this sense, inasmuch as it enables production, need, supply, demand, value, and price, etcetera, to be linked together through exchange, the market constitutes a site of veridiction, I mean a site of verification-falsification for governmental practice” (my emphasis).
  25. Alain de Benoist, “Critique of Liberal Ideology” (Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 2003), pp. 13-4, my emphasis.
  26. This marks the birth of the “homo economicus”, the “rational” man of self-interest who serves as the principal unit of analysis in so-called social “science”.
  27. Ibid., p. 9, my emphasis.
  28. Ibid., p. 9, my emphasis.
  29. In this way, the market provides the link between what Foucault has identified as the two traditions of liberal jurisprudence: the rights-based approach (or, to use Foucault’s terminology, the “axiomatic, juridico-deductive approach”) and the utilitarian approach (1979, 39-43). Insofar as the primary aim of liberalism is individual autonomy, there is no significant difference between these traditions in the market society; for by reducing the state to a mere referee, the market effectively neutralizes the political, leaving the “individual” free to pursue whatever arrangement he chooses (so long, of course, as this does not prevent others from doing the same).
  30. Plato, Grube G. M. A., and Reeve C. D. C. Republic. Hackett, 1992, 564a, my emphasis.
  31. I have borrowed this term (i.e., subjectively willed predilection) from John Milbank, who, in his “Beyond Progressivism: Toward a Personalist Metaphysics of History”, speaks of the absolutism of “consciously willed predilection” which pervades the modern West.
  32. Matthew 6:24, KJV, my emphasis.