Imitation; R. J. Rushdoony

566 live a life without reckoning, and without a day of economic or re ligious judgment. The beginning of the era of revolutions did not lead to a pro letarianization of culture. Instead, the new classes in power began to imitate the vices of the old aristoc racy and to flaunt their contempt of economics and religion as a means of proving that they had arrived. In France, from Louis XIV on, the court was marked by gambling on a massive scale, and sexual immorality. Nineteenth cen tury France saw the new classes imitate royalty, and courtesans tri umphed as never before. In Red China, the elite communist cadres put the old war lords to shame with their more systematic ex ploitation of women, their use of power to promote their idle fan cies, and their childish and sense less pride. Each new generation of leaders has imitated the older idle rich 1973 IMITATION 567 and have built houses, not in terms of convenience and utility, but as imitation palaces, and furnishings still are prized because they echo the ornate vulgarity of the Bour bon styles. The "proletarian art"

of Marxist countries is officially required to imitate the older styles of royal Europe in the name of so calist realism, whereas non-Marx ist art despises the same tradition in art because the middle classes borrowed and used it for a time. Modern art strives instead for a new elitism which is non-utili tarian in a radical sense. The Training of Gentlemen In education, the goal on the part of the traditional scholar is the training of gentlemen. Witon ski thus deplores the instrumen talism of American universities, where, "Instead of studying, say, Latin poetry, a student can study urban race relations, an instru mental course that will be of little use to him in the real world." (Peter Witonski: What Went Wrong With AmeriCian Education, p. 112. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1973.) But of what "use" is Latin poetry "in the real world"? Witonski's idea of a lib eral education is hopelessly obso lete. A liberal education is an edu cation in the art of freedom, of be ing a free man (lib er meaning free), and Witonski, as an Oxford and Harvard scholar, has a view of freedom which is irrelevant to our world, and, in its own way, al most as worthless as courses in hotel management. The scholar as a member of the idle class, a man who is rather than does, is mean ingless increasingly. The scholar who does seeks to imitate the "so cial relevancy" of agitators. The academic scholar thus has .been unable to define himself in our era because he lacks a faith which makes for valid definition. This underscores his increasing irrele vance to the future in any con structi ve sense.

The styles of men and women in the age of aristocracy stressed clothing which made people useless for work. Women emphasized this by their hair-styles, shoes, and finger-nails: they were beyond work. The goal of most moderns is the same non-utilitarianism and the same lust for an aristocratic idleness. The hippies have also manifested the same contempt for the :world of work: they drop out of study' and work. They empha size hand crafts and aristocratic arts as alone relevant to their cul tural goals. "The Puritan work ethic", as the antithesis of this imitation of the non-working or idle rich, has been especially under attack. In the 1920's, as a boy in Detroit, one of the most remarkable facts 568 THE FREEMAN September was the pride of workers in auto mobile factories: they urged friends to take the guided tour through, for example, the Ford plant, to see the assembly line. In stead of boredom, there was a de light in the high volume of pro duction and a boastfulness about what their work was doing to change the world. The reason for this attitude was the "Puritan work ethic." The increasing signs of boredom today mark not only the automobile workers but white collar workers, executives, intel lectuals, and, men in every area of work. The reason is a change of faith, the growth of a delight in idleness rather than work. Increas ingly, men no longer live to work, but work in order to be able to play. The Playboy dream is to cul tivate the appearance of being a member of the idle rich from col lege days on.

The idle rich were a reality, but always a sign of approaching death and collapse. The nobility of France, for· example, became idle and useless when Louis XIV re quired their presence at court and stripped them of power to prevent revolts. As a growing bureaucracy took over, the monarchs them selves became idle and finally ir relevant. Today, because of the proletarianization of the dream of idleness, men of all classes are de termined to make themselves irrelevant and to commit cultural suicide. Imitating the Idleness, Not the Greatness, 01 the Rich The hatred of capitalism is largely inspired by the old dream of imitating the nobility and roy alty, not in their greatness, but in their decadence. The life style of the future requires, we are told, living in terms of fun and games. We are asked to despise mass pro duction in favor of handcrafts, 'and to love the new morality rather than to obey God.

