SandScript

that I think shed very interesting light on the chatacrer of the class you have described as Brahmins. Lists of "stuff white people like" or claims about ethnic/tribal origins, as suggested in some of the comments, seem to me to be superficial identifiers. They are less fundamental to the issue at hand than are the origins of the e9lite status of this class. Past e9lites have moved from the creation and husbanding of wealth in some form - whether in agricultural land, commerce, industry, or finance - to acquire social and cultural influence and political power. The Brahmins, however, have moved in the opposite direction, from the acquisition of political strength to the possession of wealth. The Clintons are obvious examples. Haivng spent the earlier part of their lives in politics or politically-related pursuits, they have realized over $100 million in post=White House income purely as a consequence of their presumed access to and familiarity with the levers of government. Obama offers another, somewhat more modest example, in the way that he acquired a $1.65 million house with the assistance of the political fixer and 'low-income housing' magnate Tony Rezko. The peculiar way that the Brahminate has moved from power to wealth rather than in the opposite and more usual way, however unusual it may be, is not unique. Here as in many cases we see the truth of Mark Twain's quip that history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. A clear parallel to the modern Brahminate is illustrated in Hugh Trevor-Roper's two papers "The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" (below referred to as GCSC) and "The Culture of the Baroque Court" (below referred to as CBC).As Nick Szabo has pointed out, contrary to vulgar perception, medie6val kings were not absolute monarchs. They reigned often with very little direct authority over kingdoms that were patchwork quilts of substantially independent jurisdictional entities each possessing definite political property rights - here a feudal baron; there a lord of regality; elsewhere church lands infeft in the local parish, or cathedral chapter, or monastery, or held as an abbacy in commendam (possibly by a layman); or within towns and cities each of which had its jealously guarded liberties. Such arrangements constituted what theorists of the time admired as an Aristotelian "mixed monarchy," that of the Crown and Estates. Trevor-Roper asks how it was that this ideal, still so admired in 1600, could have vanished completely by 1700. He finds the answer in political developments that took place during the Renaissance. "It began in Italy. It was in Italy, the economic and cultural capital of Europe, that the previous model of government had been perfected, and it was there that it was transformed. That model was the commune, the city-republic ruled by a mercantile patriciate. Medieval Europe was, in a sense, a colony - at least an economic colony - of Italy. It was on the trade routes to Italy that the cities of Flanders, the Rhineland and South Germany grew rich, and it was from Italy that they borrowed their culture... International trade made these cities international, and being international, they looked, for their culture, to the greatest of international institutions, which was also Italian, the Church. This combination... determined the culture of the Middle Ages. It was Florence, Venice, Genoa, Milan, Ghent, Bruges, Augsburg, Nuremberg, not the feudal courts of Europe, which generated the great art, as they also generated the wealth, of that phase of history..."Then, at the close of the middle ages, came the great crisis of the cities which was to end, almost everywhere, in the extinction of their liberties. First in Italy, then in Flanders, the old city republics were replaced by new monarchies. Almosty every Italian commune became a principality. Milan was transformed into a duchy, Florence into a grand duchy. The cities of Flanders were swallowed up in the duchy of Burgundy. the few city republics which survived drew in their horns and ceased to assert their independence..."This take-over of the cities by the princes marked a profound social change in Europe, comparable, in its generality, with the eclipse of nineteenth-century liberalism by twentieth-century dictatorship. The princes, old and new, erected their power of a new social base and justified it by a new political philosophy. Against the urban patriciate, with its ideas of freedom and republican tradition, they relied on wider support; they mobilized the country against the city, the plebs against the patriciate.... The merchants then learned their lesson. The sons of the old patriciate turned away from the uncertainties of private commerce to the profits of office. They became courtiers, bureaucrats, farmers of taxes, court-monopolists, 'officers' of those close-knit, professional 'privy councils' which would replace the looser, more amateur 'chambers' of the old feudal princes." (CBC, pp. 224-5)."We often speak of the Renaissance State. How can we define it? When we come down to facts, we find that it is, at bottom, a great and expanding bureaucracy, a huge system of administrative centralization, staffed by and ever-growing multitude of 'courtiers' and 'officers.' The 'officers' are familiar enough to us as a social type. We think of the great Tudor ministers in England, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, the two Cecils; of of the letrados of Spain, Cardinal Xime9nez, the two Granvelles, Francisco de los Cobos, Antf3nio Pe9rez; and we see their common chatacrer; they are formidable administrators, Machiavellian diplomats, cultivated patrons of arts and letters, magnificent builders of palaces and colleges, greedy collectors of statues and pictures, books and bindings. For of course these men, as royal servants, imitated their masters... But what is significant about the sixteenth century is not merely the magnificence of these great 'officers,' it is the number - the ever-growing number - of lesser officers who also, on their lesser scale, accepted the standards and copied the tastes of their masters. For all though the century the number of officers was growing. Princes needed them, more and more, to staff their councils and courts, their new special or permanent tribunals which were the means of governing new territories and centralizing the government of old..."Thus the power of Renaissance princes was not princely power only; it was also the power of thousands of 'officers' who also, like thier masters, had extravagant tastes, and somehow, the means of gratifying them..."(T)he bulk of an officer's gains came from private opportunities to which public office merely opened the door." (GCSC, pp. 56-7).The parallel between the 'officer' class of the Renaissance state and the Brahminate of today is evident - in both cases, "the bulk... of gains came from private opportunities to which public office merely opened the door" - whether the officer was a Wolsey or a Clinton, a Cromwell or an Obama, or any of their countless subordinates, whether four hundred years ago, or yesterday.Trevor-Roper argues that it was the weight of this large and extravagant bureaucracy that led to what he calls the general crisis of the seventeenth century. The productive capacity of the economy of the day was simply not enough to support it. Early efforts at reform proved failures:"The reform provded ineffectual. Such reform almost always was, for it entailed the 'de-manning' of a powerful corporation. The courtiers were a solid 'interest,' a kind of trade union, concerned not with efficiency but with job-protection, full employment and union rates. In Milan, when the courtiers, at a time of crisis, were asked to accept a cut in their salaries, they drew together, and, with one voice, declared, 'No! Not a sou!' In London, when King James I appointed an outsider to rationalize and reduce his expensive household, the officers of the household similarly drew together and blocked the appointment. Voluntary reform, self-reform, was impossible; and so, in the end, it was war or revolution which transformed or destroyed those overblown Renaissance courts which were so ill-equipped for such a strain" (CBC, pp. 237-8). Of course, historical parallels are not perfect, and to quote Marx's one correct apere7u, history repeats itself - first as tragedy and then as farce. We should have no doubt that ours is the era of farce, however little it may amuse us. A lot could be forgiven today's Brahminate if they had the exquisite tastes in architecture, art, music, and literature of the Renaissance officer class. There will be that much less to regret when they come to their well-deserved fall.