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Musings Report #51 12-19-15 What is the Wellspring of Revolution? An Aspirational Middle Class
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What is the Wellspring of Revolution? An Aspirational Middle Class
One of the great ironies of Marx's historical blueprint for revolution is that revolutionary leaders don't arise from the peasantry or proletariat but from a middle class with aspirations and expectations that are unfulfilled by the status quo.
Marx was born into a wealthy middle-class family in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland (now Germany), and studied at the universities of Bonn and Berlin at a time when only the elite attended university.
Lenin was born into a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Russia. His interest in revolutionary socialist politics was sparked by his brother's execution in 1887. He was expelled from Kazan State University for participating in protests.
Mao was the son of a wealthy farmer in Shaoshan, Hunan. influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919, Mao converted to Marxism–Leninism while working at Peking University.
The building blocks of revolution are visible in each case: a middle-class upbringing that enables aspirations and higher education, and a grave injustice or movement aimed at rectifying social/economic/political injustice that acts as a trigger for revolutionary fervor and commitment.
The dynamic of revolution is coiled around the psychology of aspirations and expectations as much as the metrics of wealth inequality and the oppression of privileged Elites.
The lower social classes (peasantry and proletariats) do not just have less wealth, capital and education than middle class households; most strikingly, their expectations of life are far lower than those held by the middle class.
Middle class people expect to marry, and aspire to marry well. They expect to have a stable career and aspire to a life of rising income and capital. They expect vacations and a well-funded retirement, and a good education for their children.
Their higher educational attainment--university, foreign travel, after-school enrichment programs and lessons, etc.-- fuels much higher expectations than those held by those who did not grow up in a household that provided a taste of life enjoyed by the upper classes.
Those in the lower social classes tend to have very low expectations of life, society and themselves. They expect little and so aren't disappointed when they have to settle for less.
Those with high expectations who have tasted the good life of education, travel, surplus income, and the higher social status associated with learning, arts, cultural attainment, etc. are extremely discontented if these are no longer attainable.
Given their aspirations and belief that their class deserves a prosperous life, this discontent does not remain a private grievance; given the universal rightness of their expectations, any system that denies them the opportunity that is rightly theirs is clearly unjust and should be reformed.
If it can't be reformed, then it deserves to be overthrown.
This is the dynamic of revolutionary leadership--and by revolutionary, I don't mean violent--I mean a leadership powered by aspirations and moral grievances that seeks the overthrow of privileged Elites who have capped social mobility. This sense of being denied what is rightly ours is not just financial; it is social.
These leaders often find the lower class has no equivalent sense of outrage because their marginalized lot in life aligns with their expectations.
The revolutionary leadership must either inflame a sense of injustice in those with low aspirations, or the economy must deteriorate to the point that even the lowest expectations are not being met.
To some degree, we can discern this dynamic in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movement, both of which have drawn support from increasingly marginalized elements of the middle class: people with high expectations that are unmet, and people attuned to the injustices of elite domination.
If there is no central narrative that the disenfranchised middle class can rally around, the political spectrum splinters into factions rallying around a hot-button issue that acts as a lightning rod for middle class discontent: immigration, for example, or the dominance of Wall Street.
Political and social revolutions gather momentum when a central narrative draws a critical mass of disappointed disenfranchised people from splinter groups to an organized movement. In the case of Marx, Lenin and Mao, this organizing narrative was a materialist social theory based on an understanding of capitalism's core conflict between the ownership class and the labor class.
There is as yet no new gravitational narrative, but this is direction we can anticipate, for this is a well-trod path to revolutionary movements that radically reform or overthrow the status quo that has failed to fulfill middle class aspirations and capped social mobility.
In fragile nation-states in which elite control is crumbling, we can anticipate revolutionary overthrow of the existing order. In relatively stable nation-states such as the U.S., the result might be the marginalization of the existing political parties and the emergence of new coalitions and narratives.
That the existing parties exist to protect the privileges of the few at the expense of the many is increasingly obvious; the elite donor-class that funds the campaigns of both parties no longer represents the aspirational middle class nor those inflamed by the oppressive dominance of the privileged few.
When the middle class no longer feels any connection to the elites, reform or revolution become inevitable.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
Our "Star Wars" Economy: the Fed-Farce Awakens 12/18/15
Money Velocity Is Crashing--Here's Why 12/17/15
There's No Upside Left 12/16/15
Why Has the Labor Participation Rate Plunged? 12/15/15
Is Oil Close to a Tradable Bottom? 12/14/15
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Pizza at the Cheese Board Co-op, a worker-owned enterprise. They offer a different pizza every day, and the line is still long as late as 2:30 pm (they close at 3 pm).
Market Musings: What Can't Possibly Go Up, According to the Conventional Financial Media?
Let's ask a contrarian question: what can't possibly go up because the fundamentals are so soundly negative?
According to the conventional financial media, oil and natural gas can't go up because of over-supply, and gold can't go up because the Fed's interest rate increase will strengthen the US dollar, which pushes gold down.
Last week we looked at oil; here are weekly charts of gold and natural gas (natty).
Both certainly look bleak technically, but there are potential set-ups for reversals: if gold holds above $1,046, this could mark a double-bottom, and natty's free-fall through the lower Bollinger Band and oversold stochastic are suggestive of a washout/capitulation.
Sentiment on oil, natty and gold is uniformly negative; very few see any drivers for higher prices. It would difficult to find three sectors with lower bullish sentiment than gold, oil and natty.
When sentiment is 90% one way or the other, that often signals a reversal is at hand. Buyers have vanished and sellers have sold, so even a small increase in demand can move prices higher.
Let's keep an eye on these but be careful not to catch the falling knife, i.e. anticipate a reversal before there is price evidence of a reversal.
From Left Field
Government Loans Make College More Expensive, Worsen Income Inequality -- unintended consequences that just so happen to benefit a cartel...
CFTC Approves Rule Giving Wall Street Break on Billions in Swaps -- unintended consequences that just so happen to benefit a cartel... do you see the pattern here?
Mass-produced, printable solar cells enter market and could change everything (via Drew S.)
How The Fed Just Launched The Next Bear Market -- the next Bear market emerges regardless of the Fed...
Goldman Sachs wants to create its own version of bitcoin (via Drew S.) -- if the blockchain is a worthless scheme, why is GS patenting their version of it?
Results Are In: Best and Worst U.S. Airports in 2015 (via Mark G.) -- small is beautiful (and way less busy)... but to be fair, the survey should have separated major int'l airports from small domestic ones--it's apples and oranges...
Spooked: What do we learn about science from a controversy in physics? No well-tested scientific concept is more astonishing than the one that gives its name to a new book by the Scientific American contributing editor George Musser, “Spooky Action at a Distance” (quantum entanglement).
Is There a New ‘Silk Route’ to Europe’s Gas Market? (via Mark G.)
Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen? (via Maoxian)
The Age of Extremes -- "Social crises under capitalism come in many forms."
The World’s “Hot” Money -- $7.8 trillion has flowed out of developing countries in the last decade... a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking real money...
There is something extraordinary happening in the world -- interesting and honest comments from a young Brazilian entrepreneur.
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." Thomas Edison
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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