The rich have always been with us, as have the poor. The lines, his torically, have been very sharply drawn. To the horror of the no bility, the Industrial Revolution not only created a new rich class, the industrialists and merchants, but it made good living cheap enough for the middle and lower classes. Capitalism undermined the old aristocracy and dramatically benefited the masses. As Hazlitt notes, "Before the Industrial Rev olution the prevailing trades ca tered almost exclusively to the wants of the well-t'o-do. But mass production could succeed only by catering to the needs of the masses." (Henry Hazlitt: The Conquest of Poverty, p. 54. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1973.) The result was the rapid rise in the standard of living 1973 IMITATION 569 among all peoples in Western Europe. A savage counter-attack came from the two major branches of the old aristocracy, the lords and the intellectuals. A series of "in vestigations" were launched in England to dredge up every case of capitalistic exploitation in order to build a case against the new class. Since no class is exempt from sin, such examples were found and publicized by both the lords and also by the intellectuals.

(See F. A. Hayek, editor: Capi tal'ism and the Historians. The University of Chicago Press, 1954.) Socialists and aristocrats made common cause in their hatred of the levelling influence of the free market. Karl Marx, by virtue of being an intellectual, en tered the ranks of the aristocracy and married into the nobility. In The Communist Manifesto, he echoed the aristocratic hatred of the Industrial Revolution while ad mitting its revolutionary impact on the world. Marx charged, "The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic rela tions. It has pitilessly torn a sunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superi ors', and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment' ." The bourgeoisie had replaced the old aristocracy, with its junior members, the intellectu als, with a new upper class, the producers, and Marx could not for give them for that offense. While ready to admit the remarkable ef fects of industrialism, he took of fense at its bypassing of the in tellectual. He countered with an Hegelian dream in which the se duced masses, rej oicing in the new affluence, were offered even more affluence if only they followed the intellectuals as their philosopher kings. One point Marx saw clearly.

Power had belonged to the royalty and landed nobility, because, in the old order,. they largely controlled property. This old aristocracy had made room for the intellectual; a Ph.D. had standing as a junior member of the aristocracy, and, if he were a Goethe or a Voltaire, with or without a degree he was an uncrowned king. That eminence had been shattered. Capitalistic production had created new and cheap property, good property, and even landed property was being taken over by the middle and lower classes with their new wealth. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx declared, "The distinguishing fea ture of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. . . . In this sense, the theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: 570 THE FREEMAN September Abolition of private property .... Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power." Once a feudal aristocracy had controlled this so cial power, property. Marx now proposed that a new feudal aris tocracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the intellectual elite, control this social power. The Marxist "revolution" was the ulti mate in counter-revolutionary thinking: it was aimed at undoing the effects of the Industrial Revo lution.

Sabotaging Production In a variety of ways, the New Left continues in this reactionary, counter-revolutionary tradition. "Detroit" is a symbol of the hated mass producer. Production has pol luted the world, the ecology people hold, ignorant of the greater pol lution which preceded the Indus trial Revolution, or of the times when the rivers of Europe were dead streams in a way beyond our present knowledge. The goal of the New Left is to sabotage the great seducer of the common man, pro duction. Instead of realistic at tempts at dealing with pollution, the "eco-freaks", the New Leftist exploiters of ecology and conserva tion, concentrate instead on des troying production. Through legis lation and sabotage, production is hampered. Oil shortages are one result. The oil reserves in America alone are enormous, despite the statements to the contrary, but drilling is restricted, and new re fineries are not built because of re strictions. Offshore drilling has a remarkable record of safety; the Santa Barbara incident had over tones of sabotage. Today, guards are necessary 'on offshore installa tions to prevent sabotage by groups who want to create de struction in order to make prod uc tion anathema. It is the mark of the New Leftist aristocracy to despise mass production in the name of the masses, to hate an abundance which enables "the com mon man" to have as much as an intellectual. One well-paid univer sity professor climaxed and con cluded a long tirade against capi talism by declaring, "Do you real ize that my plumber makes more money than I do?" This was the ultimate insult: the free market economy had given a pIumber more money than a professor! The professor's contempt of capital istic materialism had a material istic ring. In every age, dispropor tions have existed such as the pro fessor cited, and in every society.

