Sam Francis (1947 - 2005)

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it ought to be obvious that the dominant powers and authorities in the United States and other Western countries are either indifferent to the accelerating racial and cultural dispossession of the historic peoples of America and Europe or are actually in favor of it.

–Samuel Francis in Race and the American Prospect

Among the many good things that paleoconservative Sam Francis left to us was his analysis of the “managerial elite.” Francis drew his understanding of this concept from James Burnham, who in the 1930s moved beyond his Marxist views to offer a competing theory known as the theory of the managerial revolution. In this view, as traditional capitalism and its ruling class passed from the scene, managers—or more properly “technocrats”—would replace them (p. 384). More specifically, it would include “administrators, experts, directing engineers, production executives, propaganda specialists, [and] technocrats” (p. 385).

(All numbered quotes are drawn from Francis’s “Why the American Ruling Class Betrays Its Race and Civilization,”in Race and the American Prospect. See here and here for further reading.)

Francis laid out the problem starkly:

. . . the realities of twentieth and twenty-first century power that do in fact explain what must be one of the most significant and astonishing truths of human history—that an entire ruling class has abandoned and in effect declared war upon the very population and civilization from which it is itself drawn. (p.377)

Further, he noted, these assaults on whites “are not the results of democratic majority rule or popular consent” (p.377).

What explains it then? Francis argued that the classical theory of elites, along with James Burnham’s theory of the managerial revolution, do the job (p. 378). “The two essential characteristics of an elite-ruling class are what may be called Unity and Dominance—unity in that it needs to cohere around its interest and to agree on what its interests are and (in general) how to pursue them, and dominance in that it must be able to make its interests prevail over those of rival groups” (p. 382).

As Francis saw it,

The major common interest that unites the managerial class is its need to extend and perpetuate the demand for the skills and functions on which its power and social rewards depend. The managers pursue that interest by seeking to ensure that the mass organizations they control, which require the skills and functions that only the managers can provide, are preserved and extended. Large corporations must displace and dominate small businesses. A large, centralized, bureaucratic state must displace and dominate small, localized, and decentralized government. Mass media and communications conglomerates and mass universities must displace and dominate smaller, local newspapers, publishers, colleges, and schools. Moreover, the elites that controlled these older and smaller institutions must also be displaced as the ruling class of the larger society and their ideology and cultural values discredited and rejected. (p. 386)

Francis clearly advanced the argument that the managers of these larger institutions are responsible for the destruction of the traditional white societies that came before them. Those old elites “championed traditional religious and moral beliefs and institutions, the importance of the patriarchal family and local community, and the value of national, regional, racial, and ethnic identity, as well as the virtues of the capitalist ethnic—hard work, frugality, personal honesty and integrity, individual initiative, postponement of gratification” (p. 388).

If he was right, then we need not search for another primary cause of the collapse of traditional Western societies. In particular, he offered a competing view to that of Kevin MacDonald and his idea that Jews had unleashed a “culture of critique” on white societies. For Francis, the existence of such a withering critique is not in question; rather, for Francis, the source was and is the managerial elite.

“The managerial ideology,” he wrote, “also demonized the old elite and its institutions and values as ‘obsolete,’ ‘backward,’ ‘repressive,’ ‘exploitative,’ and ‘narrow-minded’” (p. 389). Thus, it had no compunction about destroying the traditional family, local community and religion, or traditional cultural and moral codes. Nor did it have a need for ethnic or racial identities (as far as whites were concerned). In fact, the whole nation-state was superfluous (p. 390).

(I might interject here that since Francis was talking about a historical process not driven by particular racial or ethnic concerns, we would expect similar results from non-white regions which have incorporated the techno-bureaucratic system Francis discussed. Japan and other Asian nations would now fit this mold, yet we observe not even the stirring of any desire to dispossess traditional same-race elites. With a combined population of nearly 200 million, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have substantially adopted modern corporate-bureaucratic structures, yet this has affected their racial composition not at all. China, with its one-billion-plus population, remains overwhelming Han Chinese and also shows no signs of changing.)

That Francis does not attribute this powerful attack on traditional society to be the work of Jews does not mean he saw no role for Jews. On the contrary, he had a very idiosyncratic interpretation of the role Jews played.

In his section “The Agenda of Dispossession,” Francis acknowledged the detailed work done by Kevin MacDonald to document the Jewish role in the dispossession of whites. But for Francis, the Jewish aspiration to cultural and political supremacy over whites is merely fortuitous, for “the Jewish agenda and that of the managerial elite are in this respect perfectly congruent with each other.”

Now a man of Francis’s rare intelligence and insight is not about to downplay the vast role played by Jews in America today. Rather than attributing dominance to this group, however, he takes an alternative tack: “Jews within the managerial elite serve as the cultural vanguard of the managerial class. . . . perform[ing] a support function” (p. 397).

So we’ve reached the crux of the issue: Are Jews subordinate to the (implied) white managerial elite, or are they dominant? This very question divides white nationalists to this day.

Here I will argue that Francis’s belief in Jewish subordination was wrong, but it was intentionally wrong. Put another way, in “Why the American Ruling Class Betrays Its Race and Civilization” and in his other writings, he was writing esoterically because he knew the consequences of writing too candidly about Jewish power.

Consider that Francis noted the new role of managerial bureaucrats in government and the political parties in displacing the previous White, non-Jewish power holders. This new governmental domination is mirrored by that occurring in the universities, foundation, think tanks, national newspapers and magazines, as well as visual mass media. But hasn’t Jewish dominance in these spheres has been so massively documented (by MacDonald, for example) that it would seem “managerial elite” is practically synonymous with “Jewish elite”?

When reading the following list proffered by Francis, does not the informed reader perforce construct a mental image of Jewish dominance: “public bureaucracies, mass labor unions, political parties, mass media, financial institutions, universities, foundations, and other organizations that were immense in size, scale, and technical complexity . . .” (p. 385).

Two institutions that might fall outside the immediate ken of Jewish domination are large corporations involved in manufacturing, and the military (although the last time I checked, Norton Schwartz headed the US Air Force, becoming the third Jew in the top ranks of the military, alongside Lieutenant General Steven Blum, head of the National Guard, and General Robert Magnus, the assistant commandant of the Marines. This is according to The Jewish Forward.)

