Recently, the abject Westminster-Bubble Tory Boy outlet, Pimlico Journal, launched a surprising defence of the Fabian Society, which doubled as a scathing attack on The Lotus Eaters who stand accused of “peasant conspiratorialism”.
Excellent little essay. The tory-boy is truly revolting. Dear Brits, I do think this is your last shot. Britain must emerge victorious in the next election– if it is to emerge at all.
The plump catamite/pig look...I think a lot of Tory pathology stems from being abandoned at sodomite boarding schools at a young age; they are all subject to a kind of MK Ultra regime of bullying and rape, and they come out the other end with a taste for subjugation and betrayal, natural Tories you might say.
Hence why I laughed, the imagery and description in the comment is so near to the mark, it is simultaneously funny, and accurate in a black humour sort of way.
Only element of disagreement I have is the degree to which the Tory views himself as a supplicant, or views the Fabians as an ally. The Tory seems to exist in a perpetual state of 'current thingism'. This is what your El-Fattah mockery has alluded to. To the Tory mind, they are legitimately pushing back on and not aligned with the Fabian or the Socialist, because that's true in the moment. The fact that the broader arc of the conflict between the two sees the Tory playing the role of the break-glass to pause the revolution when it's going too fast, and that the Fabian is the actual locus of political change, doesn't occur to the 'current thingist' Tory. Today, the problem is that the loony left want to hike tax from 45% to 47%, and the Tory will never once think of the time when tax was 5%.
Indeed, though, it seems to me that the same is true of the Fabian. The Fabian never seems to realise that the reforms they're permitted to win enduringly are the reforms which are useful to the oligarchic controllers of capital. Even Trotsky didn't envision international socialism meaning the third world moving en masse to Russia; mass immigration is useful solely to the capital class. The same story plays out with 'egalitarianism'. There's egalitarianism between the little people -- I have to pay half my salary in tax -- but there's no pretense of an equality between the petite bourgeoisie and the capital class. Amazon can offshore all its taxes, and investment can attract less tax than PAYE, but the PAYE piggies will be aggressively equalised amongst one another. When the capital class is threatened, e.g. by Labour's steep taxation in the 70s, the Tory does finally wake up and snap that back hard.
I realise I'm not telling you anything you don't already know here, but my framing would thus be that both the Tory and 'the Left' are each simply elements of the Punch and Judy show with different purposes to the managerial state and to the controllers of capital. 'The left' is used to cause state change, and 'the right' is used to wind back change that was painful to the actual people the regime serves or to slow down change that the proles are reacting to. The Fabian is slightly more knowing in this arrangement (but it'd be hard to be less knowing than a Tory), but both are useful idiots to one degree or another.
The relative handful of billionaires (not millionaires) is precisely who I'm talking about. That's the oligarchic system of the West writ large. In modernity, there is a single oligarchic, capitalist class that has international influence across Western countries,. Peter Thiel is nominally an American billionaire, but funds political movements across the West. George Soros is nominally Hungarian, but funds political movements across the West. The list goes on. It is between us and these people that there's no pretense of equality of either taxation or power, not between us and micro holders of debt or institutional holders of credit.
You say they 'have' to lobby politicians as if that's a proof of their lack of power. Who do you imagine the politician will listen more to, you, the regular voter, or the people who (in America) funded their north of $1b presidential campaign run? Why do you think the desires of the base of any given party are routinely ignored, often to 180 degrees?
You're correct that capital as a whole is heavily managerialised, as is every other aspect of the state. But that also means it isn't individually controllable. Attributing power to dispersed capital, like individual mortgage holders, is the financial equivalent of the populist delusion and isn't worth considering from a power analysis. Institutional capital, like credit institutions themselves, is indeed where most of centralised capital lies, but it's also not answerable to a single figure; it's as bureaucratised as the state itself. The only form of capital that is bound to a singular will is oligarchic capital, which is precisely why they can have an outsized influence on politics.
You're right that from the perspective of the system itself their share is tiny. But their money power as an individual is larger than any other, and allows them to meaningfully shape the system and not just be downstream of it. Take Musks's purchase of Twitter as an example. Whether you think that's enabled a great right wing pushback or something altogether more Zionist-aligned, that is an example of a large shift in the political landscape that is caused by the individual power of an oligarchic controller of capital, his individual share of the system-wide capital notwithstanding.
