More anecdotal evidence that leftism is a phenomenon of upper middle class social prerogatives.
In review, I define leftism’s essential characteristic as magical thought applied to the social and political realms. In response to any emergent social problem, leftism seeks to solve it by “wishing” it would go away. While this is my attempt to simplify the concept, I don’t mean to say that leftism is burying heads in sand. Rather, problems are solved by assertion of belief. And since magic isn’t real, problems get blamed on those who hold wrong beliefs. And so the real solution becomes to reeducate and organize revolutions against non-believers. It’s a psychological and sociological phenomenon. But, I think it’s probably sophomoric to associate leftism with some of its modern proximate characteristics like workers’ revolutions or this or that economic theory.
Leftism itself is not necessarily an upper middle class phenomenon, but upper middles possess unique traits that favor them to it. It is their ideology. If the lower upper class are the bourgeoisie and the lower middle class the “petit bourgeoise”, then the upper middles are the administrators. Ayn Rand spoke of Atilla and the witch doctors. The state or warlord, and the court mystics, ideologues and rationalizers. The upper middles are the witch doctors. They are patronized by the oligarchs and chieftains, and are not directly responsible for their own wealth. Thus, they live detached from reality. And indeed, it’s their job to craft unreal narratives to justify and rationalize the power of the state.
These form a core, around which a culture emerges, which goes on to define the entire class who holds that level of wealth. Not all upper middles are academics or bureaucrats, but anyone with their level of wealth is bound to live in their neighborhoods and feel the pressure of their culture.
I would contend that the Calvinists of Zurich were upper middles. The Marxists of France and Germany the children of upper middles. The transcendentalists of New England. And eco-justice social equity warrior princesses of today. Che was an upper middle child.
If there’s an exception to this rule, it has to be in the cases when the upper class itself gets involved in leftist politics. But, history shows that this happens when the agents of their networks act to spawn, sponsor, or lead revolutionary movements. This is only natural. It’s Atilla searching for new witch doctors, and creating them – maybe to seize power from other uppers in a game of thrones.
Why then is the upper middle class so revolutionary? To a degree, they aren’t. Their politics is profoundly conservative and represents a desire to maintain and promote their class interest. Much of leftist politics isn’t well-thought out (if we ignore irrelevant fringes), and amounts to little more than demanding more money from Atilla. Revolution seems to occur when the upper middle class collapses (Atilla runs out of money), and then out of desperation asserts itself upon a probably already vulnerable polity. If leftism’s violence is noteworthy, it’s probably because of the unreality of their worldview.
Atilla himself doesn’t actually believe his own witch doctor, and constantly makes pragmatic tough choices as needed. The leftists in their revolutions attempt to rule by their system of wishful thinking, and this departure from Atilla’s realist politics is where the extreme violence comes from – as Atilla himself has created a state structure of massive, but relatively contained, violence.
It’s not leftism that creates violence but rather leftism’s inability to rule that’s unleashes the full horror of state violence. The violence of leftism is the inherent and invisible violence of the state.