Unless it wasn’t clear before, the recent economic meltdown has largely proven the dominance of Wall St. capital over individual corporations, particularly those in manufacturing (see this blog for a short description). As for the military, the heavily Jewish neoconservatives have successfully made the US military subordinate to their will. Again, both of these claims need not be demonstrated here for they have been demonstrated so well in other familiar and accessible places.

Francis also listed non-white ethnic and racial groups which are encouraged to openly pursue their own interests, such as the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and so on. In a footnote, he acknowledged the contribution to Race and the American Prospect made by Kevin MacDonald on the Jewish creation and control of the NAACP. As editor of the book, Francis simply cannot plead ignorance. In the same way that MacDonald shows how the NAACP was a front group in the Jewish assault on white society, so too can we show that many of the other managerial groups cited by Francis have been dominated by Jews. Jews were not and are not merely performing a support function.

A good friend who is following these debates sums up the situation well: “Jewish influence is so pervasive and powerful that other factors can hardly be said to be truly independent. It is not now possible to live in a vacuum, a world that is unaffected by their influence.”

He continues:

I’d like to know what force is larger and more menacing than they are? The only even remotely plausible candidates would quite simply have to be secret societies, because there is no force that is possible to detect in the daylight that is bigger, more powerful, or more menacing. And secret societies are of course notoriously difficult to trace or, in some cases (like the Illuminati) even to prove that they exist. So, to the extent that the Jews are not the tool/pawn of some larger force that is very difficult to verify, it is reasonable to conclude that the Jews are the greatest power in the world today (and the world of the past hundred years). I certainly haven’t seen anything in Francis’s work that has convinced me otherwise.

A similarly well-informed friend adds,

Furthermore, Jews socialize to create a certain elite—the “beheading” of the natural elite. [See my own essay on that topic here.] Their ability to control discourse [as in Israel Shamir’s Masters of Discourse], both through media domination and by destroying individuals such as Irving, Rudolf, Zundel, or organizations like the IHR (they firebombed it), completely distorts public discourse.

It is pointless to argue with philo-Semites of any stripe. Even philo-Semites would be different in the absence of Jews: they’d have to identify a different god to worship and center their lives around!

Again, this position is a common one among those who have studied The Jewish Question at length. Such observers—properly, in my view—have little patience with theories that posit Jews as supporting actors or as people who are overtaken by impersonal forces that supposedly ride herd over us humans.

Sam Francis died nearly five years ago, so he missed the continued rise of the Zionists and neocons, and the transparently Jewish-backed elevation of a non-White to the Presidency, and the present econmic tumult, with its famed minority mortgage meltdown, the bankruptcy of General Motors, and the bailouts to Wall St., followed by the obscene bonuses paid to those bankers. Had he lived, he may indeed have begun to write more openly about The Jewish Problem.

Personally, I sympathize greatly with someone in a situation such as his. He played by the rules, earning advanced degrees at good universities, then went quietly to work in the halls of power, all the while honing his writing skills.

When the time came, he moved to an editorial position at The Washington Times, but as Joe Sobran noted, Sam “stayed at the Times for nine years until he was abruptly fired for speaking (on his own time) at an American Renaissance Conference. The comments in his speech were not at issue. The newspaper objected to his having appeared at the gathering.”

Francis knew the line he was walking and did his best to stay honest to himself and to his readers. He also knew the risks—and paid for taking them.

Still, he had critics among white nationalists who felt he should have done more to expose the threat emanating from the Jewish quarter. One of critics was Victor J. Gerhard, Esq. who posted on VNN this exchange with Francis. Chided for not naming Jews, Francis replied, “You simply cannot go much further than I have already gone and expect to be published at all in anything like mainstream media.”

Gerhard upped the ante, however, demanding of Francis:

Join those on the radical right who are not afraid to tell the whole truth. I am not asking you to do ANYTHING I have not done. I lost my job as an Attorney, I have friends going to jail on made up charges, I’ve had my phone tapped, I get the super search at every airport, but I am a FREE MAN! I also write columns — they don’t get published mainstream, but thousands of people read them. You could do a hundred times better.

I realize this is a lot to ask, but screw the money and respectability. What do I want? White Power! Your entire body of work does little to counter an anti-Jewish explanation of American Politics. I believe almost all you have written; yet it contradicts most of MacDonald not at all. Your writings try to explain why and how this managerial elite became so alienated and hostile to traditional America. It partially explains the alienation, but does little to explain the hostility, the outright hatred, that these elites have for people who are basically members of their family. Only a non-White group could have such hatred for Whites, and such an obsession with their destruction. Only by understanding that the most influential part of the managerial elite is Jewish can one finally understand this contradiction in your work. [emphasis added]

Sam shot back:

I don’t deny that Jews have power — certainly in the media and cultural centers generally and in politics through funding, staffing etc. But Jews are not the ruling class in this country (at least not yet). As in many other societies they form a satellite that provides services for the ruling class (tax collecting in Poland, e.g.), but I think they have little interest in becoming the actual ruling class because they have no interest in that as long as their interests are secured.

My entire body of writings over the last 20-25 years is an explanation of how I disagree with and have a somewhat different view of the world than what is frankly a monomaniacal obsession with an omnipotent Jew. [emphasis in the original]

Again, I appreciate that Francis was in a difficult situation. John Derbyshire described it quite well in a remarkable exchange with Joey Kurtzman, a Jewish editor of the website Jewcy.com, asserting:

So far as the consequences of ticking off Jews are concerned: First, I was making particular reference to respectable rightwing journalism, most especially in the U.S. I can absolutely assure you that anyone who made general, mildly negative, remarks about Jews would NOT — not ever again — be published in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages, The Weekly Standard, National Review, The New York Sun, The New York Post, or The Washington Times. I know the actual people, the editors, involved here, and I can assert this confidently.

Note that he never says anything about the truth value of such hypothetical remarks; presumably, even true ones that reflect poorly on the Jews would succeed in getting one banished. That is the point.

The fact is, tactics aimed at the protection and advancement of Whites tried till now have not succeeded. They have failed. Consider again the scope of the problem, outlined here by an incredulous Peter Brimelow:

This is a problem which we see throughout the Western world—an unprecedentedly huge influx of non-traditional immigration. The result of this is that every major Western nation will be a minority in its homeland in the foreseeable future. It takes less time in some places and more time in others, but the calculations can easily be made. . . . What’s so amazing about this transformation is that it has no economic benefit for the traditional people of the Western nations that are voluntarily giving up their identity — and their political power.