They are not corrected by envy and mass suicide. We see also a horror of abun dance in the New Left and a desire to destroy abundance. The delight of the New Left in handcrafts is revealing . What they produce is 1973 IMITATION 571 sometimes good, sometimes crude and childish, but, in either case, it has for them the virtue of being a scarce product. Scarcity is prized and abundance is despised. There is a contempt in every area of the common and the abundant. For ex ample, to have a lovely flower or shrub in one's garden which grows and blooms readily is somehow despised and frowned upon. The idea is to coax growth out of something which does not do well in that locale. Achievement is not seen as beauty but as scarcity and exclusiveness. For many, a flower is not beautiful if it is common. In my university days, I heard professors on a few occasions ridi cule the Californian's affection for his state flower, the poppy. In those days, tens of thousands of acres were covered with poppies every spring. Since then, cultiva tion and the extension of farming into new areas has caused the poppy to recede. A student has told me that he has heard profes sors denounce the destruction of the California poppy by the exten sion of farming. This is typical: abundance is despised, and scar city is prized, because only the elite can afford the scarce item.

To cite one more example among many, styles reflect the same hatred of that which all men can enjoy and the same lust for the aristocratic. The aristocratic in this definition is not the superior but rather the exclusive and the scarce. Whether the style is in dress or in a fad, as long as it is the mark of the avant garde, ev erybody is ready to imi tate and adopt it. The imitation of the idle rich, the jet set or any other group, is a major passion. Is it chic to see a certain pornographic film, to favor homosexuals, or to adopt a style? Then all climb aboard the bandwagon of liberal or radical chic, hippy chic, or what have you. However, when it be comes popular, it perishes. Is ev erybody doing it? Then forget it. The imitation or the following of Christ had as its goal life. The imitation of the ideal of the idle rich, of aristocracy as imagined in the modern era, has as its goal ir relevance.

The privileged groups of the monarchist era in France had as their social goals and principles four things. First, they believed in inequality, however much they idolized Rousseau and his gospel of equality. It was an article of faith with them that some men are more equal than others. Second, they believed in the autonomy of the aristocracy; they were exempt, or should be, from the laws which bind common men. Third, they were "different" and hence could not be included in the body politic in the· same way as other men.

572 THE FREEMAN September Fourth, even though they· had little power, they regarded the ex ercise of state power as their natural right. It is this heritage which the intellectuals and the New Left (as well as the Old Left) have largely adopted. It is a policy of studied irrelevance, and its only real power is, not to produce, but to destroy. Another factor which has since been added is madness. The extent to which madness is a theme of importance in modern culture is rarely appreciated. Before Freud, the cultivation of new and aristo cratic mental illnesses was already prominent. Psychoanalysis became an "inthing" for a time for the self-styled elite. In fiction, televi sion, and motion pictures, the sub j ect of madness is a common one, and an appealing one to many. Mental illness is in fact systema tically courted as a liberating process by sensitivity and encoun ter groups, and industry for a time recently worked to cultivate mental illness as though it offered a way to a higher status and health. This cultivation of mental illness is still a "growth indus try", typical of the new, non-pro ductive growth "industries" of our time. Gene Church and Conrad D.

Carnes, in The Pit, A Group En counter Defiled (New York: Outer bridge & Layard, 1972), gives us an account of the kinds of depravity cultivated in the attempts to gain leadership and aristocracy through induced madness. An age which despises produc tion and abundance and pursues scarcity, idleness, and irrelevance will certainly gain all these things, and will destroy itself in the proc ess. Scarcity is ahead, and irrele vance, and death as well. The age of the state, the world of human istic man, is committing suicide. We will be hurt in that process, but it is also a forerunner of our deliverance. More than ever, we must work to re-establish our roots in the Biblical faith and order, to establish new schools and institutions to rebuild society. In 1961, in the concluding para graph of my book, Intellectual Schizophrenia, Culture, and Edu cation, I wrote: "The end of an age is always a time of turmoil, war, economic catastrophe, cyni cism, lawlessness, and distress. But it is also an era of heightened challenge and crea tivity, and of intense vitality. And because of the intensification of issues, and their worldwide scope, never has an era faced a more demanding and exciting crisis. This then above all else is the great and glorious era to live in, a time of opportunity, one requiring fresh and vigorous thinking, indeed a glorious time to be alive." More than ever, this is true today. I A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Eyewitness to History: Isaac Don Levine, who describes himself as a "mutualist" (meaning that, like Leonard Read, he believes in "anything that's peaceful"), has for many years been our most vig orous and competent authority on the machinations of the Commu nists. You would think that he would be full of honors for his many services to freedom, but the strange thing is that he still suffers from being ahead of popular opin ion in his efforts to arouse a sleep ing Republic to various totalitarian menaces. His fascinating autobi ography, Eyewitness to History: Memoirs and Reflections of a For eign Correspondent for Half a Cen tury (Hawthorn, $10), is a com pendium of journalistic "firsts"