unsuccessful in that it
came to an impasse over the first item on the agenda, whether [the collective assembly] should vote by estate, giving the first two estates an advantage, which was the king's choice, or vote all together, giving the Third Estate the advantage.
Comprendez-vous? Voting "by estate" would have presumably resulted in an outcome of 2 against 1, and victory for the elites in the kingdom. Whether the Third Estate had 600 or 60,000 delegates would not have mattered one tiny bit, as collectively they would still have merely cast only a single vote. Ain't politics grand?
Geeky words-of-the-day: a society or a system ruled and dominated by a small number of (not necessarily rich) people is known as an oligarchy; this is a word worth getting to know (Daily Kos makes this fairly easy). Another word worth getting to know is plutocracy, where the small minority who rule and dominate happen to be the society's richest citizens (the "filthy rich", as some call them).
Rumor has it that America is a representative democracy, where the small minority who rule theoretically represent "we the people". Some people (pesky Third Estate types, mostly) think that the small minority who rule are actually much more sensitive to the needs and wants of Second Estate types, i.e. our modern-day nobility, however. When you think about it, this issue is similar to the dilemma faced by the Estates General: should lawmakers vote in a way that is advantageous to America's "upper classes", or should they vote in a way that is advantageous to the common people (an estate with significantly more members)? Everything that's old is new again.
On a side note: Senator Bernie Sanders recently asked Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen whether or not America is now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. Her answer was cute: I prefer not to give labels. Democracy, Oligarchy, Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to, ... If a small minority of people is now stealthily ruling what was previously a democratic country, and "the people" don't seem to realize it, should anyone bother to tell them?
Getting back to Versailles, King Louis wanted those with the most wealth and power in his country (those who were "sitting on the right") to render the final verdicts, rather than the representatives of the common people. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to compare that attitude with those who define themselves as conservatives today: do they truly believe in the principles of democracy (i.e. one person, one honest and authentic vote) or do they actually believe that those with the most wealth and power (i.e. first estate professional Christians and second estate "job creators" like the Koch brothers) should render the final verdicts for "the good of the country". [Dang it, now a voice in my head won't stop saying, "The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants", which was Woody Allen's explanation about why he romantically pursued the adopted child of his own partner. Perhaps the Second Estate types just can't help the fact that they just aren't into democracy as much as the rest of us? Snarky and rhetorical question: Is it really so wrong of them to use their wealth and power in an attempt to gain even greater wealth and power, despite the negative consequences to those in the Third Estate? ]
Meanwhile, at the other (/left) end of the room:
[The Estates General] was brought to an end when the Third Estate formed into a National Assembly, inviting the other two to join, against the wishes of the king, signaling the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Translation: Those annoying kill-joys, the commoners, thought that justice required the voting in the assembly to be something closer to "majority rule," and apparently were impolite enough to be willing to rock the boat. The nerve of some people! Woody's voice has finally stopped, thank goodness, but now I'm hearing a different set of voices, which are some kind of song, I think ... they're starting out quietly, then growing louder and louder ...
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
Let's tie this back more tightly to the concepts of Left and Right, shall we?
Who was it that "sat on the left"? Who "opposed the monarchy and supported the revolution, including the creation of a republic and secularization"? It was the Third Estate - the common people, the poor people who were starving to death while those in the upper classes, like Marie Antoinette, indifferently uttered words such as "Let them eat cake".
Who was it that "sat on the right"? Who was "supportive of the traditional institutions of the Old Regime"? That would be the First and Second Estates, namely the clergy and the nobility. What is another way to describe nobility? Aren't they persons with wealth and power? What is another way to describe the clergy? Don't they have great power? And vows of poverty or not, don't "the most notable" members often have great wealth too?
In other words, weren't those who "sat on the right" generally all persons who had benefited from the status quo and therefore wanted to keep things just the same, whether others starved or not?
Marie Antoinette at age 12 by Martin van Meytens, circa 1767-1768 (courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons).
There are many in this country who bemoan the fact that America essentially has a two-party political system. I share their unhappiness with our current system, but in my mind, there are natural forces - almost as strong as gravity itself - that will always exert themselves to create two key parties: 1) the party of the haves (those with wealth and/or power), and 2) the party of the have nots.