As Brimelow phrases it, the question then becomes “Why are these countries doing this to themselves if they are not benefiting their native-born — their own people? . . . How can the founding stock of the country have so completely lost control?”

The answer is that the founding stock—and two hundred million other Euro-Americans—have come under the rule of an alien elite, along with the multitude of non-White minorities which that elite has recruited.

A serious study of this process will reveal that rather than the Managerial Revolution as postulated by Burnham or Francis being responsible, it has been a race-centered progression instituted by organized Jewry and by Jews individually. I think of it as a “promote-punish-purge” process in which perceived Jewish interests are always paramount.

Francis was purged because his writings were pro-white, an unacceptable position to Jews because only THEY among powerful groups may promote group integrity. From the time German Jews arrived in America during the 1800s, they have actively pursued this “promote-punish-purge” campaign, boosting Jewish power and influence, while undermining and destroying that of their current main nemesis, Whites.

The list of those pro-Whites punished and purged is long, and it is hard to reconcile the vehemence of the attacks against them with the desire of the managerial elite to gain and hold power. Ford, Lindbergh, Coughlin, Pound, Eliot, McCarthy, Carto, Pierce, Oliver, Duke, Dickson, Robertson, Buchanan, Sobran, Irving, Gibson, MacDonald. This list goes on.

Meanwhile, the enemies of Whites—mainly drawn from the ranks of White liberals—have been assiduously promoted for over a century. Ted Kennedy, the public face of the 1965 immigration law betrayal, is but an example.

Had Sam Francis been given his threescore years and ten, I suspect he would have come over to the side of more white nationalists on the Jewish Question and I think he would have done so publicly.

Is it not our duty, then, to honor Dr. Francis’s memory by addressing forthrightly the chief problem facing us today?

Apart from his analyses of residues and derivations, Pareto is notable among sociologists for the theory known as “the circulation of the elites.” Let us remember that Pareto considered society a system in equilibrium, where processes of change tend to set in motion forces that work to restore and maintain social balance.

Pareto asserts that there are two types of elites within society: the governing elite and the non-governing elite. Moreover, the men who make up these elite strata are of two distinct mentalities, the speculator and the rentier. The speculator is the progressive, filled with Class I residues, while the rentier is the conservative, Class II residue type. There is a natural propensity in healthy societies for the two types to alternate in power. When, for example, speculators have made a mess of government and have outraged the bulk of their countrymen by their corruption and scandals, conservative forces will step to the fore and, in one way or another, replace them. The process, as we have said, is cyclical and more or less inevitable.

Furthermore, according to Pareto, wise rulers seek to reinvigorate their ranks by allowing the best from the lower strata of society to rise and become fully a part of the ruling class. This not only brings the best and brightest to the top, but deprives the lower classes of talent and of the leadership qualities that might one day prove to be a threat. Summarizing this component of Pareto’s theory, a contemporary sociologist observes that practicality, not pity, demands such a policy:

A dominant group, in Pareto’s opinion, survives only if it provides opportunities for the best persons of other origins to join in its privileges and rewards, and if it does not hesitate to use force to defend these privileges and rewards. Pareto’s irony attacks the elite that becomes humanitarian, tenderhearted rather than tough-minded. Pareto favors opportunity for all competent members of society to advance into the elite, but he is not motivated by feelings of pity for the underprivileged. To express and spread such humanitarian sentiments merely weakens the elite in the defense of its privileges. Moreover, such humanitarian sentiments would easily be a platform for rallying the opposition. [26]

But few aristocracies of long standing grasp the essential nature of this process, preferring to keep their ranks as exclusive as possible. Time takes its toll, and the rulers become ever weaker and ever less capable of bearing the burden of governing:

It is a specific trait of weak governments. Among the causes of the weakness two especially are to be noted: humanitarianism and cowardice — the cowardice that comes natural to decadent aristocracies and is in part natural, in part calculated, in “speculator” governments that are primarily concerned with material gain. The humanitarian spirit … is a malady peculiar to spineless individuals who are richly endowed with certain Class I residues that they have dressed up in sentimental garb. [27]

In the end, of course, the ruling class falls from power. Thus, Pareto writes that “history is a graveyard of aristocracies.” [28]

The Transformation of Democracy

Published as a slim volume near the end of Pareto’s life, The Transformation of Democracy originally appeared in 1920 as a series of essays published in an Italian scholarly periodical, Revista di Milano. In this work, Pareto recapitulates many of his theories in a more concise form, placing particular emphasis on what he believes are the consequences of allowing a money-elite to dominate society. The title of this work comes from Pareto’s observation that European democracies in the 1920s were more and more being transformed into plutocracies. The deception and corruption associated with plutocratic rule would eventually produce a reaction, however, and lead to the system’s downfall. In Pareto’s words,

The plutocracy has invented countless makeshift programs, such as generating enormous public debt that plutocrats know they will never be able to repay, levies on capital, taxes which exhaust the incomes of those who do not speculate, sumtuary laws which have historically proven useless, and other similar measures. The principal goal of each of these measures is to deceive the multitudes. [29]

When a society’s system of values deteriorates to the point where hard work is denigrated and “easy money” extolled, where honesty is mocked and duplicity celebrated, where authority gives way to anarchy and justice to legal chicanery, such a society stands face to face with ruin.

ENDNOTES:

[26] Hans L. Zetterberg, “Introduction” to The Rise and Fall of the Elites by Vilfredo Pareto, pp. 2-3.

[27] Pareto, Treatise, # 2474.

[28] Ibid., # 2053.

[29] Pareto, Transformation, p. 60.

Residues and Derivations

One of Pareto’s most noteworthy and controversial theories is that human beings are not, for the most part, motivated by logic and reason but rather by sentiment. Les Systèmes socialistes is interspersed with this theme and it appears in its fully developed form in Pareto’s vast Treatise on General Sociology. In his Treatise, Pareto examines the multitudes of human actions that constitute the outward manifestations of these sentiments and classifies them into six major groups, calling them “residues.” All of these residues are common to the whole of mankind, Pareto comments, but certain residues stand out more markedly in certain individuals. Additionally, they are unalterable; man’s political nature is not perfectible but remains a constant throughout history.

