What are the classes? What do they do? I’ve covered this before. A class is a function. Not a race, not a set of genetic codes, but a function. There are classes that manage, and classes that work. And all of them have needs. All of them serve society as a whole. All of them must be managed to, irrespective of what race or nation we’re talking about.1
Politics does this, but largely unconsciously, reactively. There is no set of principles in political theory or philosophy aimed at understanding classes as discreet units. Political theory is hyperfocused on the structure of the state, its powers and limits, and not on what ought to be done with poltical power.
Post-Englightenment, there is a general idea that politics is a vehicle for transcending existing social realities. But this is millenarian nonsense, the attempt to Solve Politics, to create a state of affairs in which group conflict will not exist, because everyone’s needs will have been satisfied.
The evidence of the last two-and-a-half centuries should convince us that we’re a long way from achieving that goal, and we’ve wrought a good deal of damage in the process.
Let us rather accept that there will always be tension between groups, that not everyone can be satisfied, that there are certain things which will never be solved, only ameliorated. Politics ought to be a process of managing the interests of large groups. This is a twofold process:
Recognizing the Legitimate Interests of Groups.
Enabling Negotiation and Compromise between Groups.
As I said, to a certain degree this already goes on. But it goes on haphazardly, according to the shifting tides of charisma and institutional power. There is no philosophy to it.
My goal is to establish that philosophy, to determine the Legitimate Interests of the varying classes, and to discuss the issues and dangers with pursuing them. In the essay I linked above, I determined that these classes exist, either currently or traditionally:
Landowners/Aristocracy - control land, study war and dominate it
Burgesses/Merchants - control trade, finance, and mechanical production
Clerisy/Academia - control truth and law/tradition
Artisans - produce goods
Freeholders/Yeomanry - produce food
The Circus (media and entertainment) - produce distraction and public information
Proletariat - sell their labor
These might need some tweaking to remain relevant. For example, Artisans could be folded into both the Proletariat (as “skilled labor”) or as petit bourgeois. Certainly the petit bourgeois themselves merit a separate entry, as might the homeless or lumpenproletariat, the Untouchables of modern society. And the existence of Aristocracy is purely notional, a touchstone of a remembered past.
Nevertheless, I’m going to pursue it: a discussion of the Legitmate Interests of each class. I’m going to use the phrase Legitimate Interests instead of rights because we are beginning with the proposition that these things will require negotiation and compromise. A Right, goes the theory, is something that Can Never Be Alienated. But as I’ve written before:
The plain fact of politics is all things within the political realm are negotiable, and all sacred things will be compromised over time, regardless of what we say about them.
Sometimes one must compromise a Legitimate Interest in order to better achieve or maintain another Good. Not erase it, mind: just not pursue it to its absolute, to the exclusion of everything else. We do not talk about Rights this way. We cannot. When you declare something a Right, it is to be given its way, and damn the consequences.2
Thus, sometimes the Interest of one class and that of another will be in opposition. If we wish to avoid open war, followed by domination and exploitation of one class by another, then we must study how to get each to give.
This will be a long project, requiring individual analyses of each segment of society. I will not be relying on Sociological texts, as what Sociology I’ve read I’ve found to be of little use. This will be an ontological exercise: name the thing, its struggles, its interests. With this understanding, I hope that we can move beyond Millenarianism and create a politics in which conflict is understood and acknowledged. The Ideal will not come to earth, for we are mired in the Real.
Watch this Space, and thanks for reading.
This does not mean ethnic or racial differentiation doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. Things are what they are. I’m just not focused on that.
The fact that all Rights are subject to regulation in order to prevent a greater disorder is why the way we think about Rights is subject to question.
HI! To contribute my perspective t you’re comment, please allow me to add some missing details, and since we’re governmentally and legally descended from England, I’ll employ the specifics of England’s case:
Landowners/Aristocracy:
the roles of landowners and aristocracy were complicated. While they did control land and usually played big roles in military matters, their influence wasn't monolithic. Power in their space was in effective terms very decentralized, so the lesser nobility (like the gentry) managed local affairs and governance. Justices of the Peace, often but not exclusively from the gentry, were big in local admin, law enforcement, and the execution of policies at the local/county level. Their authority was balanced by other local power structures whose membership included non nobles, these structures were things like parish officers and borough corporations.
Burgesses/Merchants:
The configuration of the burgesses and merchants in their "controlled trade, finance, and mechanical production" is also complicated because of the decentralized and fragmented nature of their control. Merchants and burgesses operated within the framework of guilds and borough corporations which were themselves decentralized entities with a wide degree of personal autonomy. Control of trade and finance was not centralized in the hands of a relative few, it was spread across a wide and loose network of independent actors who, very importantly and unfortunately in most of the big cases unlike today, had to deal with local politics regulations, whether they wanted to or not.
Clerisy/Academia:
The Church and academia, were very influential in education, and moral guidance, and the transmission of knowledge, but they didn’t control the law. Their role was more about shaping societal values and traditions, which often provided a framework within which the law was interpreted and applied. But they were not the only groups doing that stuff, and while they were coordinated they coordination was much less than their most analogous contemporaries of current day USA, for example, in the case of England, the legal system was mostly in the hands of the nobility, both full and lesser, with a large amount of decentralization in how law and tradition were held. The nobility, especially in positions like Justices of the Peace (often Minors), played big roles in local law and justice admin. But Non nobles, usually those in local governance roles like as parish officers or members of borough corporations, also had real and meaningful says in how local laws were crafted, enforced and admined.
Who would have thought that I, a spiritual aristocrat, was just another artisan at the circus when I had been forced into the proletariat!