Lardlordism vs. Democracy: Abolishing Aristocracy, then and NOW

I am a critic of the left-wing view of
wealth and social inequality I'm a critic of both the left-wing understanding of the problem and the left-wing proposal for the solution but as you may have heard me say on this channel recently I nevertheless do support the eventual objective of eliminating the billionaire class I support that objective for different reasons and with different concerns from anyone who represents the left-wing today and to my knowledge actually my approach this issue is different from any left-wing movement that has existed in the past it's maybe easier to understand what my position now is like now meaning in the year 2020 and looking ahead to the future of democracy and planet Earth it's easy to understand what my position is if we talk about a kind of ancient or medieval Society precisely because we have so much detachment and looking back at that medieval society and we maybe even have detachment in looking at the way in which we manufacture propaganda about the type of society we aspire to have in future out of the analysis or appraisal of those historical societies what was right with them and what was wrong with them right um many people on the Left insist on regarding aristocrats as social parasites they look back at the history of medieval Europe or medieval Asia because we could be talking about China Japan Thailand any of these countries and they see the role of the aristocrat paradoxically as being like a beggar just takes money for his or her own enjoyment and then this this money is wasted or disappears my perspective historically is a much more sober and I think fair assessment of what the function of aristocrats was in in that society and now it's true I have my modern perspective my modern analysis that that was a bad but the sense in which aristocracy was a bad thing was precisely because I believe something better could exist if you about abolished the aristocracy if you removed the the aristocracy as a kind of obstruction to progress so that's that's my belief and that's my bias but I'm not so blind as to pretend that the aristocrats were merely social parasites or that they had no positive social function so in the English Civil War the reality is the aristocrats are the people collecting taxes and giving them to the government the aristocrats before the war begins are people who devote all of their time and energy to breeding horses for war they don't even know what the next war is gonna be but they got a breed horses for and the minute there is a war the government or the King comes and steals all their horses and puts them into war right so when all their wealth is going into producing the requirements for the military but in this period of history there isn't like a bureaucratically separate professional military the military is precisely what the King gathers together from the aristocrats or what the government gathers together as as you like to put it um all of their time and energy is going into preparing for war and apart from that their lives are devoted to agriculture now this is a very grim society I don't approve of this society but it's totally false to offer an analysis of the society as if the aristocrats are doing nothing as if the aristocrats are just stealing money from the peasants for their own enjoyment as if the aristocrats are social parasites now I dislike the Society of England in the Dark Ages and it's very easy for me to look back and say well you guys could have had a much more wonderful society if you imitate in the society of ancient Athens right a democracy however imperfect we could now launch into a criticism of the many ways in which the Society of ancient Athens was also bad or imperfect a flood but it was better than the Dark Ages in England it was better than having a society that exists by and for the aristocrats and this problem is so profound that it has nothing to do with the personal virtue or personal vice of aristocrats as individuals even if all of the aristocrats each even if each and every one of them is a really good person a really virtuous person a really charitable person even if every single one of them really cares about helping the poor for example nevertheless you have this horrible distorting effect on society as a whole because the domination of that society by its wealthy class the domination of that society by the aristocrats inexorably produces a government a polity that exists by and for the aristocrats my point being even in the absence of any overarching scheme even in the absence of any plan class interests the cultural dominance of the ruling class will completely warp the development of something like the university education system United States through thoughtless accretion without any kind of grand scheme without any plot or conspiracy and in this way they build themselves around the interests of the ruling class sometimes with none of the people participating even being aware that they're doing it why is the American University system designed in the way it's designed well it's not a system it's not designed but anyone and everyone who analyzes the way universities work in the United States they say well gee this was made for the rich this was made by and for the wealthiest people in America and it works pretty well for their interests but then when you look at it from even a middle class perspective let alone a poor people's perspective this is crazy the American University system doesn't work well at all well it wasn't designed as a charity to benefit the poor and help the poor become medical doctors right you can say in a sense it was created by an for the rich it reflects the interests of and cultural values of the ruling class in this way with no central planning with no plot with no grand scheme right it's not the case that billionaires are cynical often plotting how to make American Universities overpriced and accessible and wasteful and grandiose it just happened it just develops out of that cultural and political context and produces institutions that reflect those class interests the interests of that ruling class right now France the university system is completely different from the United States America and it has its own advantages and disadvantages Germany the university system completely different from United States of America right what I just said about the university system in America is not true of Germany or France I'm trying to get divorced in France I have been trying to get divorced in France for many years let me tell you something the French legal system the French court system is designed by the rich for the rich at every stage of this process I have to ask how could this possibly work if I couldn't spend like $30,000 a year on lawyers and legal fees okay and I'm not even in a criminal situation this isn't even about justice or injustice I'm just trying to get divorced it is impossible to get divorced in France if you were in my situation if you don't have a lot of money to flush down the drain if you can't spend a huge amount of money year after year after year you will never be able to get divorced in France you will never be able to pursue justice and nobody planned it that way all right it's not the case that people in government or members of a nervous aristocracy sat down