Class I is the “instinct for combinations.” This is the manifestation of sentiments in individuals and in society that tends towards progressiveness, inventiveness, and the desire for adventure.

Class II residues have to do with what Pareto calls the “preservation of aggregates” and encompass the more conservative side of human nature, including loyalty to society’s enduring institutions such as family, church, community, and nation and the desire for permanency and security.

Following this comes the need for expressing sentiments through external action, Pareto’s Class III residues. Religious and patriotic ceremonies and pageantry stand out as examples of these residues and will include such things as saluting the flag, participating in a Christian communion service, marching in a military parade, and so on. In other words, human beings tend to manifest their feelings in symbols.

Next comes the social instinct, Class IV, embracing manifestations of sentiments in support of the individual and societal discipline that is indispensable for maintaining the social structure. This includes phenomena such as self-sacrifice for the sake of family and community and concepts such as the hierarchical arrangement of societies.

Class V is that quality in a society that stresses individual integrity and the integrity of the individual’s possessions and appurtenances. These residues contribute to social stability, systems of criminal and civil law being the most obvious examples.

Last we have Class VI, which is the sexual instinct, or the tendency to see social events in sexual terms.

Foxes and Lions

Throughout his Treatise, Pareto places particular emphasis on the first two of these six residue classes and to the struggle within individual men as well as in society between innovation and consolidation. The late James Burnham, writer, philosopher, and one of the foremost American disciples of Pareto, states that Pareto’s Class I and II residues are an extension and amplification of certain aspects of political theorizing set down in the fifteenth century by Niccolo Machiavelli. [16] Machiavelli divided humans into two classes, foxes and lions. The qualities he ascribes to these two classes of men resemble quite closely the qualities typical of Pareto’s Class I and Class II residue types. Men with strong Class I residues are the “foxes,” tending to be manipulative, innovative, calculating, and imaginative. Entrepreneurs prone to taking risks, inventors, scientists, authors of fiction, politicians, and creators of complex philosophies fall into this category. Class II men are “lions” and place much more value on traits such as good character and devotion to duty than on sheer wits. They are the defenders of tradition, the guardians of religious dogma, and the protectors of national honor.

For society to function properly there must be a balance between these two types of individuals; the functional relationship between the two is complementary. To illustrate this point, Pareto offers the examples of Kaiser Wilhelm I, his chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and Prussia’s adversary Emperor Napoleon III. Wilhelm had an abundance of Class II residues, while Bismarck exemplified Class I. Separately, perhaps, neither would have accomplished much, but together they loomed gigantic in nineteenth-century European history, each supplying what the other lacked. [17]

From the standpoint of Pareto’s theories, the regime of Napoleon III was a lopsided affair, obsessed with material prosperity and dominated for almost twenty years by such “foxes” as stock-market speculators and contractors who, it is said, divided the national budget among themselves. “In Prussia,” Pareto observes, “one finds a hereditary monarchy supported by a loyal nobility: Class II residues predominate; in France one finds a crowned adventurer supported by a band of speculators and spenders: Class I residues predominate.” [18] And, even more to the point, whereas in Prussia at that time the requirements of the army dictated financial policy, in France the financiers dictated military policy. Accordingly, when war broke out between Prussia and France in the summer of 1870, the “moment of truth” came for France. Napoleon’s vaunted Second Empire fell to pieces and was overrun in a matter of weeks. [19]

Justifying “Derivations”

Another aspect of Pareto’s theories which we shall examine here briefly is what he calls “derivations,” the ostensibly logical justifications that people employ to rationalize their essentially non-logical, sentiment-driven actions. Pareto names four principle classes of derivations: 1) derivations of assertion; 2) derivations of authority; 3) derivations that are in agreement with common sentiments and principles; and, 4) derivations of verbal proof. The first of these include statements of a dogmatic or aphoristic nature; for example, the saying, “honesty is the best policy.” The second, authority, is an appeal to people or concepts held in high esteem by tradition. To cite the opinion of one of the American Founding Fathers on some topic of current interest is to draw from Class II derivations. The third deals with appeals to “universal judgment,” the “will of the people,” the “best interests of the majority,” or similar sentiments. And, finally, the fourth relies on various verbal gymnastics, metaphors, allegories, and so forth.

We see, then, that to comprehend Pareto’s residues and derivations is to gain insights into the paradox of human behavior. They represent an attack on rationalism and liberal ideals in that they illuminate the primitive motivations behind the sentimental slogans and catchwords of political life. Pareto devotes the vast majority of his Treatise to setting forth in detail his observations on human nature and to proving the validity of his observations by citing examples from history. His erudition in fields such as Greco-Roman history was legendary and this fact is reflected throughout his massive tome.

Natural Equilibrium

At the social level, according to Pareto’s sociological scheme, residues and derivations are mechanisms by which society maintains its equilibrium. Society is seen as a system, “a whole consisting of interdependent parts. The ‘material points or molecules’ of the system … are individuals who are affected by social forces which are marked by constant or common properties.” [20] When imbalances arise, a reaction sets in whereby equilibrium is again achieved. Pareto believed that Italy and France, the two modern societies with which he was most familiar, were grossly out of balance and that “foxes” were largely in control. Long are his laments in the Treatise about the effete ruling classes in those two countries. In both instances, he held, revolutions were overdue.

We have already noted that when a ruling class is dominated by men possessing strong Class I residues, intelligence is generally valued over all other qualities. The use of force in dealing with internal and external dangers to the state and nation is shunned, and in its place attempts are made to resolve problems or mitigate threats through negotiations or social tinkering. Usually, such rulers will find justification for their timidity in false humanitarianism.