It's Fabians all the way down. Even if Rupert Lowe became PM the entire government apparatus is infected, he'd have to do a Milei and afuera entire departments. It's far more likely we have total societal collapse, with maybe a 50% survival rate, if we are lucky, or civil war.
You said it yourself: progress was 'redefined'. If the author at PJ was defending Fabianism I imagine it was precisely because its founders were driven by a rather different spirit to that which animates current notions of 'progress'. Not sure what the relevance of 'da Tories' is. You sound in many ways like a rape victim...
Quite interesting. Could have been better if you mentioned who funds this think tank. One always scratches his head when he contemplates the logic of capitalists funding anti-capitalism. How does supporting an ideology antithetical to their interests make them more powerful?
You might want to add the term "continuity of agenda" to your lexicon. The ratchet effect is lopsided. If we dig deeper we'll find a commonality of disdain for the commoner (peasant); it's an aesthetic, reaching into an apotheosis to create distinction. Personally I think it might have something to do with misplaced discernment, hating onto others for the condition of being human, and instead of seeing spiritual growth as one of the goals of life, seeks to dominate in our conscious and material spheres.
I watched your video reading, further expanding on the essay (and concur with a comment of it being a nice return to form). It's interesting to observe your "aha moment". At the moment we're living in a world with different shades of the uniparty, which is part of why it doesn't really matter who gets selected during elections in Western democracies (this has more to do with "what's the goal of life" than mode of governance).
Not to sound pretentious, but I'd invite you to look into the aristocratic structure of governance of ancient Venice. They succeeded in maintaining an empire for nearly a millennium, so they must have done something correctly, fooling everyone in believing they were just a city state (they gave us the crusades to crush Constantinople, for instance), especially as they did away with monarchy during the European medieval period. Quite remarkable as they managed a delicate balancing act of aristocracy with renewal, rules (bureaucracy) and checks and balances on different branches of governance.
I wrote that in this context because if you follow through in the line of thinking discussed in the video commentary, there's a return to Aristotle, keeping in mind he didn't have the benefits of the liberal revolution of the 1700s. Aristotle had democracy without liberalism.
In my own simplified view, the right/left distinction in modes of governance makes sense only insofar as we look at the either/or extremes:
On the right: dictators (potentially worst) -> monarchs (potentially bad) -> aristocracy (potentially good)
On the left: anarchy (potentially worst) -> democracy (potentially bad) -> socialism (potentially good).
An aristocratic socialist republic might be the ideal.
In my reading of our history, Communism is akin to a socialist dictatorship, while technocracy is a form of aristocracy. Oligarchy is more the consequences of the corrupting influence of power and sets the stage for political transformation, it can occur under any of the modes of governance.
I think the above is useful because it exposed the contradictions of the Fabians and the Conservatives. The Fabians (as you pointed out if I'm not mistaken) see themselves in similar terms of a technocratic elite class. Meanwhile the Tories represent the remnants of a privileged aristocratic class in terms of aesthetic, but without the power of this mode of governance and without any political ideology (which is why conservativism flounders, saved by nationalism, which harkens back to Dominion). The Tories are in a way technocrats.
That helps explain why Blair would want to keep the Tories around. It also helps explain the uniparty in the USA.
The key is also appreciating how Communism is a form of Liberalism, a usurpation of power by a technocratic vanguard. Instead of attempting to create a better evolution in governance promoting participation, which would transform the political gains into social gains, in Marx's view of historical progress (without a goal), social relations must be upended to destroy the ruling class (elites) and their apparatchiks (the bourgeoisie) while the party rules supreme.
In my reading fascism becomes a purely reactionary game, caught between the contradictions of longing for monarchy (dictatorship) and limited by populism (democracy/socialism), not unlike communism. It's curious to note how Mussolini's modes of governance evolved and had two distinct phases: socialist liberalism (lasted until 1922) and socialist dictatorship. Nazism was a form of technocratic socialism as well.
There's also the dynamic today of the fauxhemian, radical chic middle class, Fabian women who are promiscuous and put out as a revolutionary act of freedom in their heads, so young Tory Boys will hang out with and socialize with Fabian Society crowds. Bernaysian conditioning is still iron law over there. Con Inc. women only go back to the apartment with high status men in their political scene. This is why a surprising amount of libertarians used to hang around Democratic Socialist of America meetings years ago
Excellent little essay. The tory-boy is truly revolting. Dear Brits, I do think this is your last shot. Britain must emerge victorious in the next election– if it is to emerge at all.
Aim high, vote Lowe.