and schemed and connive to produce a legal system that's prejudicial against the poor or that only works to the rich this is just the way the cookie crumbled this is just and that's not an excuse you know the government of France ought to be passionately interested in justice for all the government in the United States America ought to really be interested in well what about the people who can't afford to pay bail what about the people who can't afford to spend $30,000 in a lawyer what about people who don't have access to justice what about the people for whom this system doesn't work while acknowledging at the same time this system probably does work really well for maybe the wealthiest 10% of people I don't know I don't know if it's 10 percent or 20 percent you could investigate that ok so I think when we talk about particular examples like this how the university system works how the health care system works how the legal system works how the administration of justice works but then ultimately how Parliament works how the Senate works how Congress works but if you live in a country with the system of parliament you may find if you do the research that multimillionaires and the owners of huge corporations have a very easy time having their voices heard in parliamentary Affairs committees in congressional inquiries that they have a very easy time getting a meeting with a member of parliament or getting their message delivered at native in Parliament and this is a system also that was designed to work for one social class and not another in a genocidal country like Canada it's very clear that we have a representative system of government that was not meant to represent the indigenous people right it was meant to represent a certain class of white British settler colonists and that's still reflected in the design of government the operation of government to this day my point being even in the absence of any overarching scheme even in the absence of any plan class interests the cultural dominance of the ruling class will completely warp the development of something like the university education system United States or the process of the law in France there are her defects that come about not because any one aristocrat had some kind of Machiavellian scheme had some kind of plan to shape society in this way the society itself comes to exist for aristocrats it's not a government by the people for the people it's a government by the aristocrats for the aristocrats even if none of them really wanted it that way and each of those aristocrats is busy coping with their own agricultural problems and raising horses and preparing for war and they may have the best of intentions and they may perceive themselves as trying to help the poor and nevertheless that's the way the society is going to go I can look at each of these societies historically and I can positively appreciate the role aristocrats are playing the function of aristocrats what is being done with the wealth in that society while at the same time I would like to call for the abolition of that class I would like to call for the abolition of aristocracy I'd like to call for the completely profound transformation okay now likewise it's completely false to me it's alienating and stupid when I see left-wing people claiming that landlords are just parasites it's exactly the same mentality but applied to the present day No I even feel a sense of gratitude towards my landlords okay the landlord's I've had I've lived in all these different cities around the world my landlords provided me with a home and in the future because people's employment is becoming more and more itinerant you know people don't just live in the same city the role lives they don't just have the same job their lives people move from place to place with new jobs and education this increasing mobility of Labor we really need a relationship with our landlords which is almost like a member of the family however even if all of the landlords are virtuous people even if you lived in a country where every single landlord was kind and caring and courteous and helpful towards you you know my current landlord he's he's pretty nice to me mail he's helpful towards me you know I know you can have a bad landlord you can have an immoral and have a dishonest own but even if every single landlord is kind and virtuous towards their tenants and let's say every single landlord also care helping the poor let's just say they're also charitable people who when their spare time takes some of the money that makes a landlord let's just say you live in a country with a 100% rate of virtuous landlords nevertheless the problem is we live in a society that is by the rich for the rich we have government that is of the landlords by the landlords of the landlords for the landlords not by the people of the people for the people you see in this way you can end up with the society that even in the absence of anyone having bad intentions even in the absence of a figure like Napoleon who sees this as his opportunity to seize control and seizes control and becomes a dictator which certainly happens with multimillionaires and billionaires they seize control of government outright this is this was also already in Aristotle's time a major concern that if you allow wealth to accumulate in a few hands you're gonna slip from democracy to oligarchy to dictatorship perhaps not in that order this this is a fundamental problem even if nobody has any bad intentions so my approach this issue is based on a positive appreciation of the role of aristocrats and aristocracy a positive appreciation of the role of the investment capitalists the venture capitalists the landlords the billionaire class in a capitalist society but in both cases this positive role they're playing now conceals something that's much harder to see in the same way that people in medieval England or people in the Dark Ages in the Ottoman Empire in Turkey in the same way that those people couldn't easily imagine how much better their whole society could be if they would abolish the aristocratic class and instead of a democracy even a democracy as flawed as ancient Athens or even a democracy as flawed as Switzerland today in Switzerland it's positive example of democracy with direct democracy and in the modern world okay but but of course what's the one has its own problems it's imperfect it's not an ideal it was so hard for people to imagine how their society could be made better by eliminating the very social class that they were dependent upon for everything in the same way I depend on my landlord to be good for me people depended on aristocrats to defend them to lead them in war for so many these fundamental social functions right it's very very hard to see that in the same way I feel right now it's not the weakness of capitalism it's not the oppression of the poor it's not the poverty in capitalism that makes it hard to see how we can have a better say it's the success of capitalism it's the wealth of capitalism it's the comfort of capitalism it's the fact that life is so easy if the fact that conformity is so easy that conforming to the system participating in this sense the benefit of is so easy that it's hard to picture what could be better if we would abolish this billionaire class and take steps towards having a truly democratic society [Music]