In the domestic sphere, the greatest danger to a society is an excess of criminal activity with which Class I types attempt to cope by resorting to methods such as criminal “rehabilitation” and various eleemosynary gestures. The result, as we know only too well, is a country awash in crime. With characteristic sarcasm Pareto comments on this phenomenon:

Modern theorists are in the habit of bitterly reproving ancient “prejudices” whereby the sins of the father were visited upon the son. They fail to notice that there is a similar thing in our own society, in the sense that the sins of the father benefit the son and acquit him of guilt. For the modern criminal it is a great good fortune to be able to count somewhere among his ancestry or other relations a criminal, a lunatic, or just a mere drunkard, for in a court of law that will win him a lighter penalty or, not seldom, an acquittal. Things have come to such a pass that there is hardly a criminal case nowadays where that sort of defense is not put forward. The old metaphysical proof that was used to show that a son should be punished because of his father’s wrongdoing was neither more nor less valid than the proof used nowadays to show that the punishment which otherwise he deserves should for the same reasons be either mitigated or remitted. When, then, the effort to find an excuse for the criminal in the sins of his ancestors proves unavailing, there is still recourse to finding one in the crimes of “society,” which, having failed to provide for the criminal’s happiness, is “guilty” of his crime. And the punishment proceeds to fall not upon “society,” but upon one of its members, who is chosen at random and has nothing whatever to do with the presumed guilt. [21]

Pareto elucidates in his footnote: “The classical case is that of the starving man who steals a loaf of bread. That he should be allowed to go free is understandable enough; but it is less understandable that “society’s” obligation not to let him starve should devolve upon one baker chosen at random and not on society as a whole.” [22]

Pareto gives another example, about a woman who tries to shoot her seducer, hits a third party who has nothing to do with her grievance, and is ultimately acquitted by the courts. Finally, he concludes his note with these remarks: “To satisfy sentiments of languorous pity, humanitarian legislators approve ‘probation’ and ‘suspended sentence’ laws, thanks to which a person who has committed a first theft is at once put in a position to commit a second. And why should the luxury of humaneness be paid for by the unfortunate victim of the second theft and not by society as a whole? … As it is, the criminal only is looked after and no one gives a thought to the victim. [23]

Expanding on the proposition that “society” is responsible for the murderous conduct of certain people, with which viewpoint he has no tolerance, he writes:

In any event, we still have not been shown why people who, be it through fault of “society,” happen to be “wanting in the moral sense,” should be allowed freely to walk the streets, killing anybody they please, and so saddling on one unlucky individual the task of paying for a “fault” that is common to all the members of “society.” If our humanitarians would but grant that these estimable individuals who are lacking in a moral sense as a result of “society’s shortcomings” should be made to wear some visible sign of their misfortune in their buttonholes, an honest man would have a chance of seeing them coming and get out of the way. [24]

Foreign Affairs

In foreign affairs, “foxes” tend to judge the wisdom of all policies from a commercial point of view and usually opt for negotiations and compromise, even in dangerous situations. For such men profit and loss determine all policy, and though such an outlook may succeed for some time, the final result is usually ruinous. That is because enemies maintaining a balance of “foxes” and “lions” remain capable of appreciating the use of force. Though they may occasionally make a pretence of having been bought off, when the moment is right and their overly-ingenious foe is fast asleep, they strike the lethal blow. In other words, Class I people are accustomed by their excessively-intellectualized preconceptions to believe that “reason” and money are always mightier than the sword, while Class II folk, with their native common sense, do not nurse such potentially fatal delusions. In Pareto’s words, “The fox may, by his cunning, escape for a certain length of time, but the day may come when the lion will reach him with a well-aimed cuff, and that will be the end of the argument.” [25]

ENDNOTES

[16] James Burnham, Suicide of the West (New York: John Day Company, 1964), pp. 248-50.

[17] Pareto, Treatise, # 2455. Citations from the Treatise refer to the paragraph numbers that the author uses in this work . Citations are thus uniform in all editions.

[18] Ibid., # 2462.

[19] Ibid., # 2458-72.

[20] Nicholas Timasheff, Sociological Theory: Its Nature and Growth (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 162.

[21] Pareto, Treatise, # 1987.

[22] Ibid. # 1987n.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid., # 1716n.

[25] Ibid., # 2480n.

Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy

Sam Francis (1947 - 2005)

Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt is the sequel to Professor Paul Gottfried’s earlier volume, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, published by Princeton University Press in 1999. In both books Professor Gottfried, a prominent paleo-conservative polemicist, intellectual historian, and Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, tries to account for the emergence of “post-liberal” trends in political thought and behavior, especially the rise of such phenomena as “multiculturalism” and what is popularly called “political correctness.” The problem underlying his efforts is that such political and cultural views are so self-evidently absurd, based on such transparently false beliefs about history and culture, and so evidently harmful to intellectual freedom and social cohesion, that it is a mystery why anyone believes them at all, let alone why they have become such powerful and all but irresistible trends in academic, intellectual, and political life. Is the acceptance of such views by various key elites in Western society genuine, and to what extent does their acceptance point either to some hidden agenda reflecting the material interests of these elites or to some equally obscure irrational motivation, a collective “death wish” on the part of the leadership sectors of the modern West? This is perhaps the central problem Mr. Gottfried’s series seeks to answer. Aside from what I take to be certain flaws in his presentation and argument, both books are well worth reading, and not only for the large amount of anti-Western foolishness that he documents. They are major contributions to our understanding of what is happening to the Western world and why.

Both books take off from the common assumption that the United States and most of the Western world are now governed by what Gottfried calls the “managerial state,” a term and concept that derive from conservative theorist James Burnham in his The Managerial Revolution of 1941 and which I to some extent reformulated in various essays, columns, and books in the 1980s. Gottfried’s usage of them, however, is quite different from their meaning as defined by either Burnham or me.

In the first place, Burnham was writing under the influence of a Marxism from which he had only recently defected and of the largely Italian school of what are known as “classical elite” theorists, in particular Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, which he had recently discovered. Hence, his theory, as well as the reformulated version that I developed, is framed in terms of elites—relatively small groups within a population that share a common relationship to the instruments of power within a society and a common interest in how those instruments are used and which exclude the majority of the population from access to power. The key concept for Burnham, then, was a “managerial elite,” a “managerial class,” or a “new class,” which was displacing the older elite or ruling class in modern society. He saw this process going on simultaneously in Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the United States of the New Deal era. The new elite, like the old, dominates the state, the formal apparatus of government, but also extends well beyond the state in its control of the economy (as a corporate elite) and of the culture (the structures of ideological formulation, education, and mass communications). In both the original and the reformulated versions of the theory, the behavior of the managerial elite is largely determined by its consciousness of its power interests and its pursuit of those interests, and its ideology is constructed by a managerial intelligentsia (academics, journalists, think tank verbalists, etc.) to justify its interests.