I believe that these two parties manifest themselves with different names over time in different countries. I think Karl Marx made this same realization many years before I did; he called the party of the haves the bourgeoisie and the party of the have nots the proletariat. Wikipedia describes their relationship to each other this way:
In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle, wherein the capitalists exploit the workers, whilst the workers resist their economic exploitation, which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to earn a living, he or she seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer, who sells them for a price ... the capitalist profits (makes extra money) by selling the surplus value of the labour of the workers
(emphasis mine)
Another snippet is disturbingly familiar to what I see happening in America today:
by the 18th century, ... the bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling class who owned the means of production (capital and land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed forces and legal system, police forces and prison system). In such a society, the bourgeoisie’s ownership of the means of production enabled their employment and exploitation of the wage-earning working class (urban and rural), people whose sole economic means is labour; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the socio-political challenges of the lower classes, and so preserved the economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained employers
(emphasis mine)
Regardless of the text in any "party platform", I believe that the "haves" and the "have nots" have certain constant properties and agendas, described below:
- If you don't have it:
- you want a level playing field so you can get it,
- even more importantly, you want a level playing field so that your kids have a hope of getting it,
- you want change, and especially want social justice,
- you are in the majority.
- If you have it:
- you want to keep it,
- you want your children to keep it too (blood is thicker than water),
- at the end of the day, you don't quite care so much about whether the playing field is level or not,
- you want to preserve the status quo because you have done well under it, and are relatively indifferent to social justice and the plight of the "have nots" (though in the interest of public relations, you might act in ways to keep your true feelings hidden (such as making large donations that allegedly benefit the public at large))
- you are willing and able to exert the considerable power you have in order to get what you want,
- you are in the minority.
The haves and the have nots are playing two different games with the political process. Each side wants to "win" this game, as the stakes are incredibly high (the health, welfare, and even literally the survival of one's self and one's family).
This diary has grown long. I have some additional thoughts that I'll need to save for a second one; it will be shorter and lighter, I think, and also have a few "what can we do" type suggestions.
I'll just close now by pointing you to awesomeness that was recently published by Kossack MinistryOfTruth and is called "The pitchforks ARE coming" - A billionaire warns his fellow Oligarchs what is coming down the pipe.
Multi-millionaire Nick Hanauer is no dummy. He sees the writing on the wall ... Eventually those poor and miserable people figure out who is keeping them poor and miserable ... You can only push those people too far until your gated communities won't keep you secure anymore ... The wealthiest .01% have a choice, as Mr. Hanauer states at the end of his piece, they can either start paying decent wages or they can "sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks."
MinistryOfTruth also wrote "The plutocrats need to let the rest of us enjoy some long overdue prosperity and wage increases before the most extreme among us decide that isn't enough and start calling for the pitchforks. I don't want that, it's the last thing I want to see." I don't want to see pitchforks either.
But as the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I believe that many of those who have great wealth and power will attempt to gain more of both without regard to the suffering of others; indeed, "demonizing the other" is one of this group's most oft-used tactics. Woody Allen told us, the heart wants what it wants, regardless how perverse the desire; it may be that this group of people lack the ability to control themselves. The founding fathers knew that men are no angels; they believed in checks and balances. We need to figure out how to put some kind of safeguard into our system to prevent the catastrophe that undoubtedly lies in our future if we fail to act. We need to discover how to effectively limit the power of the Second Estate. And we need to do it soon.
Tue Jul 01, 2014 at 10:39 AM PT: I wasn't completely satisfied with how I originally concluded this diary. Several conversations in the comments prompted me to add these words here now. I am not really an expert on the French revolution; that wasn't really the point of what I was trying to say. I ultimately wanted to convey the idea that
Left = common people
Right = those with wealth and power, who have a vested interest in the status quo and therefore want to keep it, warts and all.
We live in the world where the left is demonized by those who have a vested interest in keeping their wealth and power. Those who seek greater democracy and justice are sneeringly called "radicals". The fact that those on the right are actually advocating for policies that will maintain their own wealth and power is rarely part of the conversation.
They sneer at us out of their own self-interest; but striving for a level playing field is nothing to be ashamed of. It's taken me decades to figure this out, I'm hoping to help others who don't see it yet to grasp that reality more quickly.