I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but I think the time for voting your way out of this came and went generations ago.
You're going to have to actually do something.
The plump catamite/pig look...I think a lot of Tory pathology stems from being abandoned at sodomite boarding schools at a young age; they are all subject to a kind of MK Ultra regime of bullying and rape, and they come out the other end with a taste for subjugation and betrayal, natural Tories you might say.
Lol.
You laugh, but I think he's 100% correct.
Hence why I laughed, the imagery and description in the comment is so near to the mark, it is simultaneously funny, and accurate in a black humour sort of way.
Gotcha
Excellent piece, as per usual.
Only element of disagreement I have is the degree to which the Tory views himself as a supplicant, or views the Fabians as an ally. The Tory seems to exist in a perpetual state of 'current thingism'. This is what your El-Fattah mockery has alluded to. To the Tory mind, they are legitimately pushing back on and not aligned with the Fabian or the Socialist, because that's true in the moment. The fact that the broader arc of the conflict between the two sees the Tory playing the role of the break-glass to pause the revolution when it's going too fast, and that the Fabian is the actual locus of political change, doesn't occur to the 'current thingist' Tory. Today, the problem is that the loony left want to hike tax from 45% to 47%, and the Tory will never once think of the time when tax was 5%.
Indeed, though, it seems to me that the same is true of the Fabian. The Fabian never seems to realise that the reforms they're permitted to win enduringly are the reforms which are useful to the oligarchic controllers of capital. Even Trotsky didn't envision international socialism meaning the third world moving en masse to Russia; mass immigration is useful solely to the capital class. The same story plays out with 'egalitarianism'. There's egalitarianism between the little people -- I have to pay half my salary in tax -- but there's no pretense of an equality between the petite bourgeoisie and the capital class. Amazon can offshore all its taxes, and investment can attract less tax than PAYE, but the PAYE piggies will be aggressively equalised amongst one another. When the capital class is threatened, e.g. by Labour's steep taxation in the 70s, the Tory does finally wake up and snap that back hard.
I realise I'm not telling you anything you don't already know here, but my framing would thus be that both the Tory and 'the Left' are each simply elements of the Punch and Judy show with different purposes to the managerial state and to the controllers of capital. 'The left' is used to cause state change, and 'the right' is used to wind back change that was painful to the actual people the regime serves or to slow down change that the proles are reacting to. The Fabian is slightly more knowing in this arrangement (but it'd be hard to be less knowing than a Tory), but both are useful idiots to one degree or another.
The relative handful of billionaires (not millionaires) is precisely who I'm talking about. That's the oligarchic system of the West writ large. In modernity, there is a single oligarchic, capitalist class that has international influence across Western countries,. Peter Thiel is nominally an American billionaire, but funds political movements across the West. George Soros is nominally Hungarian, but funds political movements across the West. The list goes on. It is between us and these people that there's no pretense of equality of either taxation or power, not between us and micro holders of debt or institutional holders of credit.
You say they 'have' to lobby politicians as if that's a proof of their lack of power. Who do you imagine the politician will listen more to, you, the regular voter, or the people who (in America) funded their north of $1b presidential campaign run? Why do you think the desires of the base of any given party are routinely ignored, often to 180 degrees?
True, I should be clearer in my language.
You're correct that capital as a whole is heavily managerialised, as is every other aspect of the state. But that also means it isn't individually controllable. Attributing power to dispersed capital, like individual mortgage holders, is the financial equivalent of the populist delusion and isn't worth considering from a power analysis. Institutional capital, like credit institutions themselves, is indeed where most of centralised capital lies, but it's also not answerable to a single figure; it's as bureaucratised as the state itself. The only form of capital that is bound to a singular will is oligarchic capital, which is precisely why they can have an outsized influence on politics.
You're right that from the perspective of the system itself their share is tiny. But their money power as an individual is larger than any other, and allows them to meaningfully shape the system and not just be downstream of it. Take Musks's purchase of Twitter as an example. Whether you think that's enabled a great right wing pushback or something altogether more Zionist-aligned, that is an example of a large shift in the political landscape that is caused by the individual power of an oligarchic controller of capital, his individual share of the system-wide capital notwithstanding.
It's Fabians all the way down. Even if Rupert Lowe became PM the entire government apparatus is infected, he'd have to do a Milei and afuera entire departments. It's far more likely we have total societal collapse, with maybe a 50% survival rate, if we are lucky, or civil war.