Gottfried’s work, by contrast, owes little to elite theory, and he seldom speaks of a “managerial elite” or “managerial class” at all. Instead, his discussion focuses almost exclusively on the state itself. Large corporations, unions, foundations, mass media, and schools and universities play far less of a role in his model of managerial dominance than in Burnham’s or mine, and his concept of what motivates the thinking and behavior of those who control the managerial state is also radically different.

Secondly, and consistent with his abandonment of elite theory, Gottfried’s usage of the term “managerial state” itself is quite different from that of the Burnhamite school. In the latter, much as in classical Marxism, the state is largely the “executive committee” of the ruling class—in Marx’s case, the capitalist bourgeoisie; in the Burnhamite case, the managerial bureaucracy, which is closely wedded to the corporate and cultural managers. In the absence of the elite theory concept, however, Gottfried’s “managerial state” appears almost spontaneously, merely as the product of liberal ideology combined with political ambition. For Gottfried, the “managerial state” seems to be mainly a synonym for what a Goldwater conservative of the 1960s would have called “big government”—the centralized federal government that regulates the economy, dishes out welfare and special benefits to selected constituencies, and overrides state, local, and private authorities as vaguely defined “mandates” or “social needs” dictate—but neither the interests of the elite that runs the state nor those of sister elites with which it is allied seem to constitute significant driving forces for its behavior and policies. There is therefore little connection between Gottfried’s usage of the term “managerial” and the special sense in which Burnham developed the concept of “manager”—specifically, one who holds power through proficiency in modern technical and managerial skills.

Those who hold such skills are able to dominate the state, the economy, and the culture because the structures of these sectors of modern society require technical functions that only specially skilled personnel can provide. The older elites simply lack those skills and eventually lose actual control over the key institutions of modern mass society. As the new, managerial elites take over, society is reconfigured to reflect and support their interests as a ruling class—interests radically different from those of the older elites. Generally, the interests of the new managerial elites consist in maintaining and extending the institutions they control and in ensuring that the needs for and rewards of the technical skills they possess are steadily increased, that society become as dependent on them and their functions as possible.

Little of this analysis is apparent in Gottfried’s discussion, however, and it is never entirely clear why he is using the term “managerial state” at all or what the relationship between his usage and that of Burnham is. Indeed, the bulk of his second volume is concerned with how and why the “managerial state” evolves into what he now calls the “therapeutic state,” which undertakes “therapeutic” functions intended to “cure” the pathologies of bourgeois society—its “racism,” “sexism, “homophobia,” etc.—and which adopts what is now called generally “multiculturalism” as its dominant ideology. Whereas the old “managerial state” was concerned principally with the public administration of material welfare, the new therapeutic state is concerned mainly with the instillation of “correct” mental and psychological attitudes and behavior.

Social guilt, antifascist education, and the search for subterranean prejudice are integral to the moral mission of European politicians and intellectuals as much as it is for their American preceptors. The mental cleansing that European sensitizers desire must go so deep that it can never be brought to completion. The road is indeed everything, but on the never-ending road toward the unattainable goal, the prescribed reeducation warrants a draconian control over citizens, who remain susceptible to old ways (p. 10).

As Gottfried demonstrates, adopting therapeutic functions does not mean that older managerial functions vanish or significantly diminish, despite the claims of neo-conservative champions of “democratic capitalism” that “socialism has died” or the “era of big government is over.”

But while it is clear that the therapeutic functions have been added onto the older ones, it is not so clear that the “therapeutic” state is as fundamentally different as Gottfried seems to claim. “Therapy,” after all, is merely one kind of technical skill that more recent managers have adopted and applied as an instrument of power and social control. The metaphor of a “sick society” that requires therapy is indeed more recent than the older managerial one centered on the idea of “social engineering,” but the concept of “therapy” does not deviate from that of a technically skilled class (even if the skills are largely pseudo-scientific) asserting hegemony over the rest of society. “Therapy,” in other words, is merely the current codeword by which the managerial class rationalizes its dominance over other social and political forces and especially its claim to reconstruct the human mind itself through the manipulation of emotions, attitudes, and social relationships. Even though the new therapeutic regime reaches much further into the psychic and social roots of behavior to inculcate submission, it is not essentially different from the Burnhamite concept of managerial totalitarianism. It should be recalled that Orwell based 1984 on Burnham’s work, and the consummate achievement of therapeutic managerialism in that novel is the engineering of love for Big Brother, at the expense of all other human affective relationships. Brainwashing masked as “therapy” was thus by no means unknown to the older apostles of managerial domination.

Yet Gottfried’s “managerial” or “therapeutic” state by itself seems to be harmless enough; its drive toward tyranny does not, in his view, derive from its own structure or the interests of its controlling elite. If we could somehow take out the ideology, change the minds of those who control the state, and convert them into paleo-conservatives, the state apparatus itself would be neutral. What really animates its drive toward a totalitarian conquest and reconfiguration of society and the human mind itself comes from the ideology that the masters of the managerial state have adopted, a force that is entirely extraneous and largely accidental to the structure by which they exercise power. In Gottfried’s view, this ideology derives from and is largely identical to what he calls “Liberal Protestantism.”

As Gottfried writes, “A religious worldview gives direction to the managerial state’s progress toward a therapeutic regime concerned with the self-esteem of victims. This worldview is liberal Protestantism, understanding that term in the current sense and not in the way it might have been taken in the past” (i.e., not as a movement to adapt Protestant theology to modern scientific and political trends so much as a theologically based ethic demanding recognition of and collective repentance for such “sins” as “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “anti-Semitism,” etc.).

Gottfried is no doubt correct to point to recent expressions of guilt and guilt-mongering among various Protestant theologians in Europe and the United States, but there are two major problems with his use of such maunderings as an adequate explanation for the practices of the managerial state. In the first place, he fails to establish any significant connection between this body of theological thought, on the one hand, and actual members of the managerial elite (or administrators of the managerial state, if you will), on the other. The closest he comes is a brief account of a speech by ex-President Bill Clinton not long after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in which Mr. Clinton spoke of the collective responsibility of the West for atrocities committed against the Moslem world going back to the Crusades. That sort of rhetoric is common enough, of course, and it may in fact derive from what Gottfried means by “liberal Protestantism.” But there is little reason to take anything Bill Clinton says very seriously except as an expression of his own personal and political interests, and no reason to think that serious feelings of guilt derived from liberal Protestantism really animate the managerial class as a whole.

