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Monday 5 September 2016

Barren glory

I myself had already spoken to you of that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and office, distinctions and plumes, and which at the same time is so avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce, having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official administration.
Emile Zola - Rome (1896)

Zola describes a type still with us today but in larger numbers. It is worth reminding ourselves that the BBC is one of their warrens because in a crucial sense it too is an official administration.

It accounts for the Beeb’s inability to stray beyond the establishment outlook, why it has nothing useful to say as democratic accountability collapses. Which was never strong or even healthy, but the dear old BBC never did anything to help it to its feet.

Instead the Beeb prefers the barren glory of shoving a microphone under some punter’s nose, sucking up to dull celebrities or interviewing sports stars with nothing to say.

What about the future though? Suppose the world is evolving towards three primary groups, aristocrats who control everything, specialists who perform specialist services aristocrats find useful and intelligent machines which do all the donkey work. That would be the ASM world – Aristocrats, Specialists and Machines.

In which case a fat layer of the population won’t be required. Particularly that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and office, distinctions and plumes. 

6 comments:

Sackerson said...

Yes. Then the issue will be, how to share wealth.

Demetrius said...

I have read in several sources that the middle classes in the USA are becoming fewer and fewer for a number of reasons. Also in Europe it is said that they are now beginning to feel a similar squeeze. It is complicated but as the last couple of centuries have seen the rise of the this kind of middle class perhaps their time has begun to run out. Back to the land? But there is not enough land to be had.

A K Haart said...

Sackers - I think it already is.

Demetrius - perhaps there will be a switch where the middle class sinks and the specialists rise.

Weekend Yachtsman said...

Not sure I agree with Zola on this. Seems to be what the middle classes want above all else is security. They've worked their arses off for years to pay for a modest house in the suburbs and a reasonable car, and their great fear is that some bastard will come along and take it all away from them, or else by foolishness or mistake they themselves will lose it all - hence their desire for safe investments, their absolute abhorrence of any sort of gambling (not even lottery tickets), and so on.

It's this hunger for safety which is threatened at present by the world's banking system with its constant attempts to induce inflation - the great bogey of the cash-rich - through zero interest rates, limitless money-printing ("QE") and so on.

The rich, of course, don't care about such things - they can always find more somewhere, and the poor have nothing to lose.

This is why the middle class is the bedrock of a stable society, and is also why the various sorts of foaming levellers hate them so much.

Sackerson said...

Good answer, WY.

A K Haart said...

WY and Sackers - in part this is what Zola is saying - "so avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce". A middle class which is risk-averse with respect to money but still wants the kudos of office.