Cleaning Out the Power Elite

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by One_more_turn
This sounds like what Pol-Pot was trying to do.

Only because you don't know what Pol Pot was trying to do.

[MORON]

If the masses are happy with their newfound entertainment, is there anything wrong with the picture? If everyone can be decadent at the same time without collapse, civilization would finally have succeeded.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by snoopy369
This is, interestingly enough, connected to a book I'm reading (System of the World),

That's such a ****ing awesome trilogy!

[chequita guevara]

Re: Cleaning Out the Power Elite

Originally posted by Seeker
I guess I subscribe to elite theory in when it comes to political science.

Not in terms of 'organization' but simply in terms of a mass of people in the 'power elite' generally forming and perpetuating ideologies that serve what they percieve as their interests.

In previous times, the Power Elite was periodically 'flushed' and cleansed from the body politic by wars, revolutions, and religious upheavals.

But we live in an era of satelite technology, affordable mass entertainment, and extremely 'leveraged' military technology. It is unlikely that an elite can be militarily threatened as long as they maintain control over their militaries.

The power elite consists of the 'top level' of society, across academia, politics, finance, corporate government, bureaucracy, media, and the military.

90% of these people should be exiled to a small Arctic island in a perfect world.

I think it is pretty clear that, due to a lack of any purgative mechanism, they have become increasingly decadent, corrupt, inefficient, and just plain bad. To a ridiculous, end-of-manchu-dynasty extent.

Representational democracy is proving to be kind of...not good as a purgative. It is too easy for the Power Elite to 'game the system', it moves too slowly, and it was created in an era before the mind-numbing effects of our Entertainment Culture.

So what are we left with? Will environmental, cultural, political and economic problems ever reach a level that will cause a Mass Sociocultural Enema? Or do we just gradually become SMAC style 'Nerve Stapled drones'?

One of your premises is not true. The "power elite" was not flushed out periodically, at least not in any kind of regular fashion. The ruling families of Europe could more or less trace their lineage back a thousand or more years. Even though dynasties may have changed, here and there, the classes that ruled remained the same. Only very rarely was an entire class replaced. In some places, such as England, the demands of a rising class were met by inter-marrying them with the old ruling class. In much of the colonial world, the ruling classes there were tied to the interests of the European colonialists.

Actual revolution, the replacement of the power elite with a new power elite is rather rare. The English did it in 1649. The French did it in 1792. We did it in 1865. The Russians did it in 1917, etc.

Your understanding of the role of ideology in maintaining the status quo is not new. You should look at authors like Gramsci who first began trying to understand why the workers supported the Fascists, who were so obviously opposed to their material interests. Also look at Adorno and Horkeimer. In fact, much of the school of Western Marxism is devoted to trying to understand the role of ideology in maintaining the system, although later WMs had less and less of a materialist philosophical viewpoint. A fellow named Thomas Frank wrote a book recently titled, What's the Matter with Kansas, that you might want to look at.

[Seeker]

LOL don't speak to me as if I'm totally uneducated here Comrade. I really don't need reading lists thrown at me.

I'm quite familiar with the different positions out there, Marxian and otherwise, their current state, and their evolution up until now. I just think they are mostly full of ****.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Does the phrase "Bread & Circuses" ring a familiar note?

Actually it was the first thing to come to mind. However, circuses were nowhere near as deeply mind-numbing, and they weren't be beamed or wired into even the most secluded shantys like TV and the internet have become. There is no comparison. We're doomed.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Seeker
LOL don't speak to me as if I'm totally uneducated here Comrade. I really don't need reading lists thrown at me.

I'm quite familiar with the different positions out there, Marxian and otherwise, their current state, and their evolution up until now. I just think they are mostly full of ****.

I apologize. I was attempting to treat you as intelligent. I shall not make that mistake again.

[Lancer]

Communists blow chunks.

[Blaupanzer]

Pretty good reading list in fact. IF you have time to follow the thinking of an apparently failed political philosophy, Comrade Snuggles has provided a good list of recent thinking. He could have added China in 1949 to his list as well as the successive barbarians that cleaned out the western part of the Roman elite plus the Arab and Turkish conquests that cleaned out the rest of Rome. But his point that it doesn't happen that often was valid. Old Thomas Jefferson was probably right about the whole thing becoming corrupt and based on nepotism within about 60 years.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lancer
Communists blow chunks.

Only when we're sick.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Pretty good reading list in fact. IF you have time to follow the thinking of an apparently failed political philosophy, Comrade Snuggles has provided a good list of recent thinking.

It's not just that, all modern understanding of the role of ideology traces back to Marxism. I could have pointed to cultural studies and post modernism, well, actually I did. These philosophies have taken the study of ideology begun by Gramsci and divorced it from material reality. Everything is ideology to them.

[Fake Boris]

It's not just that, all modern understanding of the role of ideology traces back to Marxism.

Yes.

This is also why anyone who claims Marxism has been discredited or is outdated is an ignoramus.

[Blaupanzer]

I wouldn't advise you to include post-modernism in your list of successors to Marxism. The post-modernists deny the existence of any non-observer based reality. Exactly the opposite of scientific socialism.

[Fake Boris]

Think about it a little more.

a) Marx thought that the ability to change reality was objective - that it was the foundation of human essence. The communist is not a detached entity!
b) Postmodernism (usually) considers science conventional (it deprives science of any absolute or transcendental value). It does not in any way entail that Marx was wrong - just that adhering to his model is more conventional than 'scientific'.

Your mistake is a common one.

Think of Freud for instance - many argued that his reflexions on the human psyche were bound to the early 20th century bourgeoisie of Vienna, and that as such, they didn't 'work'.
Just because Freud might have thought that they were 'universal' does not discredit his whole model. Ultimately, being wrong on the status of your theory does not entail that it can't be true in a given context.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
I wouldn't advise you to include post-modernism in your list of successors to Marxism. The post-modernists deny the existence of any non-observer based reality. Exactly the opposite of scientific socialism.

I don't hide from the truth, however uncomfortable it might be. Postmodernists may thin they've advanced the theory, but I would argue they've gone off the deep end.