In the second place, such expressions are by no means limited to Protestants or to liberal Protestants. As Gottfried acknowledges, the so-called “Christian Right” is not exactly immune from emoting about the “sins” of “racism,” and groups like Promise Keepers (before its collapse) specialized in “overcoming guilt” and actually promoted interracial marriage. Gottfried also cites a rhetorical belly crawl over Christian guilt for anti-Semitism by Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed before the Anti-Defamation League in 1995 as illustrating that “the politics of atonement has spilled over to the American Christian Right, the side of the religious spectrum where one might think it would be hardest to find.” But such performances do not derive from the kind of liberal Protestant theology of sin and guilt that Gottfried is talking about. They are more likely either a kind of public theater intended to avoid charges of “racism” and “insensitivity,” or else reflections of the real guilt experienced by various religious neurotics and oddwads who compose the leadership of the “Christian Right.”

For that matter, Pope John Paul II in the last few years has taken up the habit of crawling about on his hands and knees in a protracted apologetic to Protestants (for the Inquisition), Jews (for “The Holocaust”), Moslems (for the Crusades), and even Eastern Orthodox Greeks (for “intolerance”). Whatever the meaning of “liberal Protestantism,” guilt is hardly confined to it, but again there seems to be no special linkage between feeling such guilt or acknowledging its legitimacy and the policies of the managerial state. While Gottfried argues, perhaps accurately enough, that Protestantism harbors inherent tendencies toward guilt and repentance for sin and the rejection of social hierarchies and authority in favor of individualism, he also tends to ignore the profoundly conservative and anti-liberal Protestant heritages of the American South, the pre-twentieth century Church of England, Prussian Lutheranism, and South African Calvinism, among other expressions of Protestantism that fail to suit modern managerial ideological needs. What he seems to have identified is not so much “liberal Protestantism” as “liberalism” itself, which rejects authority and hierarchy explicitly, has succeeded in permeating virtually all Christian sects in the course of the last century, and has evolved into what the late Revilo Oliver dubbed the “succedaneous religion” of the modern West that leads it to racial and cultural suicide. There is no special reason to blame Protestantism for this development and less reason to blame it than other forces.

Searching for such forces that help animate the managerial-therapeutic state’s war on Western culture, we should extend our inquiries to other religious and ethnic formations besides those of Protestants. If we are looking for the sources of the collective consciousness of “sins” such as “racism,” “sexism,” etc. and the systematic, politically enforced reconfiguration of American society, then the Jewish role in promoting racial egalitarianism, promoting feminism and subverting male social roles, instilling collective guilt, promoting mass immigration, and pushing multiculturalism (through Franz Boas and his disciples in anthropology, the civil rights movement, Freudian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, any number of Marxist and New Left movements, Jewish feminist ideologues like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Susan Sontag, pro-immigration lobbying by Jewish “public interest” groups and individual political figures, and the major architect of multiculturalism, Horace Kallen, not to mention the largely Jewish “neo-conservatism” of recent years) can hardly be ignored. Gottfried, however, does ignore it almost entirely, though he gives a casual and not very complimentary nod to Kevin MacDonald’s work, which he characterizes in a footnote as “methodologically uneven but occasionally illuminating.” (p. 42, n. 5; and see also p. 15, n. 21) In short, even if we grant, as Gottfried seems to think, that the managerial elite has no inherent tendency to wage war on traditional Western institutions and values and even if we resort to extraneous forces such as religious and theological movements, there are any number of such forces present in modern society that are at least as plausible as the “liberal Protestantism” Gottfried accuses.

Finally, Gottfried argues that “a transformation of the self-image of the majority population would have had to take place in order for the therapeutic state to have reached its present strength,” and it is the “altered religious consciousness that has affected Protestant majorities in the United States and in other Anglophone countries” that has brought about this transformation. Yet he also points out the “catastrophic” (his word) decline in mainline Protestant church membership and attendance and remarks that “More and more of the 58 percent of the American population consisting of churched Protestants are joining Fundamentalist and Evangelical denominations” in protest of the liberalization of the mainstream churches. In other words, American Protestants, so far from having their religious consciousness altered by liberal Protestantism, are in fact fleeing it.

Moreover, it is not to my perception true that any “transformation of the self-image of the majority population” has taken place at all or that such a transformation is necessary for the dominance of the managerial state, even if the managerial state today is granted the power Gottfried attributes to it. Challenging the possibility of a nationalist, populist political reaction against the managerial regime, Gottfried remarks that “nothing connected to American nationalist politics resonates as strongly as the concern registered in polls about ‘fighting discrimination in the workplace.’ Not even quotas and affirmative action in education, issues that engage the entire American Right, have aroused a national opposition as noticeable as what is counterpoised on the other side.” (pp. 116-17)

The main foundations for these claims that the bulk of the American population now embraces the anti-discrimination policies of the liberal managerial state (as well as mass immigration) are various opinion polls that Gottfried adduces, including one from 2000 showing that 53 percent of the public approves of the federal government “guarding against discrimination in hiring.” But opinion polls often show different attitudes at different times, depending on how the questions are asked, and a mere 53 percent approval of what is an essential function of the managerial-therapeutic state is actually somewhat encouraging. Virtually all polls up to 2000 showed solid majorities favoring reduced immigration, but Gottfried uses one from that year that reported only 45 percent of the public favoring reduction as the basis of his claim that “a majority of Americans have become benignly indifferent to or positive about the government’s immigration policy.” (p. 144) Yet only four pages later he cites a Roper poll of 1996 that showed that 83 percent of the public favored reduced immigration. More recent polls since the 9/11 attacks have shown that a majority again favors reduction. It is likely that most respondents answer such polling questions not after long and deep reflection on and study of public issues but on the basis of vague associations, implanted images, and exposure to mounds of carefully selected information and misinformation about issues like race, affirmative action, and immigration. How reliable any polls on such issues can be for divining what “most” Americans “really” believe is questionable.

Yet in any case, it is not at all clear that Gottfried’s assumption that such a transformation of the majority population is necessary for a therapeutic state to function is true. Elites and states function continuously in most societies, imposing policies to which most citizens have not actually consented and do not even understand. The manufacture and manipulation of “consent” by elites skilled in propaganda and public relations is the foundation of what the state does, not what its citizens really support. Indeed, if Gottfried were correct in his analysis—that a majority of the population, influenced by their religious persuasions, has accepted the legitimacy and necessity of “curing” themselves and their institutions of various repressive pathologies—he would have largely removed most grounds for objecting to what is going on. If most Americans support multiculturalism, why object to it?