You said it yourself: progress was 'redefined'. If the author at PJ was defending Fabianism I imagine it was precisely because its founders were driven by a rather different spirit to that which animates current notions of 'progress'. Not sure what the relevance of 'da Tories' is. You sound in many ways like a rape victim...
Excellent.
You voted for Blair and still praise him, inter alia because you trans heart affirmative action
AA, can you always pls accompany a Tory Boy photo with the Harry Enfield character as he nailed it.
Pimlico have always smelled a bit off to me. This article exposes where much of the unpleasant odour emanates.
Quite interesting. Could have been better if you mentioned who funds this think tank. One always scratches his head when he contemplates the logic of capitalists funding anti-capitalism. How does supporting an ideology antithetical to their interests make them more powerful?
You might want to add the term "continuity of agenda" to your lexicon. The ratchet effect is lopsided. If we dig deeper we'll find a commonality of disdain for the commoner (peasant); it's an aesthetic, reaching into an apotheosis to create distinction. Personally I think it might have something to do with misplaced discernment, hating onto others for the condition of being human, and instead of seeing spiritual growth as one of the goals of life, seeks to dominate in our conscious and material spheres.
I watched your video reading, further expanding on the essay (and concur with a comment of it being a nice return to form). It's interesting to observe your "aha moment". At the moment we're living in a world with different shades of the uniparty, which is part of why it doesn't really matter who gets selected during elections in Western democracies (this has more to do with "what's the goal of life" than mode of governance).
Not to sound pretentious, but I'd invite you to look into the aristocratic structure of governance of ancient Venice. They succeeded in maintaining an empire for nearly a millennium, so they must have done something correctly, fooling everyone in believing they were just a city state (they gave us the crusades to crush Constantinople, for instance), especially as they did away with monarchy during the European medieval period. Quite remarkable as they managed a delicate balancing act of aristocracy with renewal, rules (bureaucracy) and checks and balances on different branches of governance.
I wrote that in this context because if you follow through in the line of thinking discussed in the video commentary, there's a return to Aristotle, keeping in mind he didn't have the benefits of the liberal revolution of the 1700s. Aristotle had democracy without liberalism.
In my own simplified view, the right/left distinction in modes of governance makes sense only insofar as we look at the either/or extremes:
On the right: dictators (potentially worst) -> monarchs (potentially bad) -> aristocracy (potentially good)
On the left: anarchy (potentially worst) -> democracy (potentially bad) -> socialism (potentially good).
An aristocratic socialist republic might be the ideal.
In my reading of our history, Communism is akin to a socialist dictatorship, while technocracy is a form of aristocracy. Oligarchy is more the consequences of the corrupting influence of power and sets the stage for political transformation, it can occur under any of the modes of governance.
I think the above is useful because it exposed the contradictions of the Fabians and the Conservatives. The Fabians (as you pointed out if I'm not mistaken) see themselves in similar terms of a technocratic elite class. Meanwhile the Tories represent the remnants of a privileged aristocratic class in terms of aesthetic, but without the power of this mode of governance and without any political ideology (which is why conservativism flounders, saved by nationalism, which harkens back to Dominion). The Tories are in a way technocrats.
That helps explain why Blair would want to keep the Tories around. It also helps explain the uniparty in the USA.
The key is also appreciating how Communism is a form of Liberalism, a usurpation of power by a technocratic vanguard. Instead of attempting to create a better evolution in governance promoting participation, which would transform the political gains into social gains, in Marx's view of historical progress (without a goal), social relations must be upended to destroy the ruling class (elites) and their apparatchiks (the bourgeoisie) while the party rules supreme.
In my reading fascism becomes a purely reactionary game, caught between the contradictions of longing for monarchy (dictatorship) and limited by populism (democracy/socialism), not unlike communism. It's curious to note how Mussolini's modes of governance evolved and had two distinct phases: socialist liberalism (lasted until 1922) and socialist dictatorship. Nazism was a form of technocratic socialism as well.
"ensure that it is merely no advance and not positive reaction which is attempted"...did Roy Jenkins write the Reform manifesto?
There's also the dynamic today of the fauxhemian, radical chic middle class, Fabian women who are promiscuous and put out as a revolutionary act of freedom in their heads, so young Tory Boys will hang out with and socialize with Fabian Society crowds. Bernaysian conditioning is still iron law over there. Con Inc. women only go back to the apartment with high status men in their political scene. This is why a surprising amount of libertarians used to hang around Democratic Socialist of America meetings years ago