Gottfried’s reliance on liberal Protestantism as the animating force behind the managerial-therapeutic state’s war on traditional culture is one of the two main flaws in his thesis. The other main flaw in his argument is his conviction that the managerial state and those who run it are not driven so much by what he calls “calculation” of self-interest on the part of the elite as by “a Protestant culture of social guilt and of individuals ashamed of their collective past.” Such irrational motivations no doubt are always operative in any social or political group, but reaching for irrationalist explanations is never as persuasive as looking for perfectly rational reasons why an entire class thinks and behaves the way it does.

In the case of the managerial class in the Burnhamite analysis, such reasons are not hard to locate. The managerial elite as a whole shares a vested interest in making sure that political, economic, and cultural organizations are dependent on the skills that only the elite possesses. Unlike earlier elites in history, the managerial class does not depend on the transmission of property, power, or status through the family but on skills that cannot be inherited or passed on. Hence, institutions such as large accumulations of private property and the family are relatively unimportant to it. So are the specific identities that multiculturalism combats. As Burnham argued, the reach of managerial power is transnational and supranational; national boundaries, sovereignties, and identities present mainly obstacles to managerial power, and Burnham explicitly predicted the managerial movement away from traditional nation-states and toward supranational organization. For much the same reason, the managerial class is at best indifferent and actually hostile to most other specific identities such as those derived from class, ethnicity and race, religion, region, and gender. Managerial power is heightened by the eradication of such identities and by the triumph of a universalist ideology and ethic that celebrates such abstractions as “humankind.”

Movements like “multiculturalism,” which ostensibly defends the legitimacy of many different cultural and ethnic identities, would seem to be the opposite of the abstract universalism that the managerial system prefers, but in fact the main social and political function of multiculturalism as it is deployed in schools and government policies today is to undermine white, Christian, male-oriented, bourgeois values and institutions—those, in other words, that remain the principal institutional constraints on managerial reach and power. Despite a good deal of play with such ethnic heritages as those of American Indians, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc., the real “cultural” bonds that discipline these different groups are those created and deployed by the managerial regime—through government bureaucracy, educational manipulation, mass routinization by the economy of managerial capitalism, and disciplining by the mass media. Managerial elites can clearly afford to patronize tribal, often paleolithic, practices such as musical styles, clothing, cuisine, and religious rituals; there is little danger that such folkways will seriously interfere with real managerial control and interests, and the elite neither expects nor desires them to do so. The main use of such diversions is to embarrass and discredit their Western counterparts as repressive, genocidal, boring, and uncreative, not really to elevate primitive and Third World cultural strains into the dominant culture created and controlled by the managerial class. The multiculturalist ideology promoted by the managerial regime is supposed to remain subordinate to and controlled by the “color-blind” universalism and egalitarianism that the regime also sponsors.

Yet Gottfried’s analysis, despite the flaws on which I have perhaps dwelled too much, remains a compelling one, and we can agree that even if “liberal Protestantism” is not the major animating force in the managerial regime, it is certainly capable of providing an influential ideological rationale and justification for managerial guilt-mongering, especially in cultural regions where a Protestant heritage remains prevalent. We can agree also that while the “managerial state” is by no means the only structure constructed and deployed for the pursuit of managerial power, it is the major one, and increasingly in both Europe and the United States, cultural and economic control and manipulation of mass society are dependent on the state itself. There are therefore points of congruence between Gottfried’s analysis of “managerial” power and that of Burnham.

Gottfried concludes his book with a warning that the multiculturalist and immigration policies of the managerial state may well be undermining its own power and the stability of the system it dominates (this is a major element in his argument that managerial policies reflect irrational motives rather than rational interests). Thus, the managerial state

will not benefit and may destroy that [managerial] order if the culture shifts in ways that diminish its control. If a certain kind of multiculturalism may have that effect, reasoning leaders will try to prevent it from destabilizing society. This has not happened with immigration: Short-term gain and ideological commitment have both driven the managerial class and its media and academic priesthood toward “empowering” those who live parasitically on multicultural institutions. Hispanic racialists, Third World patriarchs, and Mexican irredentists will likely eat up the present regime, if given the demographic chance. What will then ensue will not be a return to what the managerial state supplanted. At most a precarious truce may be struck, before the advocates of group rights resume their competition for power. (p. 147)

Of course, the managerial class would have a ready answer—that the Balkanizing forces against which Gottfried warns will themselves eventually be assimilated into the managerial stewpot, that managerial techniques of social control will neutralize any such forces, that Gottfried exaggerates them anyway, and that anyone who mentions such problems is probably a “xenophobe,” if not an outright “racist.” Nevertheless, Gottfried has an entirely valid and indeed powerful point, that the dynamic of managerial power undermines its own regime. In particular, what he is alluding to in this passage is the emergence of a non-white and indeed anti-white racial consciousness among the immigrant populations and subcultures (though by no means confined to them) that does not yet fit into the managerial superculture and which has emerged in the course of the last century as an entirely independent force, the “rising tide of color,” the rebirth of non-white and anti-white racial consciousness on a mass scale.

As noted, it is of course the conceit of the managerial class that eventually the threat of Balkanization that such consciousness and the population streams that carry it will be “assimilated” into the superculture through application of its universalist policy of “color-blindness” and the disciplines of economic reward and that they present no long-term threat. What Gottfried is suggesting is that the emergence of Third World racial consciousness cannot be assimilated, that it is impervious to managerial bribery and manipulation, and that it presents a far more serious threat to the stability and functioning of the managerial regime than the masters of the regime realize or — given their ideology — are able to understand.

“Thinking these leaders govern through calculation disregards the fantasy aspect of their vision,” he writes on his last page. Perhaps so, though interest and the greed and lust for power that it engenders can blind ruling classes just as easily as fantasies. While Paul Gottfried has analyzed the irrational and fantasy aspects of managerial power admirably, he fails to dwell sufficiently on the obvious truth that no elite can come to power or remain in power unless its ideology and behavior allow for a considerable amount of accurate calculation of its power interests. The managerial class that has now become the dominant force in American and European societies is at least as calculating as any other in human history, and its power cannot be fully or accurately understood without grasping this truth.